[MD] in defence of the "relative"

[craigerb at comcast.net]

[Matt] 

> If everything is experience, what could it possibly mean 
> for something to be "more empirical"?  How can we drive 
> a metaphysical wedge between the experience of low quality 

> associated with the hot stove and the hot stove itself 
> (a distinction you need in order to say the former 
> is "more empirical") when the "hot stove itself" 
> is nothing more or less than a set of static 
> patterns of quality, meaning that "the experience of low 
> quality" is not _associated_ with the stove, but rather _is 
> the stove itself_.  

The distinction is between the UN conceptualized 
experience & the conceptualized experience. 
The UNconceptualized response is to th e low quality, 

not to the stove or even to the heat.  (Our response might 

have  been the same to a sharp edge on the counter .) 

After the "more empirical", UNconceptualized experience, 

we might recognize/conceptualize that the response 
was to heat & that the heat was (from) the stove. 
Another example: 
Say your body temperature is lowering steadily to near 
frost-bite.  Someone rescuing you will want to 
immerse you in warm water.  You will rebel--thinking 
the water is harmfully hot.  Your body developed to 
keep you safe in your "normal" environment (which 
this is not).  One might say that being immersed in 
warm water is "subjectively"  a low-quality experience. 
But "objectively" it is a high-quality experience since 
it is the only process that wil keep your tissue alive. 
(I'm not saying these are how the terms would be used 
in the MoQ.)  

Craig