From: Scott Roberts (jse885@localnet.com)
Date: Mon Feb 14 2005 - 16:55:43 GMT
Erin,
He doesn't explicitly say that he is going to expand the meaning of the word "empiricism". What he says is
The Metaphysics of Quality subscribes to what is called empiricism. It
claims that all legitimate human knowledge arises from the senses or by
thinking what the senses provide. Most empiricists deny the validity of any
knowledge gained through imagination, authority, tradition, or purely
theoretical reasoning. They regard fields such as art, morality, religion,
and metaphysics as unverifiable. The Metaphysics of Quality varies from this
by saying that the values of art and morality and even religious mysticism
are verifiable and that in the past have been excluded for metaphysical
reasons, not empirical reasons. They have been excluded because of the
metaphysical assumption that all the universe is composed of subjects and
objects and anything that can't be classified as a subject or an object
isn't real. There is no empirical evidence for this assumption at all. It is
just an assumption."
Since he is going to include experiential data from "art and morality and even religious mysticism" that "most empiricists" reject, I think it reasonable to assume that he intends "empirical" to cover such data. But then there is another question. That is, he says "[Empiricism] claims that all legitimate human knowledge arises from the *senses* or by thinking about what the senses provide". So apparently he considers "moral" data as being provided by the senses, which I think is pretty weird. Another reason, in my opinion, to just throw the word "empirical" out.
- Scott
----- Original Message -----
From: Erin
To: moq_discuss@moq.org
Sent: Monday, February 14, 2005 8:41 AM
Subject: Re: MD Pure experience and the Kantian problematic
Scott:
Apparently your snorting and chuckling caused you to overlook that what I
REJECT is the definitional CHOICE that "Epistemological pluralism IS BY
DEFINITION the expansion of the meaning of the word empirical". One has the
choice:
1. Restrict the use of the word "empirical" to sensory experience.
2. Use the word "empirical" for all experience.
Wilber, in Eye to Eye, explicitly says he has chosen (1). Pirsig has chosen
(2). So when I say I REJECT expanding the word "empirical" to the
mental-phenomenological and the transcendental, I am saying that I think
Pirsig made a bad choice, and Wilber the right one. That is not inconsistent
with accepting that other kinds of experience than the sensory are
legitimate sources of knowledge.
ERIN: is there a specific part of Lila or Zamm where you think Pirsig's says number two?
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