From: Scott Roberts (jse885@localnet.com)
Date: Wed Feb 09 2005 - 04:33:43 GMT
Scott said:
>Your post is all about recognizing other forms of attaining knowledge. I
>agree with all that, and have never said otherwise. But as so often, you do
>not read what I say, but go off on a tangent to provide support for
>something that I do not dispute. I just, like Wilber, think that the word
>"empirical" should be restricted to the form of attaining knowledge
>"grounded in sensory experience", and not extended to those other forms.
Ant said:
Why should the term "empirical" be highlighted for special treatment out of
the countless terms employed in philosophy and philosophology in various
contexts?
I'm just thinking of Northrop's (and Pirsig's assertion!) that what ever
particular term you use for a concept isn't critical as long as you define
clearly what you understand by it.
Scott:
As I said, I wouldn't object to an expansion of the word "empirical" if it
is a useful thing to do. In this case, however, I think that it blurs a
useful distinction. The way we judge the statements of science are different
from the way we judge mathematical proofs, and different from the way we
judge claims of art, morality, and religion. To blur this distinction leaves
us worse off, without any apparent gain, except for the unworthy one of
trying to ride the coattails of respectibility that the word "empirical" has
in contemporary intellectual venues. When it results in someone saying that
we know empirically that the square root of two has no rational solution, or
that we know empirically that what mystics experience is an
"undifferentiated aesthetic continuum", then the word "empirical" has lost
all value.
Ant said:
Possibly, following David, we should use Pirsig's understandings of
particular terms when on a Pirsig Discussion group (rather than Wilber or
whoever) otherwise we will be talking over each other?
Scott:
Not if I think that Pirsig's understanding leads to adverse consequences. In
that case, Pirsig's understanding should be subject to criticism.
Ant quotes:
'The philosophically important thing about any common-sense term as it
enters into any philosophical theory is not its bare dictionary meaning, but
the particular contextual meaning usually unique to the philosophical system
in question. [For instance] philosophical materialists, idealists, dualists
and neutral monists all admit the existence of what common sense denotes by
the term 'mind,' yet there is all the difference in the world in the ways in
which they analyze and conceive of this datum.' (Northrop, 1947, p.80)
Scott:
Yes, so they way they analyze and conceive of this or that datum should be
subject to questioning.
- Scott
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