From: Erin (macavity11@yahoo.com)
Date: Sun Oct 31 2004 - 05:06:58 GMT
So based on saying what they experienced (an unobservable experience) "readers" verify it as empirical evidence. Who are these readers/gurus?
"Be your own guru" Tom Robbins
Erin
David Buchanan < > wrote:
Erin:
"Observable" things constitute just one kind of experience, sensory experience. And traditionally, this is the only kind of experience that really counts, but this is one of the limitations that Pirsig wants to overcome with an expanded empiricism.
But think of Hamlet. One could weigh and measure its lenth, count the words and such, but that's no good. If you want to experience Hamlet then you have to read the play. (or attend a performance) You have to get into the dialogue and characters and plot points. You have to enter into its intersubjective space, where the motives of the characters and the meaning of the words is understood even though these things are outside the text itself. In other words, you're having a mental experience. That's how you experience Hamlet and lots of other things. This experience can be reported and varified by others who also read the book.
I don't know about ESP, but lets say a mystical experience is the prime example of the next "level" of experience. This is akin to the mental experience in that it is not of the senses, that it is an interior event, if you will. But this can be repeated and varified by people who can "read" at this level. This is more difficult because of the relative rarity of such persons, but there are people who can achieve altered states reliably and report them. Ken Wilber pulls these reports together and has already begun the process of establishing something like an empirical spirtuality. There have always been masters, gurus who are checking the progress of students in this way, but Wilber hopes to make it scientific, for lack of a better word.
If I weren't such a blow-hard, I'd just say that sensory experience isn't the ONLY kind of experience. And ironically, the reasons for excluding other kinds of experience are metaphysical reasons, not ones based on experience.
Again I am going to play the MOQ skeptic,if somebody came in and claimed they had ESP, it would not be described as empirical because there was no observable evidence of their "experience" so why should I grant the empirical label to your "experiences" of Quality when you have given no observable evidence of it.
Erin
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