[FRIAM] post you seem to have missed from FRIAM

[Steven A Smith]

Nick -

I'm suspect that my own habits around indentation, /italicization/,
etc.   are not explicit enough to make things clear enough as to who is
speaking to whom.   I also tend to trust/defer to my mailtool
(thunderbird) which *seems* to add very limited HTML markup of included
sections.  I do this in deference to those here who might be using
(rich?)text-only tools. I am wondering if YOUR mail tool of choice
strips that?

I assume you might see both:

    Indentation <tab>

    /Italics/

and does the  following inclusion of your text appear as significantly
different text than my own?


On 11/19/19 9:39 AM, Nick Thompson wrote:
>
> Hi, Dave,
>
>  
>
> I had seen your post below before, but because you computer woke-folk
> won’t use HTML, I can never tell who’s talking to whom about what. 
> And also, this business of having two computers, neither of which
> work, is driving me ever crazier than I usually am.  I find myself
> typing a response on my new computer while moving the mouse connected
> to my old computer and wondering why nothing is happening.  So I
> stipulate that I have contributed more than my share to the
> disjointedness of the conversation.  Sorry for that.
>
>  
>
> I will try and straighten things out a bit below. 
>
>  
>
> In the meantime allow me to cop to my puritanism with respect to
> anything that smacks of “experience enhancement”.  I can hear you all
> putting on your Trump-sincere-voice, shedding one crocodile tear each,
> and saying, in a chorus, “*/Sad!”/*  But there it is.  I am not one to
> be tempted by the giant roller-coaster at the fair, or by the vampire
> movie at the mall.  To me, life is enough of a roller-coaster without
> introducing/gratuitous/ bumps.  Nor do I have a much of an interest in
> science fiction.  I come from the Silent Generation (Remember, I am
> THAT old!)  The sixties is the chasm across which you and I (and many
> of the other participants in this discussion) view one another.  In my
> Peircean moments, I view life as a stream of experiences that I am at
> pains to manage.  I grew up hearing about Hitler, killing camps, death
> and starvation of millions.   I didn’t have to imagine goblins; they
> were on the news every day.   To me, a quiet life is a miraculous
> achievement.  Anything that makes that stream of experience more
> difficult to manage is… well … annoying.  Drug experiences, extreme
> experiences of any kind, do not fill me with wonder.  If you take a
> large chunk of flint stone and bash it on an anvil it shatters into …
> well … /flints.  /Hitting the human mind with a drug-hammer, or a
> starvation hammer, a near-death hammer, or even a sleep-hammer is like
> that.  Yes, I suppose, it tells you something about the structure of
> the thing you are hitting, but I don’t suppose, with my Puritan
> mindset, that it tells me ANYTHING about the Universe.  Good LORD. 
> Why would it? 
>
>  
>
> I know that Prufrock was Ironic, but I still take some odd perverse
> pleasure in …
>
>  
>
>                 I grow old, I grow old, I shall wear the bottoms of my
> trousers rolled. …
>
>                 Do I dare to eat a peach?
>
>                 I shall wear white flannel trousers and walk upon the
> beach.
>
>                 I have heard the mermaids singing each to each.
>
>                 I do not think that they will sing for me.
>
>  
>
> Sometimes I feel like your crazy uncle at Thanksgiving*.  *Even though
> I was a little kid during WWII, I still feel like I /fought/ for your
> sanity.  And now you find joy and wisdom in madness?!  I am a 50’s
> Apollonian in a nest of 70’s Dionysians.
>
> Yes.  I know.  */Sad! /*
>
> */ /*
>
> *Nick *
>
> * *
>
> *PS:  *OK.  It’s time I read some Geertz first-hand.  Assign me
> something. Not too much, please.  N.
>
>                
>
>  
>
> Nicholas S. Thompson
>
> Emeritus Professor of Psychology and Biology
>
> Clark University
>
> http://home.earthlink.net/~nickthompson/naturaldesigns/
>
>  
>
>  
>
> -----Original Message-----
> From: Prof David West [mailto:profwest at fastmail.fm]
> Sent: Tuesday, November 19, 2019 8:14 AM
> To: nick thompson <nickthompson at earthlink.net>
> Subject: post you seem to have missed from FRIAM
>
>  
>
> Nick said:
>
>  
>
> */"What struck me about them was how many of them held the view that
> reality was beyond experience: i.e., that our experience provided
> clues to reality, but the thing itself was beyond experience.  I never
> could convince them that that their belief in a reality beyond
> experience had to be based on … experience.  So, why not be monists,
> and talk about organizations of experience.  Ultimately, it was their
> dualism that confirmed me in my monism."/*
>
>  
>
> How about an assertion that there is A Reality beyond "ordinary"
> experience; with "ordinary experience" being the half-dozen or so overt
>
> */[NST==>what is a covert sensory experience? <==nst] /*
>
> sensory inputs (sight, sound, balance, touch, taste, smell)  we
> typically associate with experience.
>
>  
>
> Given a different set of inputs — e.g. emotions, hallucinations,
> visions, dreams — must we assume that we are still experiencing the
> same Reality as that experienced with overt sensory inputs; or, is the
> door open to an alternative Reality even if Reality-A and Reality-B
> have significant but not total congruence? We are still experiencing,
> so your experiential monism is intact, but Reality is dualist/pluralist.
>
> */[NST==>Well, to a monist there is, in your sense, no reality at
> all!  Reality is an aspiration. Reality is what arises from the
> management of experience. Given our generational difference, I
> sometimes wonder if you don’t take for granted the reality that I am
> fighting for.  <==nst] /*
>
>  
>
> Or, suppose there are a set of inputs, of the same Reality, that are
> not included in the overt set (sight, taste, et. al.). Previously it
> was noted that the eye can detect a single photon (and we can "sense"
> other quantum level phenomena). You asserted that such sensory inputs
> would be "lost in the noise" of the functioning organism and hence are
> not "experienced." Is this not a case of a detectable/sensible Reality
> beyond experience?
>
>  
>
> A corollary: can there be "experiences" — a set of stimulus-response
> pairs — not included in the overt senses, and not describable in ordinary
>
> */[NST==>What is extra-ordinary language? <==nst] /*
>
> language? Obviously, I am talking about "mystical" experiences such as
> "being in the zone" or lower-case s, satori, or even upper-case s,
> Satori (aka enlightenment). It is important to note that these are
> stimulus-response events, not necessarily "experiences;" as
> experience, in ordinary language, necessarily implies an experience-r,
> and in the examples I am thinking about, there is no "I" and hence no
> experience-r.
>
>  
>
> AND,
>
>  
>
> */"By the way, Geertz is probably the locus classicus of the
> relativism I deplore."/*
>
> */ /*
>
> Sir! Them's fightin words!!!
>
>  
>
> But I forgive you, as you clearly misunderstand Geertz (one of my
> personal heroes). Nothing he says is "relativist." His observations
> and conclusions are, however, hermeneutic. Geertz merely points out a
> fact — there are no cross cultural universals (except one, that I will
> get to in just a moment), nor are there any "objective" criteria for
> asserting primacy or privilege of one culture over another. From this
> comes an indictment of ethnocentrism as one culture stating that
> "obviously" our values, our ways of doing things, our worldview, our
> customs ... are superior to yours, correct while yours are erroneous, etc.
>
>  
>
> Hermeneuticism is NOT relativism.
>
>  
>
> The one cultural universal: every culture (obviously not every
> individual in every culture) incorporates a belief in the
> "supernatural." In all but, maybe, 2-3, cultures the "supernatural"
> includes an alternative realm of existence (pre- and/or after-life or
> "other planes."  The, interpretations of this universal are multiple -
> pretty much one per culture/subculture.
>
>  
>
> davew
>
>
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