[MD] now it comes

[Krimel]

Krimel said to dmb:
You seem to be missing my point. SOM is a concept. Non-duality is a concept.
What makes one "better" than the other? 

dmb says:
I wish you were asking that question sincerely because answering that
question would be a very good way to open an introduction to the MOQ.

[Krimel]
It is a sincere question.


Krimel said:
You claim this in all rooted in some special form of experience which is
higher or mystical and I claim it is completely the opposite of that. Take
James own description of "siousness." He grounds it in physical bodily
sensations mostly in the head and throat. 


dmb says:
Your objection is predicated on the assumption that mystical experiences are
the opposite of bodily states. But I have never pitted one against the other
and see no reason to do so. You really ought to respond to the claims I
actually make rather than adding your assumptions and making inferences from
there. 

[Krimel]
No. I assume the all experiences involve the body. Or if you prefer the body
is inferred as integral to all experience.

Krimel said:
...My point is that a "feeling" of unity or purity of experience is no
better guide than a feeling of self versus other. Both are
conceptualizations of experience. Furthermore I see James as less concerned
with one versus two versus many, than he is concerned with how to decide,
rationally versus empirically. After all that is the version of SOM he is
arguing about. That is the problem his radical empiricism sets out to solve.

dmb says:
As with the last objection, it's hard to see how this can be applied to any
of my actual claims. And basically, you're saying that you just don't see
how the MOQ is any better than SOM. Again, I wish the question of their
difference was being asked sincerely. I wish you were asking a serious
philosophical question and that you genuinely wanted an answer. I'll tell
you what, Mister. You obviously love to mock the idea with snide comments. I
think this would be much more fun for you AND you'd be a lot better at it if
you actually understood what you were dumping on. Maybe you should fake some
sincere curiosity just long enough to get the intellectual ammo you so
desperately need. Sorry, just fighting snide with snide there.

[Krimel]
Odd that straight forward questions strike such tender nerves in you, Dave.

[dmb]
In any case, James continues, saying, "the natural result of such a
world-picture has been the efforts of rationalism to correct its
incoherencies by the addition of transexperiential agents of unification,
substances, intellectual categories and powers, or Selves; whereas, if
empiricism had only been radical and taken everything that comes without
disfavor, conjunction as well as separation, each at its face value, the
results would have called for no such artificial correction. Radical
empiricism, as I understand it, does full justice to conjunctive relations,
without, however, treating them as rationalism always tends to treat them,
as being true in some supernal way, as if the unity of things and their
variety belonged to different orders of truth and vitality altogether."

[Krimel]
What he is saying here is that the boundary lines we draw between such
things as concepts and levels are artificial. The world of experience and of
consciousness is continuous not discrete. Why do you feel the need to
forcefully repeat arguments I have already made? Shouldn't it be clear by
now that we are not disagreeing about this?

Fuck this I am skipping the boring and irrelevant quotefest. Seriously Dave!
Maybe you could skip the feigned outrage and my alleged insincerity and just
answer simple questions in your own words.


Krimel said:
But then my question to you remains what are you talking about?


dmb says:
I wish that were a real question too. Answering that would be another good
way to begin.

[Krimel]
It is a real question, a real problem and all you bring to the solution is
your only tool, a hammer... 

[dmb hammers away with his only tool:]
Radical empiricism, blah, blah, radical empiricism, blah, blah, blah...

That's the nature of basic metaphysical assumptions. They're very broadly
assumed. And that's usually what I'm talking about one way or another, those
assumptions. 

[Krimel]
It is the sheer tunnel vision of your approach that is most amusing. Your
lack of intellectual depth is exceeded only by your lack of breadth. You
stick to a single line of thought, trapped in the first quarter of the last
century. I mean sure the world can be found in a grain of sand but does that
mean you must ignore the rest of the beach?

But maybe a restatement of the question would help. You claim that James
claims that SOM is "just" a concept derived from experience. I claim that
anything we say is a concept derived from experience. My question is how
should we decide among concepts?