From: david buchanan (dmbuchanan@hotmail.com)
Date: Sat Oct 01 2005 - 03:56:10 BST
Matt and all:
Matt said:
You know all this and you agree with all this (I would suspect). But I
don't know how else to put my point that you seem to be acting a little
Stalinesque in your demands on how people (or just I) talk here. If you ran
the show, that'd be one thing. But this is a free forum, not a classroom.
I don't know how else to put my point that, if you are willing to say that
"metaphysics" is not common sense English, and that we need "metaphysics" to
talk about philosophy, then you should probably be willing to be flexible in
your vocabulary in a lot of other ways. When you wrote that "the inabiltiy
to be flexible and creative in our descriptions and explanations only shows
a lack of comprehension and imagination" as an expression of how you feel
about me, I practically fell out of my chair laughing. I've thought the
same thing about you for a long time, too. So I don't know. We both think
the other is being inflexible, but we can both point to a long train of
varying descriptions and explanations. So I'm not sure who's fault it is
that we don't understand each other, who lacks reading comprehension skills
or effective communication skills or just enough imagination that the idea
of trying on someone else's shoes proves impossible. I don't know, me, you?
Or is it that that's not our problem? That our problem is something else?
dmb replies:
Stalinist demands? Huh? I'm only asking you (for the gazillionth time) to
give it to me in plain English. And do you know why I'm making this
"demand"? Because I don't understand your jargon. I don't get what you're
saying. I really don't see the point or purpose with all this talk about
contextualization, traditions, vocabularies and the appearance reality
distinction. I'm asking you to have a conversation with me in a way that I
can comprehend. I feel this is a completely reasonable request and one that
should be quite easy for you to grant. See, here's the problem...
Matt said:
........if people want
to be post-appearance/reality distinction, then everything that is desirable
about Pirsig's philosophy, e.g. his distinction between "DQ and sq," is
available to us the way I'm describing things. The distinctively pragmatist
assertion is that no vocabulary for description or explanation is
universally privileged over any other. Some people describe X as a
"mystical experience," some people describe X as a "neuron firing." Neither
description is privileged over the other and you use one or the other
depending on your purpose.
dmb replies:
See, I only have the vaguest idea about all the most operative phrases in
this short paragraph;
post-appearance/reality distinction, vocabulary for description, universally
privileged. But more than that, I don't understand what the point or purpose
of all this. I'm trying to get some ideas across here about mysticism and
DQ, some ideas that have been expressed in a both we've both read. I'm
telling you that I've not read the books and am not hip to the debates that
you're jargon seems to refer to and/or come from. I just can't decode it
well enough to have a fruitful conversation with you about anything. So I'm
asking you to talk down to me. As I read that paragraph...
Blah, blah, blah, blah, I don't reject mysticism, I'm just calling it a
brain fart. Blah, blah, blah.
Matt continued:
>The only way for you to press your claim that people who describe X as a
>neuron firing are cutting out DQ or whatever is to claim that DQ demands a
>certain vocabulary to express it (beyond the obvious sense in which DQ can
>only be described by Pirsig's vocabulary). To demand this is to claim that
>Reality demands a certain, privileged vocabulary be used to get at It. You
>apparently don't want to demand this, though, because that would be
>resurrecting an appearance/reality distinction. So I'm not sure where our
>problems are yet (except that we apparently don't really understand each
>other yet and apparently you have a very deep personal problem with my
>writing).
dmb replies:
Maybe it would help if I explained how this confuses me. I've used many
different terms to describe DQ; the primary empirical reality, the primary
empirical experience, pure experience, unmediated experience, Dignaga's pure
sensation. I've used Pirsig's terms, Watt's terms, Campbell's terms,
Wilber's terms, etc.. So, when you say my assertion entails the "claim that
DQ demands a
certain vocabulary to express it", I'm very confused. Since I've been using
a wide variety of terms from a wide variety of places, I have to conclude
that you're not just talking about a guy who insists there is only one good
way to talk about DQ. So I imagine that "priviledged vocabulary" is does NOT
mean anything like "best terms". But I'm left without any explanation as to
what you actually mean. In other words, you seem to be using these phrases
in ways that I don't understand. And I don't understand what it has to do
with the appearance reality distinction nor do I understand how this
distinction has anything to do with what I'm saying about DQ or anything
else.
Matt said:
...................................................................But all
I'm claiming is that, in
>philosophy, all we are ever going to do when we try and "get everything to
>hang together in a coherent way" is talk about the various ways in which we
>can talk because that's all we ever could do. You can still claim that
>this
>is degenerate from a mystic's point of view. But all the Buddha could do
>for other people was talk to them. All we can do is talk. All we are
>doing
>is talking. So we talk about the vocabularies we are using and what they
>are doing. Pirsig at the least holds this methodological commitment as
>when
>he agrees with Niels Bohr's claim that "we are suspended in language" and
>when he says that metaphysics is degenerate, but hey, its a part of life.
dmb
This confuses me too. I don't understand what it means to talk about
vocabularies. I don't understand the point or purpose of talking about
talking, rather than talking about ideas. I don't understand what it means
to make a "methodological commitment". As I understand it, Neils Bohr's
claim is an idea. We could talk about that idea, but I honestly don't see
how this would be anything other than a different topic. I don't see how any
of this bears on the ideas I'm trying to convey or what it has to do with
mysticism. I would even be willing to talk about your stuff in your terms,
which is why I'd said, "I'm hereby asking you to explain what you mean [by
"contextualize"] in
conventional English. And I suppose it wouldn't hurt to explain what
"recontextualization" means too. But instead of telling me what you mean,
you gave me a view from www.dictionary.com "con·tex·tu·al·ize To place (a
word or idea, for example) in a particular context." But you seem to be
doing something special and philosophical with this word. See, I wasn't
asking for the conventional meaning. I was asking you to expalin YOUR
meaning in terms I can understand.
>Matt said:
>Telling me that a mystical experience is only correctly described in the
>way
>that you tell me (voicing the tradition of mysticism), and that I'm blind
>to
>it otherwise, is like a witchdoctor telling us that the demons he sees
>surrounding a sick person (differently colored demons corresponding to the
>different kinds of mushrooms that'll cure the patient) can only be
>correctly
>described _as_ demons, in the way he and his tradition tells us. Otherwise
>we are blind to demons. We don't care, though, because demon-belief was
>used to help cure sickness and we've since found better ways of diagnosing
>and curing sickness. Those are two descriptions that conflict because they
>have the same purpose for being around and, predictably, cultural evolution
>chooses the one that works better. Everyone can _insist_ that things be
>described as they want them to be, but that insistence isn't proof of
>purchase on our imaginations. What we need is to be told _why_ we should
>describe things as you do. What purposes is that tradition satisfying and
>what reason are we to suppose that we get the best satisfaction from that
>tradition rather than another?
dmb replies:
Again, since I've described the idea a gazillion different ways, I don't
understand this charge at all. And how can I be "voicing the tradition of
mysticism" when a large part of my point is that there is no such tradition
and the voices I bring to bear are buddhist scholars, theologians,
mythologists, psychologists and philosophers. Given this fact, I don't see
how it makes sense to say that I "insist that things be described" in any
particular way. To use a wide variety of terms from a wide variety of
disciplines is just about the opposite of any such insistence, no? Is this
detailed description of my confusion helping at all? As I already said, "I
honestly don't care which words are used to describe this pre-linguistic
experience. I'm trying to get an idea across here, one that can be and
actually is described in many, many ways. So long as the concept is clear,
it doesn't really matter what we call it. I'm not insisting on any
particular description. Far from it.
Matt replied:
But it seems you are insisting on a particular description. It would appear
you can't countenance the description of X as a "neuron firing" as being an
acceptable description.
dmb says:
I'm not saying you've got an unacceptable description or even an inferior
description. I think you have the wrong idea. I think you are not in
posession of the concept. I don't remember how firing neurons entered the
discussion, but it does seem that you'd be asserting that mystical
experience can be reduced to biochemical events in the brain, which doesn't
describe the experience at all but rather offers a neurological explanation
of the causes and mechanism behind the experience. But my complaints about
you taking the DQ out of the MOQ certainly doesn't revolve around this
particular "redescription". Again, I simply think you have the wrong idea
about DQ and so that's what I've been trying to explain.
Matt said:
...What we need is to be told _why_ we should describe things as you do.
What purposes is that tradition satisfying and what reason are we to suppose
that we get the best satisfaction from that tradition rather than another?"
...You do, incidently, answer this question when you say, "I mean, as I
understand it, the reason and purpose of adopting philosophical mysticism is
your own happiness and contentment." You're right, this does pass
pragmatist muster. But to convince me that philosophical mysticism is right
for _me_, you have to convince me that I'm sad and discontented and can only
be made happy by philosophical mysticism. The only way to do this, it would
seem (at least conversationally), would be to argue that only the
philosophical mystic can be a pragmatist, much like Kant argued that only
the transcendental idealist can be an empirical realist. In some sense, it
does seem like you want to argue this (as when you argued that the MoQ
rejects representationalism more radically than pragmatism). But in another
sense, if you are far from insisting on a particular description, you
wouldn't want to argue that and I'm still left unsure of why I should adopt
philosophical mysticism.
dmb says:
I don't expect you to adopt anything or be convinced that what I'm saying is
true. At least not yet. That would be skipping at least one important step;
comprehension. I'm still convinced that you don't know what I'm talking
about. More later.
Thanks,
dmb
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