From: Platt Holden (pholden@sc.rr.com)
Date: Wed Jul 21 2004 - 01:02:08 BST
Hi Paul
PH:
> > I'm trying to make the point, however, that even in Pirsig's
> description
> > of "pure experience," such as the hot-stove example, there's always
> the
> > presupposition of an experiencer present.
> Paul:
> It is difficult, but I think the key thing is to remember that whatever
> is there "experiencing" is part of the "conceptually unknown," and is
not
> to be confused with a subject or a self in the Cartesian sense. The self
> arises *from* the experience.
"Experiencing is part of the conceptually unknown" reminded me of an
anonymous quote I picked up some time ago that said, "Reality is what's
happening while you're reading this."
It also reminded me of the following from Pirsig:
"In all sexual selection, Lila chooses, Dynamically, the individual she
wants to project into the future. If he excites her sense of Quality she
joins him to perpetuate him into another generation, and he lives on. But
if he's unable to convince her of his Quality-if he's sick or deformed or
unable to satisfy her in some way- she refuses to join him and his
deformity is not carried on." (LIla, 15)
Here Pirsig connects "sense of " with Dynamic Quality which I take to mean
the same as "intuition" or an "spontaneous feeling," that is, without any
"conceptions" on Lila's part.
Focusing on the words "sense of" as a synonym for pure or non-conceptual
experience I began to list the experiences we have a "sense of " that, as
they are experienced, can occur without concepts of any kind, such as:
Sense of balance, of awe, of comfort, of duty, of expectation, of
fairness, of harmony, of humor, of purpose, of satisfaction, of
significance, of tension, of danger, of wonder, etc., etc.
In other words, while pure experience is non-conceptual (part of the
conceptually unknown), it nevertheless plays an active role in what it
feels like to be a human being (a sense of life).
Of course, many non-conceptual senses can be attributed to the biological
level, i.e., instincts. My cat has an obvious sense of danger and a sense
of pleasure plus senses I can only guess at. But I doubt if he has a sense
of beauty or of humor. Looking at evolution from the point of view of the
capacity to experience, one could argue that what has evolved is not so
much the depth of physical structures as measured by greater complexity
but
breadth of the psyche as measured by a greater range non-conceptual
experiences.
Paul
> I think the second trouble, as you note above, is that you cannot arrive
> at the existence or understanding of something "conceptually unknown"
> through a process of conceptual reasoning, it has to be acquired and
> understood through experience. (In a similar vein, one cannot arrive at
> an understanding of "sweetness" through a process of reason.) Yet, one
> *can* reason *from* this understanding and relate it to the things that
> can be acquired and understood through reason. This is what the MOQ
does.
Acquiring "understanding" through experience is what the practices of Zen
Buddhism try to achieve, although whether such practices are necessary
seems debatable. As one sage put it, "Your everyday ordinary awareness.
That is the Tao."
Anyway, what I'm trying to do, like the MOQ, is to relate non-conceptual
understanding to what can be understood through reason. Do you think the
thoughts expressed here have any potential to do that, or is this a
tangent
best left to fizzle out due to lack of grounding in agreement with
experience, logical consistency, and economy of explanation? In other
words, is "sense of" helpful in describing Quality, the indescribable?
Best,
Platt
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