Re: Subjectivity, intimacy, experience

Posted by Eric Charles-2 on
URL: http://friam.383.s1.nabble.com/Subjectivity-intimacy-experience-tp7587205p7587207.html

Russ, you asked about both "subjective" and "experience". I did my best to answer about both.

What I mean by "experience" is probably best answered by my quote from Dewey. I fancy myself a very good writer... but not better than Dewey. I mean an actual, in the moment, experiencing of a thing. In the most general and non-technical sense of the word "thing."

Beyond that, I think that when we analyze the "experience" relationship, we find that it consists of what could properly be labeled "behavior" (or, perhaps, a physiological orientation towards certain behavior, although I'm not as comfortable with that). That is, to "experience something" is to be reacting to it, with a few caveats thrown in to make it clear than not all reactions count.

 

On Tue, Mar 1, 2016 at 5:01 PM, Russ Abbott <[hidden email]> wrote:

I'm afraid I'm not satisfied. 

So often when I ask what appears to be a relatively straightforward question I get drowned in words that dance around the subject in ways I don't understand. For example, Eric wrote, "What I don't accept, however, is the that the notion that all experience is some how "inescapably subjective" in the sense that ... "  

I had asked what you mean by the term experience. None of this tells me. Mainly you attribute a position to me (or imply that I hold it) and then attack it. This seems to happen all the time. I ask you a question and your response is to say that my position (or some position that you apparently associate with me) is wrong. 

How about just answering the question. What do you mean when you use the word "experience?"

On Tue, Mar 1, 2016 at 8:24 AM Eric Charles <[hidden email]> wrote:

The other thread was getting bogged down in other things, so I'm starting a new one to try to answer Russ's question about some of the terms Nick and I are using, in particular "experience" and whether I deny "subjectivity".

The latter is easier. Re subjectivity:
I do not deny that the knowledge relationship has two elements (knower and known) and the relationship between them that we refer to as "knowing." But that leaves open the question of what type of relationship that is. If you are merely pointing out that there are "subjects" who look out into the world, then I have no objection. If you are pointing out that those subjects see the world from a particular point of view (in a literal and metaphorical sense), I still have no objection. What I don't accept, however, is the that the notion that all experience is some how "inescapably subjective" in the sense that A) we can never really know what someone else is experiencing, or B) that we are never really experiencing anything but "our own subjective worlds." The latter, if taken seriously, has lead emminent philosophers to feel like intellectual giants if they channel their inner The Big Lebowski and reply to any claim about the world with, "Yeah, well, you know, that's just, like, uh, your opinion, man."

I'm not sure what would satisfy you re experience. I will try quoting some Dewey to see if that helps:

Immediate empiricism postulates that things- anything, everything, in the ordinary or nontechnical use of the term " thing "- are what they are experienced as. Hence, if one wishes to describe anything truly, his task is to tell what it is experienced as being. If it is a horse that is to be described, or the equus that is to be defined, then must the horse-trader, or the jockey, or the timid family man who wants a " safe driver," or the zoologist or the paleontologist tell us what the horse is which is experienced. If these accounts turn out different in some respects, as well as congruous in others, this is no reason for assuming the content of one to be exclusively " real," and that of others to be " phenomenal"; for each account of what is experienced will manifest that it is the account o f the horse-dealer, or of the zoologist, and hence will give the conditions requisite for understanding the differences as well as the agreements of the various accounts. And the principle varies not a whit if we bring in the psychologist's horse, the logician's horse, or the metaphysician's horse.

In each case, the nub of the question is, what sort of experience is denoted or indicated: a concrete and determinate experience, varying, when it varies, in specific real elements, and agreeing, when it agrees, in specific real elements, so that we have a contrast, not between a Reality, and various approximations to, or phenomenal representations of Reality, but between different reals of experience. And the reader is begged to bear in mind that from this standpoint, when " an experience " or " some sort of experience " is referred to, " some thing " or " some sort of thing " is always meant....

 

-----------
Eric P. Charles, Ph.D.
Lab Manager
Center for Teaching, Research, and Learning
American University, Hurst Hall Room 203A
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On Mon, Feb 29, 2016 at 11:20 PM, Russ Abbott <[hidden email]> wrote:

This has moved so far beyond what I'm capable of thinking about that I'm lost. (Although I thank Nick for crediting me with pointing out the activity of the visual cortex. Good point -- even though it didn't occur to me to refer to it.)

I'm still way back at a much simpler question. What do Nick and Eric mean when they use the word experience as a noun and as a verb as Eric did in the following? 

whatever you are experiencing, you are experiencing it as somehow akin to a visual experience

Eric actually wrote the preceding not too long ago. 

Or to take a more recent example, Nick wrote, "I don’t think that is what John had in mind." What does Nick mean by "had in mind"?

The point is that both Eric and Nick seem to use subjective experience language fairly freely but at the same time claim that it doesn't mean anything. So my question continues to be what do they mean when they use it.

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