From: david buchanan (dmbuchanan@hotmail.com)
Date: Sun Nov 20 2005 - 17:38:56 GMT
Matt and all:
This is the second half...
Matt said:
This is a conversational problem. It either ends with the mystical
dogmatist shrugging his shoulders, smiling, and saying, "Well, you'll know
it when you see it," at which point there's nothing else to say because the
conversant is hopeless or with the pragmatist shaking his head and saying,
"Well, maybe we should just try not to talk about that stuff, or really, in
that way. Afterall, talk won't help. Maybe we should just concentrate on
the linguistic pile when it comes to conversation." This has the effect of
changing the subject. But why should this be a problem for a mystic?
Afterall, what's the point of talking about something that is inexpressible?
Whatever "knowing directly" is, it can't be shared with other people. The
pragmatist reaction is just that maybe we should fix up the rules of the
conversation so that we don't get stuck in those kinds of cul-de-sacs.
dmb says:
Yes, this has the effect of changing the subject, which is rather large
conversational problem in its own right. See, you wish to avoid it, you
insist that talk won't help, you describe it in terms of witch doctors with
their colored demons or in terms of the neurological activity that seems to
be ASSOCIATED with it. You actually seem kind of desperate about trying to
explain it all away. Your man Rorty is on record saying that the sublime
isn't real, that nothing beyond language really exists. And yet you still
want to insist that your brand of pragmatism DOESN"T exclude this category
of experiences?
Of course it does. Obviously it does. In effect, you want to fix up the
rules so that it's excluded from the conversation. By contrast, Pirsig
rejects the correspondence theory of truth because he wants to expand
rationality so that mysticism is NOT excluded from the conversation. See,
you don't just have an alternative interpretation or variation of the MOQ,
your project is directly at odds with the MOQ in a very big way here. Again,
you've UNsolved the problem. From this perspective, your brand of pragmatism
is not an improvement over SOM at all. In terms of Pirsig's aim to include
this category of experience within his metaphysical system, your brand
pragmatism is just as bad as SOM. They both exclude it.
If your aim is to exclude "mere" metaphysics from the conversation, which is
to exclude assertions about realities that are beyond experience and for
which there is no evidence, then I'm with you. And like you, I'd be
unimpressed with any assertion based on nothing more than a shrugging
"you'll know it when you see it" attitude. But I don't think you have to be
enlightened to understand what I'm saying. This is just metaphysics, not God
talking. Its enough to accept the reports and explanations of those who have
experience in this area, just like anything else. Even if the descriptions
in Pirsig's books were the only thing you ever read or heard about
mysticism, it should be enough to at least get started on the topic. If you
didn't insist on changing the subject to the Rortain critique, and otherwise
excluding from the conversation, we'd likely be well into the substance of
the matter by now, but NooooooOOOOOOOOOOOOoooooooo.
Matt said:
I'm skipping over the Platonic nonsense of "Heaven is this world, rightly
seen" (afterall, isn't "rightly seen" the wrong phrasing for someone who
can't imagine anyone thinking absolute certainty is even possible? Only if
you could cash in on if it was "right" or not would you use the phrase, and
the only way to cash in is if you had criteria to determine rightness, but
we don't have any criteria because such criteria was the pipe dream you
boggled at anybody in their right mind dreaming of) to focus on your quick
about-face on the everydayness of DQ.
dmb says:
I'm skipping over this fictional about-face to focus on your inapporiate
application of the Rortian critique to that little saying about Heaven.
(Interesting that you would have philosophical objections to "rightly seen"
rather than "Heaven".) Such a statement is not supposed to be treated as an
intellectual claim and we're miles away from any talk about the critera for
absolute certainty. Can we please just agree that nobody here is shooting
for absolute certainty about anything and just move on the conversation.
Dude, you're arguing with a bunch of dead religious fanatics who aren't here
and its just not relevant. I don't have to tell you that the MOQ's idea of
truth is lightyears away from any such grandiose notion and the critera for
intellectual truth is simple.
Matt focused:
...If I'm reading you right, you're saying that there are two kinds of DQ,
the everyday ordinariness and the mystic's inexpressible "rare moment." But
that means to me that you are still writing with the pathos of distance in
mind. I don't think that's good.
dmb replies:
Wrong on both counts. I'm not saying there are two kinds of DQ and I'm not
writing with the pathos of distance in mind. The only distances involved in
what I'm saying between one level of experience and another. And DQ is not
two kinds, special and ordinary or whatever, it is a CATEGORY of
experiences. It includes a whole range of experiences. The infant who has
not yet learned to interperpet experience in terms of the culture's static
patterns, the spontaneous inspiration that comes from art or nature, the
artist or craftsman who achieves a state of mind in his work, and the
enlightenment experience itself can all be put into this category. There is
a difference between the infant and the enlightened one because the infant
didn't have any static to overcome. The craftsmen and artists know how to
ride this experience better than the one's who are just lucky enough to be
inspired. And why shouldn't this category of experience be found everywhere
both sacred and profane? The idea is that Quality generates everything we
know, that its the primary empirical reality. Its the first thing we know
and everything follows from that.
Matt said:
Vocabularies don't rise and fall because they are adequate or inadequate to
experience or reality. They rise and fall because they are either useful or
not for our purposes.
dmb says:
Dude, we're talking about a metaphysical system. The whole point is the have
an adequate explanation or description of reality. Again, not adequate in
the sense of corresponding to objective reality but adequate in the sense of
able to do the job. In the case of this sort of intellectual truth, the
purpose is to come up with useful explanations of our experience, which is
the only reality we get.
Matt misleadingly said:
So again, is there lost wisdom in the ancients? Yeah. Would we be better
if we regained it? Likely. But are we going to capture that wisdom by
turning back the clock to ancient times? No. We're going to use their
wisdom for us, for our times.
dmb says:
Who said anything about turning back the clock or undoing the progess of the
West? Now you're just making shit up. Of course this recovery project is
"for our times".
DMB had said:
>It seems to me that interpreting the MOQ through this Rortian filter is
>quite unworkable and it would be much better and easier to simply admit
>that
>the MOQ is not for you.
>Matt replied:
>Actually, I think it much easier to say that _your_ philosophy isn't for
>me,
>and vice versa. I think Pirsig is great. When interpreting Pirsig, it is
>only when those interpretations butt heads does there become a problem with
>Pirsig, either with my version or with yours. It is when we interpret
>Pirsig that we try and establish what is "really central" from what isn't.
>Pirsig's fine, Pirsig's just the source material.
dmb says:
Naturally, I disagree. I don't think the lack of objective critera for truth
should lead us to conclude that its all just a matter of differing
conclusions. I think you've misinterpreted the MOQ and taken a few shared
insights to extremes. You've taken the idea that we are suspended in
language to mean that language is the only reality. I think that is quite
obviously incorrect as well as out of sync with the MOQ. You've taken the
rejection of correspondance theory of truth as a rejection of truth, period.
You've taken the rejection of the metaphysics of substance as a rejection
metaphysics, period. The only things that your pragmatism has in common with
the MOQ, those are wildly exaggerated in your version and those thin
connections are more easily found elsewhere.
Finally, Matt asked:
And how is my version unworkable? You _certainly_ haven't shown that. The
only thing you might have shown, with my help, is that our versions are
unworkable together.
dmb says:
Obviously, all I have is my interpretation, my point of view, But I do have
lots of textual support for my view while yours seems to be based on
sniffing out vague sentiments and leanings. its all between the lines and
the "sometimes-he-sounds-like" sort of hunches. Dude, that's so weak.
Basically, I think my postion is defensible and your is not. I thin that,
mostly, I get what the guy is saying and mostly you don't. Sorry. I know the
great philosophologist will take it as slander, but I think you've got too
many isms in your eyes to see what I saying, to see what Pirisig is saying.
I don't think you've ever really made a case so much as consistantly avoided
the issues by always changing the subject. I'd be happy to try to show how
your version is unworkable, but it basically comes down to that same old
complaint, that you want to take the Quality out of the MOQ and that this is
a total disaster as far the the MOQ goes. Like I said, I think your project
is totally at odds with Pirsig's aims. That you think this mysticism stuff
is NOT central to the MOQ, I think, demonstrates some major league
misconceptions about what Pirsig is up to.
Thanks.
dmb
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