>I think that what I'm getting
>at is this: if
>all we know is a
>product of our experience only,
>then how can we understand
>something that is not experiential?

i'm not sure if you're saying/getting this but "experiential" is broad. example: my friend goes on a trip then tells me about it. my experience is what i hear and that's the info i process. so, one doesn't necessarily have to "experience" first hand. this is where teaching and learning enter the equation.

> And what glues our
>experiences together?

our experiences as an individual or as a body of people? i already gave the answer for the group (common needs, desires, processing of experience, and sometimes the experiences themselves), for an individual: whatever the storage and retrieval mechanism used for categorization of experience (i don't have a name for it per se).

>If what we know arises out
>of sensory data (experience) plus
>thoughts about the sensory data,
>where do the thoughts come
>from?

this is getting deeper. where do thoughts come from? hmmm. let me try. what you "think" about a thing comes from how it relates to other past experiences coupled with your new mental and physcal reaction to said event/stimuli? this new "thought" gets classified mentally (i dunno how) to be used the next time it's needed by the storage retrieval system. sounds good i guess.

>Let's add the unnameable back into
>the equation. Is spirit
>or soul or consciousness the
>glue that takes our random
>thoughts and puts them in
>order and creates a world
>view and a self?

two thoughts on this:
one, we can take the unknown and label them as the "soul" or whatever

or...
we define what it IS before we describe what it DOES. meaning, let's analyze that variable THEN introduce it to the perviously discussed equation.

this is kinda fun. nothing like a little brain exercise in the name of philiosophy. :-)

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