/lit/ - Literature

>>12728750
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>>12728793
a little more from whitehead. the similarity between the sensationalist and the buddhist doctrines i think is in the privileging of the foreground, the 'clear and distinct' appearances that have been selected for attention by consciousness/awareness. what whitehead would have you notice is the background which makes this foregrounding possible. it is as much 'in' experience as the foreground, but 'below' or 'behind' conscious attention. it is taken for granted by the sensationalist, while the foreground of sense-perception, already in an important sense an abstraction, is abstracted even further and taken to be the only 'real' component of experience.
beyond this, both the buddhist and the parmenidean are stuck at this level of conscious attention or awareness, which is for whitehead only a very specialized form of experience--and is, indeed, the very source of this troublesome disjunction between appearance and reality. but experience, non-conscious mentality, is 'present' at every level of 'reality', in every actual occasion. non-conscious occasions, indeed, make up the bulk of all actuality.