From: Scott Roberts (jse885@localnet.com)
Date: Mon Sep 26 2005 - 05:10:21 BST
DMB,
Scott replied:
If you sit on a hot stove and immediately jump off, hasn't a biological
judgment been carried out? Pure sensation doesn't get you off the stove,
rather, some sort of biological judgment (call it instinct?) that excessive
heat is going to damage your biological integrity is what got you off. In
other words, the hot stove example is a case of the sensation of excessive
heat acting as a sign to the biological system. Furthermore, pain exists
only because it provides this signalling function. The same goes for all
other so-called "pure sensations". It is only human fancy that can come up
with the concept of a pure sensation. In actual experience they are all
signs.
dmb answers:
The linguistics of biological sensations? Semiotic butts? Sorry Scott, but I
just don't get you at all. I think you've combined some kind of Pierceian
pragmaticism with conventional physiological explanations of experience.
This makes no sense to me.
Scott:
You have trouble understanding that pain is a sign of potential harm?
Doesn't seem to me to be so difficult to understand. But what is curious is
that you say you don't understand what I say, and then proceed as if that
counts as a rebuttal.
DMB continues:
Part of the problem here is that you have taken
Dignaga's "pure sensation" as if he were a Modern Western philosopher, as if
he were talking about the biological senses.
Scott:
I said what I said based on Hayes' description: "A cognition in which there
is a complete absence of creative judgment is called a pure sensation
(pratyaksa). An example of pure sensation for Dignaga is the act of seeing a
patch of colour without associating it in any way with previously seen
colours, or with simultaneous sensations of sound, odour, taste, texture or
temperature; this pure sensation is also free of any associations with
words. In a pure sensation, a sensible property is
being experienced just as it is in itself and for itself."
Roughly speaking, I am saying that there is never an experience that is
"just as it is in itself and for itself".
DMB continues:
I'd say you're off the mark by
an entire hemisphere and nearly a thousand years. As Pirsig points out with
respect to the hot stove example, those anatomical explanations are an
intellectual description that comes afterward. He also points out that
mystics would get off the stove before the intellectuals, which is a
humorous way of saying the same thing.
Scott:
I doubt that mystics would get off the stove before the intellectuals,
especially if the mystics are grooving on the "pure sensation" of pain "just
as it is in itself and for itself". I've commented before that the whole hot
stove example of Pirsig's makes no sense. What gets one off the stove
without thinking is biological SQ, not DQ.
DMB continues:
However, I'm glad you saw my latest post in the "Rhetoric" thread. I think
Richard Hayes (University of New Mexico) has written some stuff that might
prove to be quite effective in defeating some things you've been saying. I
think your response means that you've noticed that too.
Did you notice the bit about the modular self as it relates to Nagarjuna's
EMPTINESS, for example? I think it contradicts what you've been saying about
Nagarjuna. Maybe you'll take another look at my post with that in mind.
Scott:
The bit about the modular self is old hat. Mysticism 101, as I've called it
before. It is all true, but is not the whole truth. Hayes is making the
usual argument against essentialism, which is good advice for someone still
stuck in essentialism. But then one needs to see the danger of the
anti-essentialist stance, which appears to me to be where you are stuck. It
too needs to be deconstructed. See my debate with Paul in the
essentialism/anti-essentialism thread for more.
- Scott
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