From: Matt the Enraged Endorphin (mpkundert@students.wisc.edu)
Date: Sun Mar 23 2003 - 22:14:16 GMT
DMB,
DMB said:
His empiricism is expanded to include more kinds
of experience, but stops shorts and makes no claims about what is beyond our
perceptions. The percieved values are all we get in the MOQ. on the ohter,
spiritual hand, in a mystical experience, when our illusions are shattered,
dualities of all sorts disappear. At-one-ment. One with the universe. etc.
Its all about a Unity, a dissolution of the distinction between self and
reality. Either way you cut it, philosophically or spiritually, the MOQ
transcends the appearance/reality distinction.
Matt:
Yeah, see, when you say, "our illusions are shattered," the only sense I
can make of illusions is if there exists a reality behind the appearance of
illusions. That's why I think Pirsig's riding a fence.
DMB said:
Like postmodernism, it
dispells foundational assumptions, but it doesn't get all mired in
unverifiablity, relativity, free-floating contingency or the other kinds of
amoral nihilisms that postmodernists suffers from. Unlike the MOQ, "they
regard fields such as art, morality, relgion and metaphysics as
unverifiable".
Matt:
Oh, god, don't ascribe a belief like "they regard fields such as art,
morality, religion and metaphysics as unverifiable" to
post-moderns. Pirsig was talking about logical positivists and I don't
think you can make that stick to post-moderns. We think art and morality
and religion and metaphysics are all verifiable (as in people do art, have
morals, practice religion, and construct metaphysics), we just don't think
we need metaphysics. Post-moderns love imagination, authority, and
tradition. Most post-moderns love purely theoretical reasoning, too. The
pragmatic kind of post-modern, however, would stop short of purely
theoretical reasoning mainly because they haven't seen the pragmatic gains
to our actions that theoreticians have historically promised. But that
isn't to count out theory. It has its time and place, and that is in the
private sphere. As a private project, theory can be great.
I think the point about unverifiability is that the logical positivists
didn't think our actions should be guided by things that were private
affairs. Mystical visions, for instance, are private because it is very
difficult to reproduce them for other people, and even if they did see the
vision, it may be difficult to convince people that it was really a vision
and something else (psychosis, drugs, etc.). Post-moderns, however, don't
necessarily see a problem with having our actions guided by things that are
considered private affairs.
Matt
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