Who's been eating MY singular porridge?
brian mitchell
> "brian mitchell" <brai...@fishing.net> wrote
> > "Mayura" wrote:
> > > > Experience of the new is likely to be a new
> > > > experience.
> >
> > > This is the kind of thing that tends to make my metaphorical head
> > > metaphorically fall off. I am allergic to 'experience *of*'. To me,
> there
> > > may be some inferrable 'cat' in some inferrable 'physical world' which
> is
> > > somehow a trigger to this and that picture, sound, touch, smell, thought
> > > etc. And, to me, the combination might be 'new'. But I'm allergic to
> what I
> > > see as the slow creep towards 'naive realism' with equating that to
> > > 'experience of' the cat or the new or whatever.
> >
> > I have to say I find this position so extremely counter-intuitive that I
> > feel it must be held as the result of a decision to hold it, because I
> > can't see the utility of it...
> I always hope that if I pursue 'the truth'(tm) that any utility will
> eventually 'emerge' (or somesuch).
I'm both intrigued and impressed that you even think in terms of 'the
truth'. I'm intrigued, mostly because there seems to me to be one of
those unbridgeable gulfs between the only-inferrable and 'the truth'.
> > ...I suppose, with ultra-strict logic, you
> > cannot absolutely *know* that the model of the world you have accords
> > perfectly with some external sensible reality...
> This is slightly different from your original where the equation was between
> "new experience" and "experience of the new"...
That equation was partly ironic. One can have new experiences --as in,
novel, new twist on the old, experiences-- without any inner
refreshment. Whereas, to come upon something you haven't pre-conceived,
done to death with thought, is rare (IME).
> Now it is between "model of
> the world" and "external sensible reality." Not that I like that any
> better - especially the insertion of 'sensible' in the second part. Because
> it dumps off items like quarks, leptons, black holes etc...
Which will never be part of our subjective experiencing, so why consider
them? They're just mental toys so far. We're more likely to find common
ground by dealing with the immediate range of sensory and mental events.
> To me there's a
> fundamental gap in type between my 'model of the world' and 'external
> reality' (unless we're talking about something like a 'scale-model'.) The
> model is in 'experiential' terms whereas the external reality isn't.
Yes, I can see this. And this brings us to a major divergence. From
everything you write I have the impression of you sitting in front of a
huge plasma screen, passively absorbing everything projected onto it,
which you call experience. What's projected on there may be a physical
sensation, a feeling, a memory, anything at all within your "palette",
but they are all *equal*.
Probably because I'm the arch-naive realist, I don't internalise in that
way. When I hear a bird singing in the tree, I hear it in the tree. But
more importantly, nor do I equalise. I recognise different qualities of
experience, or different types. Some of them --not that many-- might be
called meta-experience, and these are ones which entail insight, or
realization, or understanding. Not just part of an endless subjectivised
stream.
You accuse me of cooking up singular porridge, but I think you do that
with your experiencing.
> > But in evolutionary
> > terms, our senses have developed in response to what there is to be
> > sensed, surely?
> Yes - some microscopic proportion of 'what there is to be sensed'. But the
> senses are already 'pre-skewed' in favour of what is relevant to bodily
> survival and reproduction. So they're not 'disinterested' (nor just
> 'windows').
Aesthetics? Art?
> > And we only *have* our senses with which to negotiate
> > the sensible world, so why withhold the admission of reality? What do
> > you gain?
> I'm not withholding the admission of reality. Just not confusing my
> subjective experience with some kind of 'direct awareness of an external
> sensible reality'.
Fair enough. But what keeps your experience subjective?
> > When you fear naive realism, do you believe there is a proper true
> > realism --unfooled, presumably, by the unreliable elements of
> > experience?
> No. One aspect of my dislike of naive realism that I haven't mentioned is
> that so much seems to get swept under the carpet. E.g. taking the alleged
> 'external sensible reality', most of it isn't 'sensible' at all. And taking
> the experiential 'world', all sorts of elements have no relevance to the
> 'external sensible reality' e.g. dreams, daydreams, thoughts, emotions,
> moods, volitions, 'meaning' etc. This is where I tend to start looking
> sideways at e.g. tracts by the world-focussed about 'appearances'.
I don't follow this. All my dreams (with very rare exceptions),
daydreams, thoughts, et al, are set within and express some sort of
concern with what is (apparently) external to me, the world, other
people (even if imaginary). They are all in some way relevant to my
relationship with the external sensible world --taking that in its
widest sense. Is it otherwise for you?
> > > :) I'm not saying it came out of the verbal boxes but that there was a
> > > meeting between the new (slim) 'cockpit check' experience and the old
> (fat)
> > > verbal boxes resulting in this 'amalgam'.
> >
> > On what basis can you assert that the 'cockpit check' experience was
> > slim without having had that experience yourself?
> A host of reasons. E.g. taking the Buddha's Patanjali's and Shankara's
> descritions of their experience following withdrawal of the senses and
> pursuing samadhi to its 'end'. The common elements present in all are
> 'slimmer' than the the diverse amalgams. 'Thought' is claimed to be wiped
> out in all cases and any kind of duality/proliferation. They use a mix of
> 'experience' type words and 'inferrable thing or absence-of-thing' type
> words. A lot of the descriptions are stated to be analogies and there is
> variation among these etc.
Here you seem to be using 'slimmer' to mean simpler. I was reading it
before to mean paler, less substantial. Either of these readings right?
> > > . . . After attaining the highest state of Samadhi short of his
> > > experience - 'nibbana' - under a previous teacher IIRC [the
> > > Buddha] says that this
> was
> > > not 'liberation'. When he attains the experience ' 'nibbana' - he says
> this
> > > is 'liberation'.
> >
> > All that seems most likely, but do you not think you would know when you
> > were liberated, if you were to be liberated?
> No. What kind of an 'experience' is that?
If you feel bound, you will know when the binding conditions are no
longer operating. A meta-experience, perhaps.
> There's a whole load of inference
> and mental baggage in that concept...
Why could bondage, and then liberation, not be 'the truth'? If you,
Jonathan, have the faculty to know truth when you finally come upon it,
why shouldn't he and others have (had) it?
> E.g. the Buddha's belief in his own
> 'liberation' rests on a whole load of inferences about bondage and dependent
> origination and how the 'chain' can be severed and so forth. 'During' his
> experience - 'nibbana' -
But I don't think 'nibbana' is an experience in the sense that you use
the term; not just part of a stream.
> all three of his types of 'dukkha' cease or are not
> present - physical pain, the imperfection of the conditioned and craving for
> the impermanent. On emerging from it...
Is 'nibbana' emerged from? The state of samahdi, the withdrawal from the
senses, may be fruitful conditions for the attainment of nibbana, and
these may be emerged from (when nature insists), but if nibbana is not
an experience, not an ordinary mental event, perhaps there's no merging
into it in the first place. I don't know. I just have the sense that
you're loading the dice in an adversarial way.
> > . . . And
> > there's this, courtesy of Small Tortoiseshell (and Stanford U):
> > "As in the case of virtue, Plotinus recognizes a hierarchy of beauty.
> > But what all types of beauty have in common is that they consist in form
> > or images of the Forms eternally present in Intellect (I 6. 2). The
> > lowest type of beauty is physical beauty where the splendor of the
> > paradigm is of necessity most occluded. If the beauty of a body is
> > inseparable from that body, then it is only a remote image of the
> > non-bodily Forms. Still, our ability to experience such beauty serves as
> > another indication of our own intellects' undescended character. We
> > respond to physical beauty because we dimly recognize its paradigm."
> That sounds broadly OK.
Well there's no need to get so excited about it!
brian mitchell