From: david buchanan (dmbuchanan@hotmail.com)
Date: Sat Nov 05 2005 - 22:50:13 GMT
Matt, Mike, David and all interested MOQers:
Way back on August 25th, Matt said to dmb:
...The most important problem area is certainly, as you put it, fusing
mysticism and pragmatism. ...I'm not sure, but I take your term
"epistemological pluralism" to be what you've learned from pragmatism. Maybe
not where you _actually_ learned it from, but from what I can tell, what you
call epistemological pluralism (your name for those parts of Pirsig dealing
with truth) is coextensive with what I follow Rorty in calling pragmatism.
And the way I see it, mysticism and epistemological pluralism _aren't_ fused
together at all. One way to put the relation is to say that
epistemological pluralism is there to police the border between
philosophical mysticism and epistemology, so that every time mysticism wants
to say something epistemological, the pluralism is there to say, "Nah, nah.
I don't think you want to do that." (I'm not entirely sure about how you
see your epistemological pluralism, but that is, I think, one way of putting
how I see mysticism and pragmatism relating.)
dmb says:
I picked up the phrase "epistemological pluralism" from Ken Wilber and, as I
understand it, this is a slightly more refined (non-SOM) version of the
"radical empiricism" of William James. My view is approximately opposite
from yours in that this is exactly the move that allows the mystical
experience to be counted as valid empirical evidence. I looked to Mr. Google
for a reality check on this point. James wrote: "My philosophy is what I
call a radical empiricism, a pluralism, a ‘tychism,’ which represents order
as being gradually won and always in the making." "To be radical, an
empiricism must neither admit into its constructions any element that is not
directly experienced, nor exclude from them any element that is directly
experienced." Here we see James making an attempt to include all kinds of
experience, including the varieties of religious experience, rather than
just the sensory experience and reflection upon it as is found in
traditional empiricism. This respect for concrete experience over our
theories and metaphysical assumptions is what makes it radical. This respect
for categories of experience traditonally excluded from empiricism is what
makes it pluralistic. So the way I see it, epistemological empiricism are
very much connected. (Although it seems a bit much to say they are "fused".)
As Pirsig says, mystical experience has been excluded for metaphysical
reasons, has been excluded because of our metaphysical assumptions, but
Wilber, James and Pirsig are all saying that they rather give up the
assumptions than the experience which seems to contradict them. They put
experience over theory. I think this is only sane and reasonable. Why should
ANY experience be excluded? What could be MORE real than experience?
Matt said to dmb:
...I still need to say something about how I actually see the relation
between mysticism and pragmatism, how I see what's going on at the border.
I guess the first thing I'd note is that, from what I understand, both
mysticism and pragmatism tells us that we
can't _say_ anything about reality as it is in itself. A border skirmish
starts to brew, though, when mystics tell us they have _knowledge_ or the
_truth_ of the ultimate reality. What do they mean if we can't say anything
about it? The way I see it, pragmatism should tell us to restrict the words
"knowledge" and "truth" to discursive practices. If its formulatable in
language, then its susceptible to all the things we've learned about
justifying our knowledge over the years--argumentation, evidence,
plausibility, elegance, etc.
dmb says:
You and Rorty want to "restrict" what counts as valid in a way that seems
very UN-pragmatic. Its restricted by theory. It excludes certain kinds of
experience, or rather all kinds of experience, except for linguistic
experience. That's wacked. This seems to be exactly the kind of problem
radical empiricism is designed to avoid. Also, I think there is some
confusion in your asserton that "both mysticism and pragmatism tells us that
we can't SAY anything about reality as it is in itself". It seens you are
confusing ineffability with some kind of Kantian gap between appearance and
reality, between the phenomenal and noumenal realms. But the "ineffability"
of the mystical experience refers to the gap between two kinds of
experience, mystical experience and intellectual experience and NOT between
that which we experience and that which we are forever completely ignorant.
In other words, the mystical experience is said to be ineffable because it
is intellectually unknowable but NOT because its impossible to know at all.
The Kantian nuomenal realm is beyond experience while the mystical
experience is knowable. The mystical experience is known directly while the
noumenal realm can never be known or experienced at all. Huge difference.
Here we are talking past each other in a very big way. As I understand it,
the mystic is not claiming to have reached this noumenal realm. As I
understand the MOQ, there is no such thing. Experience is not supposed to
get us closer to reality or anything like that. Instead experience is
reality. Experience is what we know, all we CAN know and the idea of some
inaccesable reality is just bad metaphysics. Its the SOM trap. Make sense?
Matt continued:
The interviewer asks Rorty about Lacan and Rorty, trying to explain why he
doesn't get Lacan, says at the end, "I guess I just distrust sublimity so
much that the more they talk about it, the more I run away." The
interviewer responds, "But at least you give it a place. It's not that you
say whatever you can't put into words doesn't exist," and
Rorty says, "I guess I do say that actually. I think that there's a
constant temptation to say that there are things that can't be put into
words. But, it's not something I want to indulge in." ...I take Rorty's
point about ineffable things not existing to be that, once you eff it,
you've made it exist in some sense where its no longer ineffable. This is
why, long ago, I said mysticism is analogous to poetry. Like the poet, they
bring things into existence. In trying to express the inexpressible, eff
the ineffable, they expand our language and allow us to say more.'
dmb:
First of all, it seems quite a stretch to claim that non-existence can be
reversed through poetry. I mean, the poet or any other effer can only
convert or translate those sublime experiences, she can't create them per
se. Sure, creative writers of all sorts bring things in to existence. No
controversy there. But she's is not creating the mystical experience by
depicting it after the fact. And secondly, this idea fails to make the
distinction between the ineffable Dynamic experience itself and the static
patterns later used as a reference to it. (Epistemological plutalism accepts
both kinds of experience as valid empirical evidence, but insists these are
two different categories of experience.) I guess that you'd reply by saying
that you reject the distinction or reject the categories, following Rorty,
because language is all we can know and anything beyond language is beyond
knowledge - or some such thing. But this brings me back to your neo-Kantian
attitude toward epistemology and metaphysics. As explained above, you seem
to be using "ineffable" as if it means "unknowable" when it really only
means "inexpressible" or, more accuarately in this context, "intellectually
unknowable but accessable by non-rational means". Rorty is pretty clearly
saying, "whatever can't be put into words doesn't exist." He wants to "run
away" from the sublime and does not "want to indulge in" it because, I
supppose, it can't be put into words. This seems to put theory over
experience. The experience doesn't fit into the theory and so it is
effectively ignored. This is bad metaphysics, mere metaphysics. As Wilber
puts it in his SEX, ECOLOGY, SPIRITUALITY...
"...even if empiricism is always and lamentably tending toward 'sensory
empiricism', many mystics speak of 'mystical empiricism', meaning DIRECT
MYSTICAL EXPERIENCE, using 'experience' in the wider and truer sense of
'immediate awareness' and not just 'immediate sensory awareness' (which is
why so many mystics insist on calling their endeavors experiential,
experimental, and scientific in that sense).
And here, too, mental experience can get into trouble, because it can use a
mental symbol, such as the MENTAL EXPERINCE of the word 'G-o-d,' to stand
for the SPIRITUAL EXPERIENCE of direct illumination (for example), and so
here again it is caught in 'mere abstractions': it is using mental
experience to try to cover experiences that AREN'T in themselves mental.
These 'representations' then become 'mere metaphysics' and since the time of
Kant, we all know that is a very bad idea: it won't hold water, which is to
say, it hasn't any experiential grounding; this type of 'mere metaphysics'
is simply EMPTY CATEGORIES devoid of true knowledge, which is to say devoid
of true experience.
However, since Kant doesn't acknowledge SPIRITUAL EXPERIENCE, he THEREFORE
thinks metaphysics per se is dead, which is the point at which Schopenhauer,
among others, leveled a devastinging criticism of Kant (and the point where
Katz's neo-kantian argument also collapses). Kant demonstrated that mental
symbols without experiential grounding are EMPTY: but the real conclusion of
his argument is that ALL FUTURE METAPHYSICS MUST BE EXPERIENTIAL - that is
to say; experimental, grounded in direct awareness and experience, coupled
with validity claims that can be redeemed in the experiment of
contemplation, and grounded in the three strands of knowledge
accumulation...
Virtually every thinker from Kant onward has announced the 'death of
metaphysics' and the 'death of philosophy' - from Nietzsche to Heidegger,
from Ayer to Wittgenstein, from Derrida to Foucault, from Adorno to Lyotard.
And in the sense of the 'death of empty categories,' I agree entirely. But
the real prolegomenon to any future metaphysics is, not that the endeavor is
altogether dead, but that the real metaphyics can now, finally, get under
way; actual comtemplative development is the future of metaphysics."
And I would add that a reality that exists indepentantly and is beyond our
experience is just about the emptiest category I can think of. Talking about
realities that nobody ever experienced is just a big waste of time. (Which
is what bugs me about theology) I agree with the Pirsigian notion that
ultimate reality is not a theory. Its known through experience, that its
knowable through non-rational means. And despite my constant insistance on
the distinction between intellectual experience and pre-intellectual
experience, despite my constant use of the word "ineffable", I talk about it
all the time. And in the Eastern traditions they do a damn good job of
effing it. The only real problem comes when these two categories of
experience confused, when one is taken for the other or when one is taken
over the other. That, my friend, is epistemological pluralism. Its says
there are different modes of experience and different categories of
knowledge. They are all considered valid so long sensory experience iand
mental experience are not mistaken for spirtual experience, etc.
Thanks.
dmb
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