[MD] The thing is Not the Word

Thu Sep 17 06:39:34 PDT 2009

I'm not the one driving people off the forum

----- Original Message ----
From: X Acto <xacto at rocketmail.com>
To: moq_discuss at moqtalk.org
Sent: Thursday, September 17, 2009 9:34:59 AM
Subject: Re: [MD] The thing is Not the Word

only if you can

----- Original Message ----
From: MarshaV <valkyr at att.net>
To: moq_discuss at moqtalk.org
Sent: Thursday, September 17, 2009 8:30:19 AM
Subject: Re: [MD] The thing is Not the Word

Blindfolding, sure, but can you hold your tongue and not hurl insults?  

-----Original Message-----
From: moq_discuss-bounces at lists.moqtalk.org
[mailto:moq_discuss-bounces at lists.moqtalk.org] On Behalf Of X Acto
Sent: Thursday, September 17, 2009 8:12 AM
To: moq_discuss at moqtalk.org
Subject: Re: [MD] The thing is Not the Word

John Quotes Royce:

  Royce's letter verbatim, but the poetic spacing is my own.
-John
-----------------

To William James, Sept. 19, 1880

Now here again I think that people are pursuing this study in too
superficial a way.  Everywhere one meets the question thus put:  What
relation in the structure of knowledge, does thought-work bear to the
contributions of experience?

This is a great problem, but not the deepest one.  The deepest question was
Kant's, how is experience possible?

Only this question can now be understood better than Kant ever understood
it.  What is experience?  A series of states of consciousness, known as a
series.  The definition has two parts.  Experience is a series: that
everyone admits.  Experience is known as a series: that most writers regard
as too simple a thing to mention.  Yet just here is the kernel.  How is a
series of states to be known as a series?  Tell us this and you have a
philosophy.  Leave this untold and you stop half way.

How is experience possible as a series of states known to be a series?

So I put the case to myself, and here I make a beginning of all
investigation.--My solution in general is something like this:  For the
series to be known as a series, each one of its states must know the others.
But in each state only itself is given.  Hence each state can know the
others only by actively constructing or postulating them.  Hence the series
of states can be known as a series only through the conscious activity  of
each of its states or moments.  Hence time as a series of states is never a
datum, only a postulate or construction.  Simple reception gives us no
knowledge of anything beyond the present. Only spontaneity constructs the
world in time. -- Now this looks very simple, but has in fact very
far-reaching consequences.

If experience is possible only through this constructive process, then what
is the ultimate datum?

Not matter.

Not mind.

Not a series of experiences, not the distinction of

object

and subject,

but just this:

a moment

of reception of some content,

joined with a constructive act that postulates

a world

of other consciousness

beyond the present data.

Reception means a passive state of consciousness,

construction an active state.

An Union of passion and action

in one moment only,

Herein is contained all we can think about the universe.

----------------------------------------------------------------------------
------
Ron:
A great quote that goes abit further into the question of being
and experience. In my own experiments with experience
I have confirmed the series of states of consciousness the concept
bears truth for me.
As far as Hams position of "animal logic", I can only advance my own
experiments of blind folding myself for hours. Objects ceased to be
"objects" and became sensations, all consciouness became sensation.
When sight was restored, I realized how the intersection of sensations
helped to create the intellectual concept of the world I live in.
Notice I use the term "intellectual" to mean abstract thought about
experience.
For to just be, to simply expereince, does not involve "spacial temporal
locations" or subjects and objects or dynamic and static for that matter,
it involves intuition and instinct.

One thing I learned in the practice of martial arts is that instincts can be
molded
formed and created through repetition and renforcement until they become
"second nature". We use that term frequently, implied is a learned behaviour
which overlays or becomes instinctual or "natural". Cultural values are one
such
example of second nature collections or systems.

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