While Dear Professor Thomspon has, over the years, become good at
understand the experience monist position, I feel he has yet to become
great at it, and so I feel the urge to put on my William James Hat, and
give more forceful answers to some of the queries the Ever-Enthusiastic
Professor West has asked. William James's "Radical Empiricism" is, I
believe, the quintessential experience monism, so channeling him is a good
way to try to respond, even though I know I cannot be as eloquent as he
was. I ask that these replies be read not as contradicting anything our
generously eye-browed colleague offered, but rather be read as
supplementing and extending upon the beginning he provided.
1) Is an *Experience* a whole or a composite? I.e., (scent of
cinnamon)—(heat of oven)—(grandmother's smile) OR (scent of cinnamon) +
(heat of oven) + (grandmothers smile)? Another analogy a single photograph
or a Photoshopped collage?
This is putting the cart before the horse. Is it not the case that, as you
move through the world you experience things *as *whole, and experience
other things *as* composite? Sometimes you may even experience something *as
*being The Same Thing, despite experiencing it as whole one minute, and as
composite the next minute. Each of these experiences is what it is, and we
must at all costs resist the urge to deny that. It is tempting, for
example, after one has learned to draw a chair - after having been taught
to "see" the chair as a collection of shapes and colors, projected at
particular angles - to retrospectively pretend that new way we have learned
to experience the chair is how the chair must have come to us in the first
instance. But the initial experience was what *it *was, and the later
experience is what *it is*, and while the retrospective experience gets to
be acknowledged for what *it* is (in its own turn), we must always keep in
mind that the retrospective experience is not the original experience.
There is no refuge to be found in *a priori* assertions that
wholes-must-be-parts, that parts-must-be-wholes, or any other metaphysical
claims. There is only an examination of the experiences - actual
experiences - to determine what those particular experiences are or are
not.
1A) If an *Experience* is is a composite- there must be 'atomic'
*Experience* from which it is composed. Is it possible to *Experience* and
"atomic *Experience*" in isolation?
This is an odd assertion. *SOME* experiences are composites, and they are
composed of exactly the components present. It may be the case that (*in
future experiences*) each person can break their experiences down up to
some limit. But there is no reason *a priori* to assume that each person's
limit will be the same, or that whatever residue one person is left with
will match the residue another is left with (one person, for example,
coming at the task with a background in traditions of western analytic
philosophy, and another coming at the task with a background in monastic
buddhist traditions, or a third having studied for decades under the
tutelage of Timothy Leary). Given around 200 years of people in Psychology
attempting, under various research conditions, to forge out agreement
amongst themselves about the smallest elements introspectively identifiable
in experience, it seems reasonable to conclude - at least tentatively -
that no such "atomic" components exist in the sense implied.
2) Does an *Experience* have duration, or is each *Experience* akin to a
frame of a film and continuity simply an artifact of being presented at
some rate; e.g., 30 frames per nanosecond?
Of course experiences have durations! One may experience a slap on the
back, or a song on the radio, or the slow decay of western
civilization under the assault of whichever political group they happen to
distrust. All of those experiences have a duration, but they all have quite
different durations.
I am not sure, however, what the reference to the film is. The closest I
can come, myself, to making sense of it, suggests the thinking is once
again backwards. There is wonderful research in the field of
"psychophysics" showing that continuity vs impulse are experienced in
different ways in different senses, and even in many different ways within
a single "sense" depending on the circumstances. For example, if you make a
device tap someone fast enough, it will eventually be experienced as a
solid (i.e., non-tapping) touch. But the frequency at which this happens
will depend on the part of the body being tapped (the upper back, for
example, requiring a lower frequency for the transition than, say, the
inside of the forearm). This is similar to what is seen with the "flicker
fusion" frequency for movies, which can vary depending on the part of the
eye being stimulated. But note that we view such experiments *without *the
arrogatation common among the hard sciences and followers of scientism -
where dualism is still commonplace - that any part of those experiments
involves escaping experience itself. We are talking about the relationship
between two experiences - the experience of the thumper *as* vibrating is
contrasted with the experience of the thumper *as* providing solid touch,
and there is no need to declared one of those experiences "correct" and the
other "mistaken."
When someone new to the discoveries of physics declares that all solidity
and stillness are *illusions*, and that all "objects" are *really*
mostly-empty-space that is constantly vibrating, they are missing the much
more fundamental fact that the experience of solidity and the experience of
stillness were exactly what they were, and continues to be what they are,
perfectly validly in their own right, with no regard to the new information
they have learned. A person rapping a well-constructed table with their
knuckles and talking about how solidly it is build and how it doesn't rock,
even with a strong push, is *not* mistaken about anything *they *are
talking about, or at least, are not mistaken due to the equally true fact
that other empirical efforts have concluded that atoms spaced out and
constantly moving.
3) Can *Experiences* be differentiated as "potential" and "actual?" To
illustrate: I turn on the camera on my phone and images pass through the
lens and appear on the screen, but a photograph does not come into
existence until I press the shutter button. Does something similar happen
with experience? They are potential until I "press the conscious awareness
button" at which point they become actual?
Things are experienced as potential all the time! Though some people report
such experiences being quite rare, and strained, others report such
experiences as common and effortless. To learn to play chess, or go, for
example, is to learn to experience the potential position of the board,
should you or your opponent move in particular ways.
I cannot speak to the photograph-stutter-button question though. Do
*you* experience
things in that fashion?
4) Can *Experiences* be categorized? To borrow vocabulary (somewhat
tortured( from Peter Sjostedt-Hughes' pentad of perception;
Of course experiences *can* be categorized, we engage in that activity all
the time! Such judgments are *post hoc* to the experience that is being
categorized, but that doesn't make it any less the case that once
categorization has happened then it *has* happened.
- *Experience* grounded in/originating from the spatio-temporal
environment (Sensed Experience)
- *Experience* of an atemporal quality, e.g., color or scent
(Perceived Experience)
- An *Experience* partly caused by an external physicality—e.g.,
motion of molecules partly causative of the *Experience* of heat
(Ecto-Physical Experience)
- An *Experience* that is partly caused by an internal
physicality—e.g., synapses firing in the brain (Endo-Physical Experience)
- *Experiences* not grounded in/originating from the spatio-temporal
environment, e.g., imaginations (Demeteption Experience)
- A sixth, of my own, a variation of Endo-Physical, where the
internal physicality is "disrupted," e.g., by taking a drug.
Are you asking if one can learn to categorize experience using these
particular categories? If so, the answer is that most people could
certainly learn to categorize their experience in this way, with various
degrees of skill, and various degrees of satisfaction at the result.
5) Does *Experience* 'exist' apart from an experiencer?
Some experiences seem intimately connected to an experiencer. That is to
say, the *experiencer* is part and parcel to the experience itself. Other
experiences do not seem to have the experiencer as a part of them. I am
assume that you ask this question because both kinds of experience are
familiar to you.... but if you are familiar with the existence of both,
then why do you ask?
5A) if not, how can we have "common experiences"
We have common experiences in exactly and completely, all the ways that we
have common experiences. There is no mystical answer to the question, no
metaphysical substructure to be uncovered. There is only a wide variety of
common experiences that actually happen, in the ways that they actually
happen.
5B) if yes, do we not have a faux monism, with two metaphysical things:
experience and experiencer?
The distinction you are trying to get at either arises *in* experience, or
we are - to paraphrase Wittgenstein - spouting uninformed speculation about
something it would be impossible to ever talk about coherently. It is the
case that much of experience *as* being from a particular point of view. It
is the case that much of experience includes ourselves *as
*experiencing beings.
It is the case that much of experience includes other beings *as* experiencing
something themselves. It is only because those are familiar and common
aspects of experiences, that these types of questions would even occur to
us. Let's not forget the actual order of things, because putting the cart
before the horse rarely gets you very far down the road.
6) Do *Experiences* persist? Perhaps as memories?
I hope this is not starting to sound repetitive, but it is true that we
often experience things *as *memories. I suppose you are asking whether,
for example, sitting on a couch and imagining the site of a childhood toy
is "a persistence of the original experience of the toy" vice "a new
experience that is a memory of the toy". I can tell you that when I engage
in that activities now, I experience the childhood toy in the latter
fashion. However, that doesn't mean that is the only way to experience the
childhood toy, and I wouldn't be surprised to learn that others experienced
the toy more as a persistence of some sort.
6A) If yes, what exactly is the difference between an
*Experience*-in-"memory"
and one "being experienced?" Analogy to a computer program executing and
the same program stored on disk.
<echar...@american.edu>
The difference is only and exactly whatever it is. The urge to search for
some *a priori* schema by which such questions can be answered, to find
some architectonic philosophy that will hold up the ground beneath our
feet, is understandable! Having myself been raised (intellectually) within
the continental traditions of dualism and stretching desperately for
infallible assertions, I am quite sympathetic to such urges, and still
sometimes feel pulled in that direction. Alas, that option is not available
to the experience monist. We might even expect to find quite different
answer to be common in different societies or at different ages. If those
are our findings, we might want to adjust our language to talk about the
distinction in a more nuanced manner. Whatever happens, we can only find
the answers "out there" in the experiences themselves --- the particular
experiences that are relevant to the questions being asked, wherever
they be found.
On Wed, Feb 8, 2023 at 10:51 PM Nicholas Thompson <thompnicks...@gmail.com>
wrote:
> to friam
>
> Dear David and other helpful persons,
>
> Thanks again for your help here. Man! Do I look forward to your
> definitive work on experience! All this cogitation is exhausting me.
>
> Your comment that I might dismiss your questions has an edge that I didn’t
> see when you first made it. There is, perhaps, a sense in which I*
> should* dismiss them. The questions you ask have the feel of
> metaphysics. You know, How many angels can dance on the head of a pin?
> Pragmatists
> try to dissolve metaphysical questions either into non-questions or
> empirical questions. “After all, if the answer to the question isn’t to
> find some angels and measure their feet, then what *are* we talking
> about, eh?” Perhaps we might devote our time to a more productive
> discussion? Notice that the whole notion of a “productive” discussion
> itself reeks of pragmatism with its convergentist aspirations.
>
>
>
> The only thing that can be positively asserted about metaphysics – by
> which I mean that vast spongy fetid cloud of supposition that surrounds and
> infects everything we explicitly believe -- is that it is inevitable. Thus,
> though debating metaphysics is useless, failing to own up to it is
> dishonest. Metaphysics is not something we propose; it’s something we
> confess to.
>
> So, I feel obligated to go on and answer these questions, even though
> their answers may indeed be unrelated to the proper thrust of “experience
> monism”. Whatever metaphysics might be offered to support my experience
> monism, it’s value will always be in its capacity to root important
> concepts such as truth and reality, not in relations between our
> experiences and some notional world-beyond-experience, but in relations
> among experiences, themselves.
>
>
>
>
>
>
>
> *The eloquence and perspicacity of Professor Thompson has convinced me to
> become an Experience monist. In my naive sophomoric enthusiasm, I have set
> about writing THE definitive work on Experience. But I have a few
> questions:*
>
>
>
> * 1A) If an Experience is is a composite- there must be
> 'atomic' Experience from which it is composed. Is it possible to Experience
> and "atomic Experience" in isolation?*
>
> Any whole with different properties can be analyzed into parts. If your
> first experience of apple pie your gramma took from her oven and sliced,
> then all of that is apple pie in the first instance. As cinnamon is
> experienced in other contexts and apple pie is eaten in other contexts, the
> experience of apple pie can be analyzed into parts, meaning that one can
> begin to experience cinnamon as something apart from the experience of
> apple pie. The analysis of any experience into component experiences is as
> much a cognitive achievement as its unification.
>
>
>
> *2) Does an Experience have duration, or is each Experience akin to a
> frame of a film and continuity simply an artifact of being presented at
> some rate; e.g., 30 frames per nanosecond?*
>
> I like, for the moment, to think of experiences as successive
> lightning-like illuminations of a landscape of associations. I would
> call these associations “signs” if my grasp of semeiotics were not so
> protean.
>
> You did not quite ask me, but I must answer the question of time, or order
> of experiences. Peirce at one offers the quasi-neural notion of the
> fading of nodes in the network of associations since each was last
> illuminated. So parts of this landscape of associations gets harder to
> illuminate as they are illuminated less often.
>
> But these questions seem like candidates for empirical investigation using
> tachistiscopes, and that sort of thing.
>
> *3) Can Experiences be differentiated as "potential" and "actual?" To
> illustrate: I turn on the camera on my phone and images pass through the
> lens and appear on the screen, but a photograph does not come into
> existence until I press the shutter button. Does something similar happen
> with experience? They are potential until I "press the conscious awareness
> button" at which point they become actual?*
>
> Potentiality and actuality are themselves cognitive achievements and
> experiences in their own right.
>
> *4) Can Experiences be categorized? To borrow vocabulary (somewhat
> tortured( from Peter Sjostedt-Hughes' pentad of perception;*
>
> Peters’s pentad doesn’t make a whole lot of sense to me, laced as it is
> with apriorist dualist appeals to physiology and an external world. I
> think a disrupted experience is one that doesn’t fit well with existing
> networks of association.
>
> - *Experience grounded in/originating from the spatio-temporal
> environment (Sensed Experience)*
> - *Experience of an atemporal quality, e.g., color or scent (Perceived
> Experience)*
> - *An Experience partly caused by an external physicality—e.g., motion
> of molecules partly causative of the Experience of heat (Ecto-Physical
> Experience)*
> - *An Experience that is partly caused by an internal
> physicality—e.g., synapses firing in the brain (Endo-Physical Experience)*
> - *Experiences not grounded in/originating from the spatio-temporal
> environment, e.g., imaginations (Demeteption Experience)*
> - *A sixth, of my own, a variation of Endo-Physical, where the
> internal physicality is "disrupted," e.g., by taking a drug.*
>
> *5) Does Experience 'exist' apart from an experiencer?*
>
> Sure, as mediated from speaker to speaker via signs. One
> experienced hunter says to another experienced hunter, “I saw a deer down
> by the crick this afternoon” the second hunter, unless he doesn’t speak the
> language, has a deer-by-crick experience. The second of those two people
> receives that experience with a “George-told-me-that” qualifier attached to
> it. If you are raising the question, can there ever be “generals,” I
> agree that that’s a heluva difficult question. But I think we monists
> have to answer the question in the following way: As speakers of a
> language we aspire, whenever we use a noun in a conversation with another
> speaker of our language, to use that noun in the same way. We aspire to
> a time when the overlap of associations that occur whenever the word is
> used will be 100 percent. Because of that aspiration, the asyntote of
> usage is that 100 percent overlap, in the same way that the asyntote of
> inquiry is the truth.
>
>
>
> *5A) if not, how can we have "common experiences"*
>
> * 5B) if yes, do we not have a faux monism, with two metaphysical
> things: experience and experiencer?*
>
>
>
> *6) Do Experiences persist? Perhaps as memories?*
>
> * 6A) If yes, what exactly is the difference between an
> Experience-in-"memory" and one "being experienced?" Analogy to a computer
> program executing and the same program stored on disk.*
>
> I hope I answered these questions above.
>
>
>
> *I would have asked Professor Thompson these questions, but I fear he
> would have dismissed them as "tending not to edification."*
>
> I feel thoroughly edified.
>
> *davew*
>
> Thanks, Dave. Nick
>
>
>
> On Sat, Feb 4, 2023 at 8:46 AM Prof David West <profw...@fastmail.fm>
> wrote:
>
>> The eloquence and perspicacity of Professor Thompson has convinced me to
>> become an *Experience* monist. In my naive sophomoric enthusiasm I have
>> set about writing THE definitive work on *Experience*. But I have a few
>> questions ...
>>
>> 1) Is an *Experience* a whole or a composite? I.e., (scent of
>> cinnamon)—(heat of oven)—(grandmother's smile) OR (scent of cinnamon) +
>> (heat of oven) + (grandmothers smile)? Another analogy a single photograph
>> or a Photoshopped collage?
>> 1A) If an *Experience* is is a composite- there must be 'atomic'
>> *Experience* from which it is composed. Is it possible to *Experience*
>> and "atomic *Experience*" in isolation?
>>
>> 2) Does an *Experience* have duration, or is each *Experience* akin to a
>> frame of a film and continuity simply an artifact of being presented at
>> some rate; e.g., 30 frames per nanosecond?
>>
>> 3) Can *Experiences* be differentiated as "potential" and "actual?" To
>> illustrate: I turn on the camera on my phone and images pass through the
>> lens and appear on the screen, but a photograph does not come into
>> existence until I press the shutter button. Does something similar happen
>> with experience? They are potential until I "press the conscious awareness
>> button" at which point they become actual?
>>
>> 4) Can *Experiences* be categorized? To borrow vocabulary (somewhat
>> tortured( from Peter Sjostedt-Hughes' pentad of perception;
>>
>> - *Experience* grounded in/originating from the spatio-temporal
>> environment (Sensed Experience)
>> - *Experience* of an atemporal quality, e.g., color or scent
>> (Perceived Experience)
>> - An *Experience* partly caused by an external physicality—e.g.,
>> motion of molecules partly causative of the *Experience* of heat
>> (Ecto-Physical Experience)
>> - An *Experience* that is partly caused by an internal
>> physicality—e.g., synapses firing in the brain (Endo-Physical Experience)
>> - *Experiences* not grounded in/originating from the spatio-temporal
>> environment, e.g., imaginations (Demeteption Experience)
>> - A sixth, of my own, a variation of Endo-Physical, where the
>> internal physicality is "disrupted," e.g., by taking a drug.
>>
>> 5) Does *Experience* 'exist' apart from an experiencer?
>> 5A) if not, how can we have "common experiences"
>> 5B) if yes, do we not have a faux monism, with two metaphysical
>> things: experience and experiencer?
>>
>> 6) Do *Experiences* persist? Perhaps as memories?
>> 6A) If yes, what exactly is the difference between an
>> *Experience*-in-"memory"
>> and one "being experienced?" Analogy to a computer program executing and
>> the same program stored on disk.
>>
>>
>> I would have asked Professor Thompson these questions, but I fear he
>> would have dismissed them as "tending not to edification."
>>
>> davew
>>
>>
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