[MD] now it comes

[david buchanan]

Krimel said to dmb:
"...The world of experience and of consciousness is continuous; not discrete." You disagree with this?

dmb replies:

It would be an understatement to say I disagree. My overall impression is that you taken the central distinction and run it through a food processor. Somehow, it's inside out and backwards at the same time. It's a convoluted version of the sentence you were trying to find in SOME PROBLEMS OF PHILOSOPHY.
"There must always be a discrepancy between concepts and reality, because the former are static and discontinuous while the latter is dynamic and flowing."
This is radical empiricism condensed into a single sentence. At the same time it is also the most concise statement of the difference between static and Dynamic. If you get this part right, understanding will rain down in buckets. 

The distinction between concepts and reality is the distinction between static patterns and dynamic quality. The difference is that one is discontinuous and the other is continuous. The line drawn between them is conceptual, for example. That concept, that line between them is what makes them discontinuous. This conceptual distinction separates them from each other. This is the nature of all concepts and that's how they deserve the name "discontinuous" or "static" of "defined". 

Reality, on the other hand, is not discontinuous. It is continuous and flowing and dynamic. This is not to say that concepts are unreal. The idea here is essentially to contrast conceptual experience and pre-conceptual experience, conceptual understandings and direct experience. There are a number of terms for this and they all get this idea across: the cutting edge of experience, the immediate flux of life, the primary empirical reality, the undifferentiated aesthetic continuum, undivided experience, pure experience, the dynamic edge of experience, etc.. The idea is simply that in the ongoing process of experience there is always a moment of awareness before experience cut up into pieces by our habits of thought. That's why we describe that moment in terms like "the pre-intellectual cutting edge of awareness". Intellect chops things into discontinuous pieces while direct experience itself is prior to that. Thus the pre-intellectual reality is continuous and flowing while concepts are discontinuous and static.

In order to agree with your sentence, I'd have to make some changes.

"...The world of experience and of consciousness is continuous; not discrete."  becomes...
"...The world of pure experience is contrasted with conceptual awareness. The former is continuous and the latter is discrete." You disagree with this?


Krimel said:
...I am past caring what you say about what James says. I have been asking you to demonstrate the "cash value" of your convictions.  ...You continue to miss the whole question. I am not asking you to clarify James' or anyone else's position on some bit of metaphysical arcania. I don't care who said what and I care ever less who you think said what.  ...The issue I am asking about is the notion of concepts arising from and being secondary to percepts. Are you saying this is or is not what James claims?


dmb says:

That's what I just explained above. I explained James's claim on that issue exactly, although he doesn't use the term "percepts" there. It is about the secodary nature of concepts and why they stand in contrast to pre-conceputal awareness. If there is something you find objectionable or confusing, I'd really like to know what it is. It seems very clear and simple to me and I baffled at the way you keep mixing it up, asking questions about it, AND insisting that you already understand it. Your confusion really confuses me. It sounds like a put-down rather than a real question, but I ask you in all seriousness. What is it you don't get about the difference between "conceptual" and "pre-conceptual". That's all we're talking about here.