From: SQUONKSTAIL@aol.com
Date: Thu Mar 06 2003 - 15:45:57 GMT
Hello there Rick!
In the western philosophical tradition, there may be said to be little that
is original in the MoQ. However, there are original aspects, and these
aspects are significant. If you find a little originality insufficient, then
you may wish to contemplate the scarcity of such insights?
The significance of MoQ originality partly lies in those aspects which
resonate with non-Western traditions. If this is ignored, then any attempt to
capture the MoQ in purely Western tradition will exclude much that is
important.
Now then,
ON DEWEY'S 'EXPERIENCE AND NATURE'....
Dewey begins with the observation that the world as we experience it both
individually and collectively is an admixture of the precarious, the
transitory and contingent aspect of things, and the stable, the patterned
regularity of natural processes that allows for prediction and human
intervention. Honest metaphysical description must take into account both of
these elements of experience. Dewey endeavors to do this by an event
ontology. The world, rather than being comprised of things or, in more
traditional terms, substances, is comprised of happenings or occurrences
that admit of both episodic uniqueness and general, structured order.
sq.: Dewey may attempt to do many things? However, if one begins with a
puzzle: Quality? Then an attempt to explain that which is basic to experience
suggests experience is of Quality itself. In other words, any will on the
part of the thinker hardly comes into it! The repercussions of Quality for
anyone emerges after the puzzle has been posed. The fundamental link between
pattern and unpattern is structured experience. We may say Quality is an
ontological basis of experience. Quality is real.
To say an event is real does not say very much at all except, 'Things are
happening.' The MoQ says, Quality happens.
Intrinsically events have an ineffable qualitative character by which they
are immediately enjoyed or suffered, thus providing the basis for
experienced value and aesthetic appreciation.
sq: Notice 'event' before 'value.' MoQ places value (Quality) before event.
There is a causal relationship in the Dewey view which is absent in the MoQ:
Events are valued for what they are. However, in the MoQ, 'We' and Quality
are One before 'We' emerge as a construct after immediate experience.
Extrinsically events are connected to one another by patterns of change and
development; any given event arises out of determinant prior conditions and
leads to probable
consequences.
sq: There is the implication here that 'extrinsic' means 'objective.' Events
cause other events regardless of our value judgements. The MoQ says our
experience of all patterns generates our explanation of them, and therefore
not merely 'extrinsic' patterns are the subject of knowledge. In fact,
Quality is the proper subject of knowledge.
The patterns of these temporal processes is the proper subject
matter of human knowledge--we know the world in terms of causal laws and
mathematical relationships--but the instrumental value of understanding and
controlling them should not blind us to the immediate, qualitative aspect of
events....
sq: Indeed. Dewey skirts around themes that are central to the MoQ without
quite getting there. And all credit should be given to thinkers such as
Dewey, and indeed James. I believe Robert Pirsig does so. Time itself is a
construct from immediate experience, and therefore we cannot rely on time as
extrinsic in and of itself?
squonk.
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