I meant discursive knowledge; the point is that such knowledge is always in the form of subjects knowing objects, or knowers knowing what is known, or objects analyzed in terms of their predicates, Lived experience is prior to that and not given or apprehended in such terms. — Janus

Forgive my lack of nuance but all experience is lived experience and we're continually intuiting or perceiving and predicting subconsciously according to our conditioning.

I recall James' "blooming and buzzing" infant: this is what it would be like to without language. — Constance

Do you think it is like this for animals?

Forgive my lack of nuance but all experience is lived experience and we're continually intuiting or perceiving and predicting subconsciously according to our conditioning. — praxis

I haven't said all experience is not lived experience; so I wonder do you understand that you are disagreeing with something? As to the fact that we, in our ordinary state of mind, commonly anticipate the future, I'm not seeing what significance you apparently think that has to the discussion.

I'll say that when you wrote earlier that "This is a very important point" I wanted to know why and have been trying to discover that since. There are different approaches to discovery. Sometimes a trial-and-error approach works wonders. Sometimes trial-and-error only produces errors. :gasp:

OK, I'm still not sure what you're looking for, but fair enough.

I'm earnestly searching for the importance of the point. The search has led me halfway through a Bergson essay today, in fact, which seems to shed some light. Bergson is anything but stingy with his points, unlike others, who shall remain nameless, for the sake of civility.

he immediate ‘now’ is inseparably all three phases. This a priori tripartite structure of the now is no fiction. — Joshs

But what is it that holds the three together? In the startled moment when one levels at the world a question that stops the past from freely and seamlessly producing a future, this is, I would argue (inspired by others, obviously), a temporal rupture. Just as when the hammer's head flies off and the hammering gives way to a pause, a wonder, here, taken to the level of basic questions where there are no alternatives that readily fill the space of momentary indeterminacy, and here, there are no possibilities that can retake the occasion with something familiar, and there is nothing to step in and affirm an existence, and one faces nothing: past is suspended. I think when a Buddhist seriously meditates, and has success, this experience is a sublime transfiguring of the "present" if there is such a thing in this. This is why they have the term 'nirvana'; and this is the essential experience that generates religious metaphysics in Hinduism.
Husserl's reduction is an annihilation of time as well, taken all the way down the rabbit hole. Students were known find religion studying his "method". Then, of course, there is the French "theological turn" that rigorously plays this out.

Do you think it is like this for animals? — Janus

I do wonder about animals in this. What they do not have is a capacity for reflection, and it is reflection that generates the ability to stand apart from one's affairs. Interesting to imagine what it would be like not to be able to second guess what lies before you as a thought, an activity, a behavior. It would pretty much be instinct all the way through.
There is this tendency to think that language interferes with "liberation", but it is also true that language makes liberation possible. Language produces the conditions of our everyday acquiescence, but it also produces the question, and the question is the tool that cancels thought processes and autonomic existing.

Just as when the hammer's head flies off and the hammering gives way to a pause, a wonder, here, taken to the level of basic questions where there are no alternatives that readily fill the space of momentary indeterminacy, and here, there are no possibilities that can retake the occasion with something familiar, and there is nothing to step in and affirm an existence, and one faces nothing: past is suspended — Constance

This is not how phenomenologists understand ‘past’. You are thinking in terms of traditional notions of the past as a separate entity from the present, occupying a separate position in a sequence.


For instance, for Heidegger, the past, present and future don't operate as sequential modes which mark distinct states of objects. They interpenetrate each other so completely that they together form a single unitary event of occurrence.

“Because my being is such that I am out ahead of myself, I must, in order to understand something I encounter, come back from this being-out-ahead to the thing I encounter. Here we can already see an immanent structure of direct understanding qua as-structured comportment [my experience of something ‘as' something], and on closer analysis it turns out to be time. And this being-ahead-of-myself as a returning is a peculiar kind of movement that time itself constantly makes, if I may put it this way.”(Heidegger 2010b)

The returning from a totality of relevance in the act of understanding something constitutes temporality not as a present object happening IN time but as temporalization.

“Temporalizing does not mean a "succession" of the ecstasies. The future is not later than than the having-been, and the having-been is not earlier than the present. “Dasein "occurs out of its future"."Da-sein, as existing, always already comes toward itself, that is, is futural in its being in general." Having-been arises from the future in such a way that the future that has-been (or better, is in the process of having-been) releases the present from itself. We call the unified phenomenon of the future that makes present in the process of having been temporality.”(Heidegger 2010)

Gendlin(1997b) echoes Heidegger's unification of the components of time.

“The future that is present now is not a time-position, not what will be past later. The future that is here now is the implying that is here now. The past is not an earlier position but the now implicitly functioning past.”“......the past functions to "interpret" the present,...the past is changed by so functioning. This needs to be put even more strongly: The past functions not as itself, but as already changed by what it functions in”(p.37 )

This is not how phenomenologists understand ‘past’. You are thinking in terms of traditional notions of the past as a separate entity from the present, occupying a separate position in a sequence. — Joshs

No, I really don't think like that. Saying the past-present-future is really "of-a-piece" actually reduces the problem for the Buddhist who faces the singular event of realization which is ideally out of time because
the production of experience is terminated? This means that there is nothing to deliver the perceptual event to in order to bring something "to mind" and for the meditator, this task is singular. Once the occurrent experience is reduced, there is a broadening of the purely perceptual horizon, and a new interpretative occasion, something "wholly other" presents itself.

This is trouble for understanding, since to be there at all, to be an agency that beholds anything at all, must be in the historical framework that comprises the self. So, while the, call is the "purity of the perceptual event" broadens, the temporal self that is this very of-a-piece event that is the witness and the receiver of it cannot be annihilated, for this would be annihilation altogether.

But as I see it, it has to be understood that this analysis of affairs is entirely "about" something that is indeterminate. What makes determinacy is open; all contexts are open, awaiting, if I may, something else. The experience of Buddhist liberation is this; it is the 'other" that so intrudes upon the totality's grasp (to borrow a term), but is, to the likes Caputo and others, impossible, for they take the apophatic course that leads to a weakness of God, and other things. They don't take the course of discovery.

“Because my being is such that I am out ahead of myself, I must, in order to understand something I encounter, come back from this being-out-ahead to the thing I encounter. Here we can already see an immanent structure of direct understanding qua as-structured comportment [my experience of something ‘as' something], and on closer analysis it turns out to be time. And this being-ahead-of-myself as a returning is a peculiar kind of movement that time itself constantly makes, if I may put it this way.”(Heidegger 2010b) — Joshs

Aside from being right and fascinating to conceive, this being ahead of myself is a useful heuristic from meditators trying to understand what lies before them, as they face the dynamic of thought intrusion. It is the intrusion of the future and the past; but this, I think, annihilates time altogether, for one is left, ideally, with no interpretative stand at all, which is the point.

Saying the past-present-future is really "of-a-piece" actually reduces the problem for the Buddhist who faces the singular event of realization which is ideally out of time because
the production of experience is terminated? This means that there is nothing to deliver the perceptual event to in order to bring something "to mind" and for the meditator, this task is singular. Once the occurrent experience is reduced, there is a broadening of the purely perceptual horizon, and a new interpretative occasion, something "wholly other" presents itself.

…this being ahead of myself is a useful heuristic from meditators trying to understand what lies before them, as they face the dynamic of thought intrusion. It is the intrusion of the future and the past; but this, I think, annihilates time altogether, for one is left, ideally, with no interpretative stand at all, which is the point. — Constance

I have written a critique of Varela and Thompson’s
understanding of mindfulness and their misreading of phenomenology. Your depiction of a subject awaiting the objects of experience seems to overlap theirs, as if the act of attention is distinct from what one is attending to , and as if there could be such a thing as a pure, pre-reflective , pre-intending, non-judging and non-willing mode of awareness, a bare feeling of being.

Here’s the abstract:

“Evan Thompson and Francisco Varela ground the affectively, valuatively felt contingency of intentional acts of other-relatedness in what they presume to be a primordial neutral point of pre-reflective conscious auto-affective awareness. Through meditative practice, we can access this pre-reflective state , and avail ourselves of ‘unconditionally intrinsic goodness', 'spontaneous compassion', 'luminosity', 'blissfulness', and ' a calm and peaceful life guided by the fundamental value of nonviolence'. But how do such feelings emerge as ultimate outcomes of a philosophy of groundlessness? Aren't they motivated by a sort of 'will to goodness', a preferencing of one affective dimension over others? It would seem that groundlessness for Varela and Thompson doesn't apply to the thinking of affect and desire. Despite their claim that nihilism cannot be overcome by assimilating groundlessness to a notion of the will, they appear not to recognize that the positive affectivities they associate with meditative practice are, as dispositions of feeling opposed to other dispositions, themselves forms of willing. Phenomenologists like Husserl and Merleau-Ponty show that attention, as a species of intention, is sense-making, which means it is sense-changing. Attention is affectively, valuatively and meaningfully implicated in what it attends to as co-participant in the synthesis, creation, constitution of objects of regard. As auto-affection turns reflexively back toward itself, what it finds is not the normative sameness and constancy of a neutral positivity( blissful, self-less compassion and benevolence toward all phenomena) but a newly sensing being. Thus, the basis of our awareness of a world isn't simply compassionate, empathic relational co-determinacy, but the motivated experience of disturbing CHANGE in relational co-determinacy.“

Through meditative practice, we can access this pre-reflective state , and avail ourselves of ‘unconditionally intrinsic goodness', 'spontaneous compassion', 'luminosity', 'blissfulness', and ' a calm and peaceful life guided by the fundamental value of nonviolence'. — Joshs

Fancy encountering a set of foundational values like these through a system of groundlessness. Surely values can only be 'accessed' if you put them there in the first place?

Do you have a view on the practice of meditation, Joshs?

To conceive in a way that puts the concept of God outside of the prejudices of narratives, of history and its groundless meta-thinking, requires a step beyond these. This is both difficult and easy: difficult because one has to step out of something firmly fixed in our culture; easy because the solution lies with the Buddhists, which a kind of apophatic existential approach, a "simple" dropping of the illusions of knowledge suppositions by practical negation: ignoring desires and attachments. The most fundamental attachment is knowledge of the world. — Constance

One thing that doesn't make sense in this is how Constance refers to knowledge suppositions as both cultural artifacts and fundamental attachments. If they're fundamental then they're not cultural.

If they're fundamental then they're not cultural. — praxis

They're fundamentally culturally attached, don't you know anything! :razz:

I guess it could be argued that one informs the other, surely? May there not be something fundamental in how our neural system generates a matrix of gestalts which also has a multiplicity of cultural possibilities based on time, place, etc?

It seems important that it be cultural rather than fundamental because if it were fundamental then metaphysical intuition would be impossible.

It seems important that it be cultural rather than fundamental because if it were fundamental then metaphysical intuition would be impossible. — praxis

Can you explain this simply? What's an example of metaphysical intuition?

Do you have a view on the practice of meditation, Joshs? — Tom Storm

I can start by saying what I think meditation does not do.
1)It does not bring us to a state prior to desire or will
2)It does not precede intention or reflection
3)it does not achieve a state of neutrality devoid of affective coloration.

As far as what it accomplishes, I think that depends on what one believes it will do for one. One’s
beliefs about it will have a lot to do with how it seems to provide benefit( sort of like chiropractics). In general meditation is a concentrated form of attention on a goal.

Very interesting. Thanks.

Do you thinks it's possible that, in being enamored with one's discursive knowledge of the world, one might become blind to lived experience?

There is this tendency to think that language interferes with "liberation", but it is also true that language makes liberation possible. — Constance

As Jim Morrison says (in a different context) " words got me the wound and will get me well if you believe it". Animals have no language and no need of liberation, so it seems that language creates both the need, and the means, for liberation. Language provides the technics, makes the technics communicable, but the act of liberation is a going beyond the limitations of language, a stepping outside of it.

One thing that doesn't make sense in this is how Constance refers to knowledge suppositions as both cultural artifacts and fundamental attachments. If they're fundamental then they're not cultural. — praxis

The tendency to become attached is fundamental, the actual attachments are culturally mediated. You can't become attached to something that doesn't exist in your culture.

Can you explain this simply? What's an example of metaphysical intuition? — Tom Storm

I don't have a good grasp of it, I'm afraid. In An Introduction to Metaphysics, Henri Bergson makes the claim that metaphysical intuition is the “kind of intellectual sympathy by which one places oneself within an object in order to coincide with what is unique in it and consequently inexpressible” In terms of actual experience, maybe something akin to aesthetic experience, I suppose.

He talks about change or movement and a key demarcation from intuition to analysis is when an object stops moving, so to speak, like when marking a point on a line of trajectory, or to put it differently, when making a multiplicity out of unity.

Goodness. Thank you.

“kind of intellectual sympathy by which one places oneself within an object in order to coincide with what is unique in it and consequently inexpressible — praxis

This sounds incomprehensible (to me). But I do understand an aesthetic experience - let's just say they are the same so we can feel a level of certainty about the matter. :wink:

Do you thinks it's possible that, in being enamored with one's discursive knowledge of the world, one might become blind to lived experience? — Janus

I don't care for the phrasing but I know what you mean and yes, in fact, I'm the worst. Just today I drove a half-hour to a client's office only to realize upon arrival that I forgot my briefcase, so lost in thought was I.

:ok: :lol:

I know what you mean — praxis

That's always an auspicious start for discussion.

I don't care for the phrasing — praxis

What is it about the phrasing that troubles you? How would you express it differently?

Just today I drove a half-hour to a client's office only to realize upon arrival that I forgot my briefcase, so lost in thought was I. — praxis

I've done such things myself, so I can relate. Whenever such things happened I told my partner it wasn't the "early onset Alzheimer's" she imputed, but a case of 'professorial absent;mindedness'.

In any case it wasn't really absent-mindedness I has in mind when I spoke of becoming blind to lived experience, it was more being stuck in certain conventional patterns of dealing with 'the world'.

as if the act of attention is distinct from what one is attending to , and as if there could be such a thing as a pure, pre-reflective , pre-intending, non-judging and non-willing mode of awareness, a bare feeling of being. — Joshs

I wouldn't draw a distinction like this.The entire experience in the world, replete with no exception, abandons nothing that is not "pure". As troublesome as an idea like this is, this "purity", it is not meant to stand apart from anything, but is inclusive rather than exclusive. The "error" (the snake that is really a rope, of the Vedanta) lies in the interpretative meanings of ideas "in play", and there is no escape from this, but here, there is no escape and any divisions between what the understanding understands and that which is understood is made moot.

The idea is not to draw up a metaphysics. It is phenomenological: a description of a disclosure of something that permeates all things, just as a person in love lives in a world in which all things radiate with love. And here, the purity is not "pre reflective" but a-reflective: reflection can help achieve this, as jnana yoga helps achieve Hindu spiritual ends, but the point is not to stop thinking, but to stop identifying thinking with "Truth" with a capital 'T': "What is Good is divine, too. That strangely enough defines my ethics," wrote Wittgenstein in Culture and Value.

Not pre intending but the intended object and the intentional act are both subsumed. As one judges the world in one way or another, the judgment is within the event of the disclosure. The "bare feeling of being" is not to be qualified within an explanatory setting of philosophical talk that is alien to the "bare feeling". And again, "bare" is not an exclusive bareness. Rather, what is rendered bare, is all things. And divisions within plain talk are not nullified; they are subsumed.

Through meditative practice, we can access this pre-reflective state , and avail ourselves of ‘unconditionally intrinsic goodness', 'spontaneous compassion', 'luminosity', 'blissfulness', and ' a calm and peaceful life guided by the fundamental value of nonviolence'. But how do such feelings emerge as ultimate outcomes of a philosophy of groundlessness — Joshs

But "groundlessness" is an imposition of a term that does not belong. The challenging encounter certainly is in the historical record, in the Tibetan Book of the Dead, in Eastern spiritualism. The trouble is, this is not taken seriously. Is this the hubris of Husserl and Heidegger and others who think the Greeks were the true progenitors of philosophical thinking? At any rate, what is being discussed here is not a thesis so much as it is a revelatory insight. The problems that arise in accounting for it lie in its simplicity.

One thing that doesn't make sense in this is how Constance refers to knowledge suppositions as both cultural artifacts and fundamental attachments. If they're fundamental then they're not cultural. — praxis

I defer to Dewey on knowledge and the aesthetic. For him, the two are of-a-piece, part of the process of acquiring knowledge is the "consummation" of the acquisition, which is the pragmatic thrill of successfully solving a problem. Language itself is just this: a body of tools, "scientifically acquired" meaning we, as infants and children were faced with models of language behavior and internalized these to the delight of others, and therefore, to our delight as well. We "tested" our knowledge with primitive utterances, and found successes in the way these became useful, and this was all imprinted in our young psyches. Now that is a fundamental attachment. Language is also a culture carrier. It is not just words rules; words are presented in a body of attitudes and idioms and ironies and countless entanglements with cultural institutions. One doesn't simply hear the term General Motors and realizes it refers to a company that makes cars. It is discussed in many contexts of value, economics, jobs and employment. and so on.

E D Hirsh wrote a book a while back called Cultural Literacy, and he believed that there were certain things every American knows AS an American, like the fact that Lincoln was born in a cabin what the three R's are. He thought this is the kind of thing Americans must know if they are going to live among Americans. Of course, he was a conservative that didn't much like immigrants, and I don't care for this kind of thinking, but he did have a point: the simple things that flow through a society's culture are freighted by everyday language use.

1)It does not bring us to a state prior to desire or will
2)It does not precede intention or reflection
3)it does not achieve a state of neutrality devoid of affective coloration. — Joshs

Just to note: to separate desire and the desired is a verbal confusion I never understood. If I have the desired, do i stop desiring it? I don't think so; I desire still, in the gratification. The Buddhist idea of nirvana, putting aside textual authorities, is a profound affective experience. it subsumes intention and reflection, just as Kierkegaard's knight of faith takes in the world's finitude and Walt Whitman's song of the self tallies the world in grandeur. These are but pale versions of the boast of nirvana. Affective coloration is the very meaning of nirvana, it has just been misrepresented by those who want to separate enlightenment from emotion.

As Jim Morrison says (in a different context) " words got me the wound and will get me well if you believe it". Animals have no language and no need of liberation, so it seems that language creates both the need, and the means, for liberation. Language provides the technics, makes the technics communicable, but the act of liberation is a going beyond the limitations of language, a stepping outside of it. — Janus

I want to say language sits comfortably along side of anything at all, like my cat does when I am not thinking about it and it is just there. SUre, there is language attending implicitly in the comfortable absence of explicit thought, but my cat could suddenly reveal herself as an avatar of God, and language could still be there attending to the spectacle.

On the other hand: In my best meditations, when things settle into an odd intimation of something just there, beneath the skin of the familiar, and there is something there, in the givenness of things, that appears just on the horizon of things, and I give this its breadth and depth as I can, I do feel the world receding and the revelatory event issues from within, as if to fill all things. It is a very strange business, I have to admit, which is why I feel the need to step into this discussion. Language does yield in that identities of things weaken, and something steps forward. And it is like going home, but this is revealed as within subjectivity, as if, as the Buddhists' say, one already is the Buddha, and it is a matter of discovering this.

In any case it wasn't really absent-mindedness I has in mind when I spoke of becoming blind to lived experience, it was more being stuck in certain conventional patterns of dealing with 'the world'. — Janus

In that case wouldn’t it simply be repatterning to what you’re calling “lived experience”?

We could look at this as a failure to pay attention or a lack of mindfulness and focus everything on improving mindfullness, awarness. And/or one could wonder what was it you were actually wrestling with that distracted you. That might be of great importance and would not get addressed by either, continuing distraction thoughts OR by seeing this as a kind of less than optimal bad habit of not being mindfull. And then there's the post-Freudian angle. What might make you want to not have the briefcase with you or to have a kind of mini-crisis of that particular sort. Buddhism can tend to gloss over, in a way different from distracted thoughts, what is really going on also.