RE: MD Pure experience and the Kantian problematic

From: David Buchanan (DBuchanan@ClassicalRadio.org)
Date: Sun Feb 06 2005 - 03:01:05 GMT

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    Marsha, Matt, Sam, Scott and all weavers using this thread:

    dmb said to Matt:
    If I follow you here, if Pirsig is to be consistently pragmatic he's gonna
    have to let loose some of his ideas. Hmmm. Let me guess which one is at the
    top of your list. Does it have anything to do with pure experience, a
    mystical experience and its validity?...

    Marsha
    Could it be Faith? Is that what is problematic about MOQ? That there is
    no room for faith in the existence of God?

    dmb replies:
    Some of these guys have been around for a while and the history of postings
    has led me to conclude that Matt rejects philosophical mysticism in order to
    maintain a kind of atheistic materialism, a kind of secular common sense.
    Sam rejects the same thing to maintain the opposite view, a kind of theistic
    traditionalism, a kind of religious common sense. They make odd bedfellows,
    but join forces in their attempts to defeat philosophical mysticism. I'm
    honestly not sure what Scott is doing. He seems to be interested in
    defeating the MOQ by quoting Pirsig's SUPPORTERS. Sometimes he looks like
    he's defending the faith and sometimes he looks every bit as nihilistic as
    Matt.

    Sorry for talking about you in the third person guys. Sometimes it just gets
    too complicated to do it any other way...

    In any case, each of them seems to be motivated by a desire to tinker with
    the MOQ until they get a version of the MOQ that looks like whatever
    hobbyhorse they brought with them. I like to call it epistemological
    narcissism and I also subscribe to it. This view asserts that truth consists
    in whatever reflects well on me and my choices and my beliefs. This view
    asserts that Goodness is essentially whatever works for me and that the
    validity of any particular philosophy rests upon how flattering it is to my
    self-image. And since the dissolution of the ego and letting go of
    intellectual prejudices are so central to mysticism, you can imagine what
    horror it is to also be an epistemological narcissist! ;-)

    OK. That's a bit cruel, but hopefully you see the point of this rather
    pointed point.

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