[MD] Three Hot Stoves

[John Carl]

dave and all,

On Sun, Dec 19, 2010 at 6:23 PM, david buchanan <dmbuchanan at hotmail.com>wrote:

>
> dmb says:
> The infant is used as an example of non-conceputal experience or pure
> experience used by both Pirsig and James. You know, because babies don't
> have a concept of their mother's breast even though they experience it
> directly.



John:  A group of sensations are conceptualized.  All the babies I've had
(5), had an instinctual conception of nipples, which they grasp - literally
- from birth.  I admit freely that they do not intellectualize at all, how
to obtain nippleness, but they certainly grasp the concept!

dmb:


> They're not motivated by the idea of hunger and they don't plan meals but
> they experience hunger all the same.



John:

Agree.  Good examples of the difference between intellectualization and
conceptualization.

dmb:



> There are perceptions and feelings and reactions going on of course.
> Infants are far from inert. But concepts come with the acquisition of
> language.


John:

Here is where we need clarification, I think.  When I say "language", I
don't mean english words necessarily.  I'm talking about "language" in the
same sense as a computer language - which can be a high-order language or a
low-order language.  The very simple language of the non-intellectual infant
eventually becomes a higher order language of the adult.  But all life, from
the simplest to the most complex beings, have running through it at least
the "language" of the dna molecule.  This, as I've said before, is what I
mean by "language" and why I think it runs all the way down.  The bits of
meanings which make up the simplest language of life, are the simplest
concepts possible, without which, there is no existant.

dmb:


> Some researches push this absence of thinking pretty far, chronologically
> speaking. I heard one psychologist recently who claimed that we don't really
> doing any "thinking", properly speaking, until we can talk. It seems to me
> that this very much supports the thesis of psychological nominalism, which
> says thinking is just inward talking.
>
>
John:

My understanding of psychological nominalism is a bit different.  I
understand it to be the stance that there are no universals but that all
conceptualization is created out of a psychological experience of
sensation.  But I realize I'm on shaky ground here with the technicalities
of philosophic distinctions.

dmb:


> If memory serves, John replied to that example by claiming that infants DO
> have ideas. As far as I know, there isn't a psychologist in the world who
> believes that.
>
>
John:

I believe my idea of idea was hastily formed before I grasped "concept".
Now I'd say "idea" is awareness of a concept - and thus contains the germ of
intellectualization.  Often it is this way in philosophy, an onward
refinement of definitions.

dmb:


> I'm tempted to say that it depends on how you define "concepts" and
> "experience". But I think those words, and words like them, are referring to
> actual phenomena.


John:

Well I do agree that it depends on how you define those "actual phenomena".
For even actual phenomena must be first conceptualized out of experience in
order for them to have meaningful existence.

dmb:


> Terms like "pure experience" are abstractions or generalizations that can
> refer to a wide range of actual situations with actual babies or actual Zen
> monks. He's talking about something athletes and artists talk about all the
> time. Brain scientists have been documenting this stuff too. Go check out
> some reviews of Jonah Lehrer's "How We Decide". It opens with a fairly
> ordinary example of somebody who uses this pre-conceptual awareness to make
> millions of dollars a year as an NFL quarterback. You know, just in case you
> wanna know the cash value.
>
>
John:

Well, not much value to me!  I'm way past the age of quarterbacking.  But
the I'd say the different conceptualizations of "reciever" and "rusher" are
used in some kind of non-intellectual process in a QB's head.  Intellect
isn't needed, but conceptualization is, just to be able to get the ball down
the field.

Hike!

John