[MD] now it comes

[david buchanan]

Krimel said:
 Please, if you will, find that quote in "Some Problems..." It isn't in my copy. In fact, search for it on the net and you will find all of the references trace back to Pirsig not James.

dmb says:
James's can be tricky, especially the stuff published after his death. But one scholar's footnote says that quote can be found on page 365 of the 1911 version, which must be the original version, I figure, because James died just one year before that.

Krimel:
What I don't get is the difference between perceptual and pre-conceptual. Nor do I see how you can deny that sensation and feelings (both fundamentally biological processes) precede perception.



dmb says:
Pre-conceputal experience is broader than perception. It includes perception, feelings, sensations but it's even broader than that. Part of the problem with traditional empiricism (SOM) is that it was also known as sensory empiricism, which is to say that empirical experience is whatever can be known through the five senses. Radical empiricism goes beyond that limit. They say the empiricist weren't being empirical enough and that it had been so limited for metaphysical reasons, not empirical reasons. There are some very interesting implications to way James focuses on the body in his psychology but I think you tend to misread that part. I think you tend to focus on perception, sensation and feeling because then James is talking about biological processes. And he is but I'm suggesting you need to think about it in another way. I think you tend to reduce his claims down to biological processes in a sort of atomistic way. Nobody is denying that we have bodies or that these processes occur, you see, but that's just not the point of what he's saying. 

Remember that passage where he explains that pure experience is rarely pure in the literal sense? Only infants, mystics and dudes suffering from head-trauma can know that and for the rest of us pure experience is always mixed with concepts. In that passage he also says that pure experience is something we can act upon. It is not only a pre-conceptual form of awareness but a mode of consciousness in which we can operate successfully. This would be a kind of un-selfconscious, spontaneous action. On top of the easily measured physical processes there would also be things like instinct, intuition and grooviness.

Think about the difference between pre-conceptual and conceptual in terms of knowing HOW and knowing THAT.  I like to use typing as an example because everyone does it. If you're anything like me, somehow you don't "know" where the keys are in the sense that you could pass a pop-quiz or give a speech on it. And yet your fingers know what to do. How long would it take if you had to think about every key-stroke? You'd never get much faster than you were the first time. And yet, hopefully, the content of the sentences and paragraphs IS something you know in that conceptual sense. You know THAT the MOQ is Robert Pirsig's idea. You know HOW to type. 

This is where the embodied nature of experience has interesting implications, by the way. If all conceptual knowledge is derived from immediate experience and immediate experience is an embodied affair involving perceptions sensations instincts intuitions and feelings, then what does that say about the prospects of trying to create artificial intelligence, which is by definition NOT so embodied? That's what Dreyfus the Heideggerian tried to tell those guys back at MIT. He makes a pretty big deal out of this difference too, between knowing-how and knowing-that. Those two ways of knowing show up in many languages, including German. I imagine this point was fairly obvious to Heidegger's domestic audience. I've heard that the old Scottish distinction between wit and ken gets at this difference too. Skill is its own kind of knowledge. It takes experience and can't be gained by way of conceptual knowledge. Know-how is not something you can pick up from a book, not even when it comes to being a skilled thinker. 


As far as denying that perception comes after sensation and feeling, I honestly don't know what you're talking about. The thought never crossed my mind and I have no idea what it's supposed mean. This happens a lot, almost every time in fact. How about, from now on, anytime you ask about a claim, denial, statement or whatever, you also include the actual claims, denial, or statement in question. It seems like you're just making stuff up out of thin air, but if not I'd certainly like to know where you think you see this stuff. This time, like most times, I literally don't know what you are talking about and I don't recognize it as anything I said or would say.