>>"experiential" is broad. example: my friend goes on a trip then tells me about it. my experience. 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.

I agree, but I'm talking about "direct experience." In this case, your direct experience is the experience of hearing your friend tell about it.

>>for an individual: whatever the storage and retrieval mechanism used for categorization of experience (i don't have a name for it per se).

Is this pre-intellectual, non-conscious awareness? Can we call this "judgement"?

You know that stuff that I spout about judgement arising without our willing it to arise and the point being what you do with the judgement, rather than whether or not you should make a judgement in the first place?

Does that work with your model?

>>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.

That works for me -- I think it explains intellectual analysis. But are thought and analysis exactly equivalent? I think the key phrase is "this new 'thought'" -- what generates the new thought? It's analyzed by the pre-existing thoughts. Do the pre-existing thoughts generate new thoughts?

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

Which might be helpful in some instances, if we think that whatever "it" is, is bigger than us (like we're a subset of "it") so we can't see it well enough to define it?

>
>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.

Hmmm. I might get stuck here. It doesn't exist in the sensory world, right? so I can't describe what it is by saying "It's purple" and "It smells like roses." And I'm not sure that I can define what it IS without recourse to sensory data or effect (what it does). What are your thoughts?

Peace.