[MD] now it comes

[Krimel]

dmb said to Krimel:
I think it's important to realize that words like "perception" and
"experience" are terms that are also used by traditional SOM empiricists,
sensory empiricists. In that case, it is assumed that we're talking about
the perceptions and experiences of a subject who is set over against an
objective, pre-existing reality. Since these radical empiricists are
rejecting that premise, it has to be understood that they do NOT mean the
feelings or sensations of a subject. It wouldn't make any logical sense to
say that subjects are derived from subjective experience, would it? The
notion that there is experience without a subject is going to seem quite
strange to a SOMer but there is no way to make sense of these quotes unless
you can grasp that notion.

Krimel replied:
... I don't see James saying anything like, experience is not happening to
some particular person at some particular location.  ... I fear it also
jibes with your romantic notion that 'the immediate flux of life' is
"better" and not equivalent term for perception because it sounds all vague
and touchy feel, new agey; or perhaps some irreducible concept. Whereas
perception actually is a meaningful and specifiable term, we wouldn't want
that since that would mean taking seriously the vast literature on the
subject that in many respect originates with James. Least you start your
usual rant about young and old James let me note that James cites his own
Principles of Psychology throughout both Some Problems... and in Essays...
The older James hardly seems to be repenting of his earlier work.

dmb says:
Well, this is what it really comes down to, isn't it? You don't see how
James the psychologist differs from James the philosopher. And our
disagreements flow from that fact. You're the psychologist but you don't
believe that I'm really doing philosophy, right? My perspective is just
vague, romantic, new-age nonsense whereas you use meaningful and specifiable
terms. Okay, Mr. Know-it-all, strap yourself in and prepare to be surprised.
Shocking as it may seem, you might actually learn something from little ole
me. Wiki has made it very easy to demonstrate that you are mistaken:

[Krimel]
It truly is hard to see how you think this wiki advances your case. You are
the one that has suggested that James is schizophrenic. Either there are two
Jameses, one old and one young or two Jameses, one a psychologist and one a
philosopher. My suggestion is that like any prolific author there are
inconsistencies in body of his work but on the whole it all hangs together.
Or if we find inconsistencies they must be treated individually and
specifically rather than through lumping his work together in levels:
old/young, psychologist/philosopher.

"Sconsiousness" seems a peculiar choice for making this distinction. It is a
term coined by young psychologist James and rarely if ever used by old
philosopher James who chose instead to focus on the fragmented monad of
"pure experience."

It is relevant to note that James introduces sconsciousness  in Chapter X of
his "Principles..." the subject of the chapter is "The Consciousness of
Self" where he says things like:

"The Empirical Self of each of us is all that he is tempted to call by the
name of me. But it is clear that between what a man calls me and what he
simply calls mine the line is difficult to draw."

In his section on the spiritual self he offers this on his own introspective
self-analysis:

"In a sense, then, it may be truly said that, in one person at least, the
'Self of selves,' when carefully examined, is found to consist mainly of the
collection of these peculiar motions in the head or between the head and
throat. I do not for a moment say that this is all it consists of, for I
fully realize how desperately hard is introspection in this field. But I
feel quite sure that these cephalic motions are the portions of my innermost
activity of which I am most distinctly aware. If the dim portions which I
cannot yet define should prove to be like unto these distinct portions in
me, and I like other men, it would follow that our entire feeling of
spiritual activity, or what commonly passes by that name, is really a
feeling of bodily activities whose exact nature is by most men overlooked."

He presages Paul Ekman's work on facial expression. You might recall that
Ekman has been fictionalized on Fox in the program, "Lie to Me." 

"They are reactions, and they are primary reactions. Everything arouses
them; for objects which have no other effects will for a moment contract the
brow and make the glottis close. It is as if all that visited the mind had
to stand an entrance-examination, and just show its face so as to be either
approved or sent back."

And then your quote kicks in where he describes "sciousness" as arising from
the intersection of sensory input and motor output. This thing that thinks
its own existence cannot be a part of the "pure experience" as it is a
reflection upon that "pure experience". It is itself and abstraction, a
concept.

"The sciousness in question would be the Thinker, and the existence of this
thinker would be given to us rather as a logical postulate than as that
direct inner perception of spiritual activity which we naturally believe
ourselves to have. 'Matter,' as something behind physical phenomena, is a
postulate of this sort. Between the postulated Matter and the postulated
Thinker, the sheet of phenomena would then swing, some of them (the
'realities') pertaining more to the matter, others (the fictions, opinions,
and errors) pertaining more to the Thinker. But who the Thinker would be, or
how many distinct Thinkers we ought to suppose in the universe, would all be
subjects for an ulterior metaphysical inquiry." 

So we have old and young, philosopher and psychologist James talking about
his personal introspection at a particular time and place. Was there more?
 
dmb continues:
See, it's not so much that I am "reluctant to use the terms percept and
perception as more precise substitutes for the fuzzier terms used by
Pirsig", as you put it. I'm saying you can't rightly understanding radical
empiricism in terms of psychology. 

[Krimel]
You are seriously suggesting that a philosophy written by a psychologist
can't be understood in terms of psychology.

[dmb]
I think you're latching on to the term "perception" so that you can do
exactly that. 

[Krimel]
You are afraid to use the terms James uses because I might bite you?

[dmb] 
See, what happens is you're trying to understand a non-dualistic experience
in terms of subject-object dualism. You're asserting SOM to oppose the
rejection of SOM, which is like fighting chemotherapy with cancer.

[Krimel]
I thought we were trying to get at the distinction between perception and
the cutting edge of reality. 

[dmb]
Want more proof? Check out this excerpt from a recent (flakey new-age) book
review: 

[Krimel]
I snipped the quotes because they are all better displayed here:

http://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/Sciousness
http://www.scimednet.org/pure-experience/

The Wiki quote was written by Bricklin. The first two chapters of his book
are available through Google books. It on the same search page your other
materials came from.


Krimel said:
But let me restate my original questions:  Where is that quote Pirsig cites
in Lila? Has he just confused his own notes on James with actual writing by
James? Please note the recent brouhaha over Arlo's use of quotes. This seems
far worse so I really would be grateful if you can find the actual quote.

dmb says:
It seems you must be very desperate to find fault. It's a scandal for Pirsig
because YOU can't find the quote? C'mon, would you like to learn something
or are you just here to play silly games? 

Seriously, Krimel. I haven't said much about the evidence provided to you
here because I think you're capable of reading and thinking and drawing your
own conclusions. Am I right to trust you that much? Do you see it? 

[Krimel]
Pirsig says:
"In his last unfinished work, Some Problems of Philosophy, James had
condensed this description to a single sentence: 'There must always be a
discrepancy between concepts and reality, because the former are static and
discontinuous while the latter is dynamic and flowing.'"

I was interested in finding that quote because I have found Some Problems...
helpful. It is available on line here:

http://www.archive.org/stream/someproblemsphil00jameuoft#page/n7/mode/2up

It is the 1916 edition so perhaps Pirsig was citing a later edition.

I am particularly taken with statements like: "Sensation and thought in man
are mingled, but they vary independently."

"The great difference between percepts and concepts is that percepts are
continuous and
concepts are discrete."

Or: 
"The perceptual flux as such, on the contrary, means nothing, and is but
what it immediately is."

"The intellectual life of man consists almost wholly in his substitution of
a conceptual order for the perceptual order in which his experience
originally comes."

He does acknowledge that perception is a slightly higher level function than
sensation and emotion. But these are whafting on the breeze like the "the
sheet of phenomena" flapping between "Thinker" and "Matter".

Or as Magnus might put it somewhere near the firmware and logic gates.

It is hard to call someone "non-dual" when they chop the world into
continuous/discrete, static/dynamic, percept/concept. Or see unity in the
notion of many all at once.

"Percepts and concepts interpenetrate and melt together, impregnate and
fertilize each other. Neither, taken alone, knows reality in its
completeness."

But James is quite clear the concepts arise from and are secondary to
percepts:

"'The insuperability of sensation' would be a short expression of my thesis.
To prove it, I must show: 
1. That concepts are secondary formations, inadequate, and only ministerial;
and 
2. That they falsify as well as omit, and make the flux impossible to
understand."

Concepts flow inevitably from our perceptions and concepts are what we use
to create a shared world. What I don't think out difference have much to do
with psychology versus philosophy. As I hope I have made clear of the year I
don't see much distinction between them. I think our differences are more
along the line of Pirsig's classic/romantic or even more likely the concern
that informs much of James' writing: the split between rationalist and
empiricists. 

"As we survey the history of metaphysics we soon realize that two pretty
distinct types of mind have filled it with their warfare. Let us call them
the rationalist and the empiricist types of mind... Rationalists are the men
of principles, empiricists the men of facts; but, since principles are
universals, and facts are particulars, perhaps
the best way of characterizing the two tendencies is to say that rationalist
thinking proceeds most willingly by going from wholes to parts, while
empiricist thinking proceeds by going from parts to wholes."

These are styles of concept formation and in the end it is concepts that are
always in dispute:

"Rationalists prefer to deduce facts from principles. Empiricists prefer to
explain principles as inductions from facts."

"The author of this volume is weakly endowed on the rationalist side, and
his book will show a strong leaning towards empiricism. The clash of the two
ways of looking at things will be emphasized throughout the volume."

My take is that you use his "radical empiricism" as an excuse to throw out
the hard work of empirical research or rigorous thought. Your whole
contention that James disavows a pre-existing "reality" is true enough on
the conceptual level. But at the perceptual level less so.

James take the side of empiricism:

"But the philosopher, although he is unable as a finite being to compass
more than a few passing moments of such experience, is yet able to extend
his knowledge beyond such moments by the ideal symbol of the other moments.
He thus commands vicariously innumerable perceptions that are out of range.
But the concepts by which he does
this, being thin extracts from perception, are always insufficient
representatives thereof; and, although they yield wider information, must
never be treated after the rationalistic fashion, as if they gave a deeper
quality of truth. The deeper features of reality are found only in
perceptual experience."

BTW, Attaining some non-dual state of awareness sound great but so what?
Abandoning all conception and freed from the chains of some separate
reality... Zowie, sign me up? Wait! I think already I have a pill or a cream
for that. 

Once again, tell me as what privileges this particular kind of awareness
over others? Why should evidence of this alleged non-dual state be regarded
as providing a higher quality or more reliable form of conception than any
other?