[FRIAM] Acid epistemology - Eric Help!!!!

Tue Mar 10 14:31:57 EDT 2020

Glen --

Perhaps we should call those "insperiences".  

N

Nicholas Thompson
Emeritus Professor of Ethology and Psychology
Clark University
ThompNickSon2 at gmail.com
https://wordpress.clarku.edu/nthompson/

-----Original Message-----
From: Friam <friam-bounces at redfish.com> On Behalf Of u?l? ?
Sent: Tuesday, March 10, 2020 10:55 AM
To: FriAM <friam at redfish.com>
Subject: Re: [FRIAM] Acid epistemology - Eric Help!!!!

Interesting. I don't think I'd say that a unique experience is not an experience. But I would say than a unique experience is not knowledge of any kind. The trick to this position would be that, when one has a unique experience, one then fiddles with it in order to think about it further or tell it to some other person.

So, I'm along about mile 4 in my 6 mile run, looking up at the moon, plodding along, my body drifts away, and [unsayable somatic, mental, and emotional state obtains] ... then that state fades away when I have to dodge a car or stop at an intersection. Now, when I go to tell Renee' *about* that state within brackets above [...], I have to couch it in my private lexicon and then translate it from my lexicon to hers. So even though [...] may have been unique, the post-processing (couching in my lexicon, translating into hers) has been done before. The post-processing is a repeated/repeating process. This means we can become confused about which part of the _experience_ is unique and which part is repeated. 

Regardless, if you cannot *tell* someone about an experience. And you can't even recall it well enough to internally tell yourself about it, then it's meaningless. The only experience that has any meaning at all is an experience that is repeatable enough so you can at least remember it. Remembering is repeating to some extent. And when you guys have this discussion *without* addressing repetition or accumulation (as you've written off regarding experience composition), then I can't see AT ALL how it's in any way related to epistemology.

On 3/10/20 9:31 AM, thompnickson2 at gmail.com wrote:
> You often and rightly accuse me of overstating stuff, and I apologize 
> if I am about to do it again.  But I think you are perhaps saying that there are no idiosyncratic experiences?  That an experience, to be an experience, has to be repeated or shared or both.  If so, I think I agree with you.  And a very strident position it would be if that were the position.  I think many humanists would assert that ONLY idiosyncratic experiences are real and that it is upon the uniqueness of individual experience that we must focus.  Hmmm!
> 
> I feel that this thought is a genuine crowbar.
> 
> . It's that protocol that carries the knowledge, not the internal experiences or the particular toolchain used to execute the protocol.
> 
> Can you pry some more things with it?

--
☣ uǝlƃ

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