Re: MD Pure experience and the Kantian problematic

From: Scott Roberts (jse885@localnet.com)
Date: Sun Jan 30 2005 - 05:16:56 GMT

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    Ron,

    > Have the philosophies of mysticism recognized that experience is before
    > subject and object, and therefore before conceptual and reality instead of
    > between conceptual and reality?

    Pirsig's philosophy of mysticism says this. I disagree with it, as I think
    that experience, subject[2] and object[2] arise together in a tri-unity.
    (The "subject[2]" refers to the distinction I made in yesterday's post,
    where subject[1] is, in MOQ terms, social and intellectual SPOV, while
    subject[2] is that which is aware of any SPOV, inorganic, biological,
    social, or intellectual.)

    >
    > In your Kant problematic, is it a matter of placing subject before object,
    > but still a matter of all experience coming from subject or object?
    >
    > Please forgive me as I am trying to undestand exactly what it is that is
    > Kant problematic. My thinking here is that what is Kant problematic is SOM
    > based to where the MOQ is not SOM based, but of course, I know that is
    much
    > to simple.

    Kant is SOM, to be sure. He holds that the subject creates an appearance of
    things from a pre-existing reality-in-itself, which is unknowable (since it
    is always put into the conceptual structures of the subject). So Kant would
    say that experience comes from the object to the subject, but by being
    forced into the conceptual structures of the subject, the object as it is in
    itself is not experienced.

    The question is, has the MOQ really overcome SOM or not? I don't think it
    has, in the sense that its replacement of the SOM vocabulary with the DQ/SQ
    vocabulary is done in a way that, in my opinion, leaves too much unsettled.
    In particular, I consider that it has no philosophy of mind worth anything.

    For the record, this does not mean that I find Pirsig's books of little
    value. Like Mark SH, I think his discussion of morality, and general insight
    (technology, celebrity, the Giant, etc.) is first-rate. It is his
    metaphysics that I find fault with, and I have a somewhat different view of
    mysticism than he has.

    - Scott

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