[MD] Static patterns are ever-changing?!? i

[david buchanan]

DMB said to Adrie:
It's been a while, but I have addressed this question (about pre-conceptual experience) many, many times. No matter how hard I try, the answers never satisfy and the question comes back around again. 



David Morey replied:

Well perhaps the reasonable explanation for this lack of progress is that you are either wrong or not very good at explaining yourself. I have no problem with the primacy of the flux and change,  this is the sea,  the dominant quality of experience,  I only think we need to be able to explain how it is possible for concepts to find some stability or regularity in experience,  small islands though these may be,  I call these experiences pre-conceptual patterns but the name is not important. ...


dmb says:

You want to know how it's possible to conceptualize the ever-changing flux of experience, right? You think realism is a better option because you don't see how that is possible, right? That's your question, right? That's the one that I've answered many times, right? As Marsha put it over a year ago, "How can Dynamic Quality or 'pure experience', which is undifferentiated, include perceptions which are differentiated?" 

This quote from William James directly addresses that question:

"Only new-born babes, or men in semi-coma from sleep, drugs, illnesses, or blows, may be assumed to have an experience pure in the literal sense of that which is not yet any definite what, tho ready to be all sorts of whats; full both of oneness and of manyness, but in respects that don't appear; changing throughout, yet so confusedly that its phases interpenetrate and no points, either of distinction or of identity, can be caught. Pure experience in this state is but another name for feeling or sensation. But the flux of it no sooner comes than it tends to fill itself with emphases, and these salient parts become identified and fixed and abstracted; so that experience now flows as if shot through with adjectives and nouns and prepositions and conjunctions. Its purity is only a relative term, meaning the proportional amount of unverbalized sensation which it still embodies." - William James - Essays in Radical Empiricism.

dmb continues:
Your response to this is really quite bizarre. You dished up an entire paragraph consisting of two run-on sentences and you've focused the whole thing on questions about a term (precept) that does not even appear in quote. James describes pure experience as another name for "feeling and sensation," but there is no "percept" to be found here. You want to know what "percept" means and  yet you have a "problem" because "percept is neither found in SQ or DQ according to you, is James in error?" 

Think about that for a minute, David Morey. (1) You don't know what the word "percept" means but (2) it's a problem that percepts are neither static nor dynamic (3) even though the term "percept" does not appear in the quote. That's pretty weird, don't you think? The next part of your response is reproduced in full. You're still responding to the James quote (above), of course....


David Morey said:

Note James says shot through AS IF, so percepts are not shot through with concepts that is only an analogy, what they are shot through with is pre-conceptual patterns, or proto-patterns, or some quality that allows particulars to stand out from the flux, so that some bubble, some wave, some shadow or shape emerges and can be valued can be good or bad, something to desire or flee. I cannot see what case there is for pretending that experience is restricted to flux or concept, radical empiricism is meant to be open to all of experience not reducing it to two categories, odd kind of pluralism that, sort of dogmatism MOQ was designed to combat not encourage. Man up and admit that you need to think again.

dmb says:
You asked the question. In fact, you demanded an answer in very insulting terms. The James quote addresses your question. It is offered as an answer to your question. And now dismissing it as "only an analogy", inventing objections based on terms it does not contain, and accusing me of reductionism and dogmatism?! You haven't said anything relevant about this answer and so I see zero comprehension of this quote. See, this is what I was saying (so politely). No matter how hard I try, the answers never satisfy. It's very discouraging. 

If you sincerely ask a question, then you should focus on the answer. If you're not going to take the time and effort to actually deal with the answer, then why ask in the first place? This is how Lucy got her name, you know? Demand an answer and then dismiss it immediately for vague and insulting reasons. Have you been taking Marsha lessons? 

The problem with your "reasonable explanation" for the lack of progress is that some people do understand these answers and so they don't need to ask these questions. I don't mean to be cruel but it's probably not a coincidence that these answers are lost on those who also use oxymoronic concepts like "ever-changing static patterns" or "pre-conceptual patterns". This way of talking not only shows a misunderstanding of the MOQ's central terms and central ideas, it's just bad english, a simple contradiction in terms, like "liquid ice". Philosophical discussion of ANY kind depends on the proper use of language, exact meanings and just the right flavor of connotation. Blatant contradictions like that are sheer hackery and they're totally unacceptable. It makes me cringe every time I see one of these oxymorons. If you talk like that in public, people will think you're barely literate. I'm sorry, but it's true. 

Here's another answer from James. Let's say it supplements the one above. Let me pretend that you'll take this as an opportunity to deal honestly and fairly with the answer you were demanding - until you prove otherwise.


"The first great pitfall from which [radical empiricism] will save us is an artificial conception of the relations between knower and known. Throughout the history of philosophy the subject and its object have been treated as absolutely discontinuous entities; and thereupon the presence of the latter to the former, or the 'apprehension' by the former of the latter, has assumed a paradoxical character which all sorts of theories had to be invented to overcome. ...All the while, in the very bosom of the finite experience, every conjunction required to make the relation intelligible is given in full." - William James - Essays in Radical Empiricism.

These quotes also address your question: 

"Subjects and objects are secondary. They are concepts derived from something more fundamental which [James] described as 'THE IMMEDIATE FLUX OF LIFE which furnishes the material to our later reflection with its CONCEPTUAL CATEGORIES.'  In this basic FLUX OF EXPERIENCE, the distinctions of reflective thought, such as those between consciousness and content, subject and object, mind and matter, have not yet emerged in the forms which we make them." (Pirsig in Lila)

"There must always be a discrepancy between concepts and reality, because the former are static and discontinuous while the latter is DYNAMIC AND FLOWING." (Pirsig in Lila)

"Dynamic Quality is the term given by Pirsig to the CONTINUALLY CHANGING FLUX of immediate reality while static quality refers to any concept abstracted from this flux." (McWatt)

Paul Williams, a Buddhist scholar quoted by McWatt uses the term "ever-changing" to describe "the flow of perceptions" in an ongoing "series of experiences" and he contrasts this with "the conceptualized aspect".


This is all offered as an answer to your question. Do you actually want it or not? If so, then you have to sort out the meaning of these quotes - and that means you cannot insert your own definitions of their terms. If you switch the meanings around so that static and patterned means "ever-changing,"so that pre-conceptual means "conceptual," so that the unpatterned flux is patterned, or anything like that, you will certainly misunderstand the evidence. You cannot understand the answer if you insist on inserting your own definitions of the key terms. That simply makes comprehension impossible. 

Impossible. That's why there has been no progress - year after year - for some people. Ever notice how Marsha views the dictionary as a form of oppression? It's quite the opposite. Without a decent respect for the english language, one is powerless and limited and unfree, not to mention isolated and lonely.