[MD] Rorty and Mysticism

[John Carl]

Marsha,

John earlier:

> I wonder if you could tell me the cash value of pre-conceptual experience?
>
>
> Hi John,
>
> Why don't you find out for yourself?  Being a skeptic, I think that might
> be
> the only way you might appreciate its value, especially when words are
> so much less than the experience and you are prone to needing proof.
>
>
John:

What occured to me Marsha, is that I have no way of doing this thing, or not
doing it.  See?  If we're talking about the tiny slice of time which occurs
right before I conceptualize, well.... doesn't that just happen naturally of
itself, each and every moment of my life?  The train chugs along, at least
until I die.  Experience unfolds and I conceptualize that experience.  Even
if the part of experience that occurs before the conceptualization of
experience is or might be all-important in some way, it is certainly in no
way controllable or manipuable.  It just happens continually, whether or no
I will it.

Now, you've offered your own experience, gleaned from meditation and what it
seems to me that you've offered then,  is post-conceptualization rather than
pre-conceptualization.  You have to still your mind in order to cease the
chattering flow of consciousness, and this only occurs with intent and
forethought.  I suppose it could be called pre-conceptual in relation to the
thoughts which come after you've achieved it, but that's just a verbal
gimmick of labeling what can only be accomplished intentionally beforehand.


Furthermore, my main point is that all the action is only in
conceptualization.  Babies might partake of this divine state of mind, but
babies don't do much creating, building, planting or reaping.  They just sit
there.  That's why it seems to me that pragmatically speaking, there is no
value in direct experience, or the doctrine of Radical Empiricism.

Yours,

John