Hi John,
great post as always. Thanks for sharing your thoughts.
There are other minor disagreements, but let me spot on the heart of your
post.
> To summarise, immediate experience is ultimately the source of all our
> knowledge, but we mediate this in words and concepts, and invent higher
> order explanatory systems, that are distanced from such immediate
> experience. The MOQ is one such system. That it points to immediate
> experience of quality is its great virtue; that it remains a metaphysics
is
> its great weakness.
>
> Is there any way beyond this outline of what can be known? The mystics say
> "Yes". .....
I could agree. And I guess that also Pirsig agrees that from the mystic's
viewpoint intellectual static patterns are "mediated reality", illusion.
That metaphysics is thought with no evidence. Tell me :-) , do the mystics
claim they can achieve evidence without thought? Good. But tell me also, can
you? I think I can't. Sorry if I'm a damned western guy, but I, like the
great majority around me, am not a mystic. So, what should I do? Stop
thinking? Stop investigating reality? Why?
Firstly, I love to know. Then, what I know is often very useful to my social
life. So, let me draw my maps. Could be they are without evidence, from
your viewpoint... For me, it's enough that they "work".
But there's more. You write:
> I can shout 'fire' in a crowded theatre and go to jail
> for it, since just shouting the word has consequences. I don't argue with
> this.
On the other hand, our life could not work without these signals. I don't
run
my car when the light is red. I don't enter a room whose door tells "Danger.
Radiations!" Your "not arguing" tells me you don't argue with the
usefulness of static concepts. Actually you write:
> Not that words
> and systems are unimportant, for they have important instrumental value,
but
> they are not in themselves 'real'.
An instrumental value, but not real..... Like to say, we mystic agree that
static concepts are useful, but we don't care too much as reality is
something else. Phew! It's not easy to face a mystic. :-)
Why do you say it's not real? The world we know... (pardon, experience
:-) ) was not built by mystic atoms, genes, families and ideas. It was
built (just to simplify) step by step by real genes upon real atoms; by real
families upon real living beings; by real ideas upon real societies.
Experiencing is just being part of the flow of interactions that is
connecting all these "things". Yes, I'm not a mystic, so I can take just a
bit from reality (a real bit of the real reality) and create new real
ideas.... I.e. new reality.
My statement (".. when we start talking about something we can't experience
we are actually experiencing it") bothered both you and Magnus.Probably for
different reasons. Let me explain what I was having in my head. I remember
an old post from Diana. Discussing logic, she wrote that "if in Europe there
are no camels, it is necessarily logic and true that in Germany there are no
camels".
Indeed it is logic and true, if firstly we agree on what Europe is, a camel
is and so on.... For example, is the Canaries archipelago Europe or Africa?
It's Spain, so it must be Europe. But if I look at a map it's apparently
Africa (and Africa is full of camels)... Is there more than one Europe?
Apparently yes. How do I know what Europe is, really? How do I experience
Europe? I've never seen it, really. I've seen maps. On my passport I read
"European Union". I've been to Switzerland, Greece, Croatia.... I've also
met dozens of German, British, French, Dutch, Norwegian.... persons. From
all that, I guess it is obvious there is something I can call Europe. It is
more probable that there is a real Europe independent of me, than the
contrary.
But, in the end, according to the subject line: what is Europe in my
knowledge? What can I know of Europe? Exactly that. Europe is the maps I've
studied at school. It's "European Union" written on my passport. It's the
day I've spent on a beach in Skopelos, Greece, talking of politics with a
Greek communist lady. It's the wonderful lakes of Plitvic in Croatia. It's
Shakespeare's Hamlet I enjoyed at a theatre. It's the postcard from Austria
I've received from my sister. This, and many other things, is what I know
about Europe. Call it "my private Europe" if you want. Everyone of us has an
infinite series of episodes building their "private Europe". Exactly now
this message is being added to your private Europe.
That's why talking about Europe is experiencing Europe. In the end Europe is
the total sum of those private Europe's. And it's real. It's real because we
are really discussing if it's good or not to extend the European Union to
other nations. Because many are really worried for Le Pen, a fascist who
wants to remove France from the Union. These real decisions will come
according to the "private Europe's" we are sharing. Real decisions, based
upon the real Europe we build and maintain everyday, even simply discussing
about it. Call it illusion if you want. It's not a problem for me. It's real
anyway.
Ciao,
Marco
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