Hi Wim, Scott, Platt, Gary, and any I have missed,
I'm trying to be brief so forgive my not responding to the many issues
raised.
First a quote from Wittgenstein, courtesy of Sam.
"If what we do now makes no difference in the end then all the seriousness
of life is done away with" - Wittgenstein
I like it because it restores the person, located in a life, an existence,
to the centre, and my issue with Wim and Scott in particular is that the
metaphysics they endorse has the potential to erode this existential core of
meaning and leave us with an abstract rational formula not unlike the
mathematical 'truths' of modern physics, which left most of the prominent
physicists of the last century profoundly dissatisfied. It is not that what
you say is wrong, Wim and Scott, but that its sheer abstractness is
alienating. It is also profoundly unsatisfactory to me to argue that
"Patterns of values are 'real' as is their change to the better" as Wim
does, since it is clear to me that "change to the better" is not a given.
When I look at people my age I see many whose changes have not been 'better'
in any way I see as meaningful. The 'seriousness' in life that Wittgenstein
asserts is a consequence of choice, or free will if you wish, in which the
consequnces of choice matter for people.
Wim asks "If humans are just sets of stable patterns of values, what does
high/low quality experience for such a set mean?" and responds "The answer
for me would that low quality experience threatens the coherence, the
'patternedness' of the set while high quality experience paradoxically BOTH
strenghtens its stability AND opens it to change (in a direction that is
experienced as 'right'/'Meaningful')."
Can you see why I compare this with the mathematical basis of physics?
"Patternedness", "stability" and "change" in my view do not do justice to
human experience. (The issue may be in fleshing out your appended
'right'/'Meaningful', Wim) I find Platt's response to beauty more human, but
still somewhat sterile. Rightness and meaning are very intellectual terms.
Beauty is broader. I would want to include at least what Wilber calls the
'big three', (the good, the true and the beautiful), the reintegration of
which he sees as the major task of our time. But I continue to assert that
these are meaningless in the abstract. They require a locus, which "just
sets of stable patterns of values" seems painfully inadequate to provide. To
exaggerate a lot, you are saying that meaning makes men through an
evolutionary value accretion process, while I say men make meaning. (My
experience of men precedes my ability to use language, which is a
prerequisite for the sorts of abstract meaning in a metaphysics, which leads
to the MOQ, which then informs 'me' that my experience is only of quality,
so forming a cyclic argument.) Even the mystic seems to accept that the
outworking of quality in the universe requires the self-referential
qualities of man to be complete.
I think Gary is right when he says "Pirsig is attempting to make a map from
a 3rd person omniscient vantage point." "Quality is infinite. A human map
is finite. Hence any one map can not take in all of the infinite. The two
can never be equivalent." Of course, Pirsig fully acknowledges this in Lila.
[By the way, Gary, I am quite impressed with your most recent posts.]
Platt's response to my input is "John B. argues that metaphysics, maps, and
words can do nothing to alleviate spiritual suffering. But words and maps
are used by spiritual guides to suggest activities that may help. People
also seek relief in prayer maps."
I do not agree with this as stated. As I view it, spiritual guides don't so
much suggest activities that may help as indicate what is happening that
gets in the way of immediate experience, which is the encounter with
quality. This is a cleansing of experience through a subtractive process,
rather than a progress towards something. I have no faith in 'prayer maps'.
Perhaps they work for some. Anyone?
The little story that Pirsig quotes in Lila about the man whose stale life
is transformed by a heart attack on the way to work is wonderfully evocative
to me, especially his renewed ability to see his hand with wonder and
delight. This is the issue that Wim does not address with his supposed
rebuttal of Gary, when he says "Jumping from a hot stove does not require a
3rd person omniscient vantage point..." No, it doesn't, but jumping from a
stale life is not so simple, and Pirsig acknowledges this but does little to
suggest how this might occur, and this is part of the suffering I refer to.
Since the issue of my quoting childhood has become an issue for some, I want
to clarify that it is the child's ability to contact here and now experience
that is valuable, and that is largely lost, except in hot stove situations,
as we age. And the intellect is largely a construct 'out of immediacy', and
so part of the problem. The guy on the train in the story Pirsig quotes
might be a leading exponent of the MOQ. It avails him nothing. His life
remains stale. Simply returning to childhood would be no solution. (My
aversion to mysticism a couple of years ago was based on this mistaken
assumption, that the mystic represents a return to the biological level. So
would a reversion to childhood. But it is the recovery of the ability to be
in contact with immediate experience, rather than a mental map of it, which
I see now is intimately connected to the mystic path.)
So Gary, when you ask "Does mysticism give us, we humans, a way to escape
our "idols", our preconceived notions, fixations, beliefs?" I argue it does
just that. Not by returning to childhood, but by regaining access to the
immediacy of experience, which is where quality is to be found.
I was interested in your later comment; "I think that traveling up into the
infinite is dangerous for our finite minds. Hence in order for us not too
lose our way we only can experience the infinite in terms of our
pre-existing finite collection of symbols. Hence the mystical way may not be
the only or even the best way to gain truly innovative new insights.
Perhaps unique new perspectives is more likely an outcome of encountering
the finite. If that finite, be it a person or a book, is different than
your own pre-existing cultural map".
Squonk too once said to me something that chimed with this fear of loss of
sanity. Bo also reflects it. I am not so worried. Perhaps I possess enough
'basic trust' to get by. Who knows? I could be wrong.
In my view the mystical way has almost nothing to do with "traveling up into
the infinite". If I may subtly change your argument, "we only can experience
the infinite in terms of ... [the] finite", where the finite is simple
experience. But it is the 'collection of symbols' that leads us astray, not
that they are wrong in themselves, but that they get between us and our
experience. This is the fundamental issue. You quote Merrell-Wolff
approvingly when he says "In the strictly metaphysical sense, i.e., in the
sense that is not related to any concrete thinker, no conceptual formulation
is either true or false. It is simply irrelevant. Nor, on the other hand,
can experience prove the truth or falsity of any fundamental theory". That
is just it, in a nutshell, yet you have not seemingly grasped the
consequence, that it is a return to concreteness that offers a way forward.
Still hanging around,
John B
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