[MD] Un-Pure Experience

[David Thomas]

On 10/26/13 12:11 PM, "David Buchanan" <dmbuchanan at hotmail.com> wrote:

> Mr. Thomas is not the only one around here who appears to lack basic reading
> skills.
[Dave]
No, you muffed it a few posts ago. Pirsig and you both muffed it in reading
James. We started with this quote from the beginning of Lila. The "dynamic"
I just added to put it into a more MoQ context.

"[Dynamic] Quality is a direct experience independent of and prior to
intellectual abstractions."

Pirsig claims that James "pure experience" is analogous to this and you
agree. Here is what Pirsig's statement really means:

Mystic experience is direct (intuitive) experience of Dynamic Quality,
reality as is really is.

This is stated on Lila pg 174 in different words. If you drop the "Dynamic
Quality" you'll find very similar statements over and over again in
explanations of what "mystic experiences" are.

Part of James "radicalization" of empiricism is to claim that no type of
human experience can a priori be excluded. Any and all psychoses, neuroses,
drugged or altered state of consciousness, "paranormal" experiences, the
huge varieties of religious experiences, including mystical experiences must
be included. In fact James was one of the first psychologists to try and
define what "mystic experience" was. But at no time during his discussion of
"pure experience" does he even hint that it is "mystical" in anyway.

Descartes starts with, "I think..." James corrects this to,"I experience."
Simply and purely experience-FULL STOP-nothing more, nothing less. Then
asking "experience" what? He answers, streams of thinking, seeing, hearing,
smelling, tasting, feeling, and though not specifically named by James,
doing.

So when Pirsig says this:

Pure experience cannot be called either physical or psychical: it logically
precedes this distinction. Lila pg 170

The Metaphysics of Quality says pure experience is value. Experience which
is not valued is not experienced. Lila pg 170

James says NO. Experience is not value. Experience is purely experience,
nothing more, nothing less. Everything else is discriminated, deduced, and
described after pure experience, including quality, value, and morals.

Dave