From: David Buchanan (DBuchanan@ClassicalRadio.org)
Date: Sun Mar 30 2003 - 20:22:08 BST
Matt and all MOQers:
Matt said:
Granted that not all mysticisms are the same. The main point I want to
make about mysticism is that if it has a concept of "maya," a notion that
if we move past the illusion of our senses or concepts or language or
whatever, that we will then see Reality as it truly wants to be seen, then
I would interpret it as having an appearance/reality distinction. For any
particular version of mysticism (or religion or philosophy, for that
matter), they may not fall in with this distinction, but that's a
scholastic issue as opposed to the metaphilosophical point I just made.
DMB says:
You're hunting in the wrong ocean, Ahab. Your great white whale, the
appearence/reality distinction, swims in the sea of epistemology.
Metaphilosophically or otherwise, mysticism is not the same as epistemology.
Recalling chapter 9 of Lila, we know that Pirsig's expanded empiricism stops
short of making any claims about what it "really" is that holds that glass
of water together, he just says the patterns are static enough that we can
trust it to keep our laps dry. If that's not pragmatic, nothing is. More
importantly, Pirsig's epistemology is not haunted by the appearence/reality
distinction, and that's where it really counts.
Matt said:
Now, as for a "conflation of appearance/reality and mysticism in Pirsig," I
don't want to say that Pirsig conflates them. I would more say that Pirsig
characterizes the mysticisms he's talking about _because_ of the
appearance/reality distinction I see him using. This is a scholastic
question, but I've thought of the easiest way to catch him doing
it. Pirsig describes Dynamic Quality as the "pre-intellectual cutting edge
of reality" and as unmediated experience. The notion of us stripping away
our language and concepts to get at _real_ experience dips into the
appearance/reality distinction.
DMB says:
You're demonstrating a misunderstanding of mysticism here. You've
misconstrued it as epistemology so that "unmediated experience" becomes the
real reality or foundation. But that's not what's going on at all in these
descriptions. Pirsig is only making a distinction about two kinds of
experience, mediated and unmediated, static and Dynamic. Pirsig's expanded
empiricism says both kinds of experience are valid and verifiable. The
distinction between these two kinds of experience does not does not "dip
into the appearance/reality distinction" because experiences ARE appearences
and in the MOQ that IS reality. Distinct? Heck, in the MOQ appearance and
reality are indentical. Experience is all you get.
Matt continued: ... Pirsig says in Ch 9, "The purpose of
mystic meditation is not to remove oneself from experience but to bring
one's self closer to it by eliminating stale, confusing, static,
intellectual attachments of the past." The problem with this statement
from my standpoint is that we are always in connection with experience, we
can never remove ourselves from it. Pirsig's statement makes no sense when
you compare it to his statements that we are everywhere in touch with
Quality. You can't really have it both ways.
DMB says:
It makes sense when you see that he's talking about the static/Dynamic
split. Yes, we are everywhere in touch with Quality, but there are two
different kinds. Re-reading your favorite book is different than tripping
your face off in a teepee. He's just saying that letting go of the static
opens up the Dynamic. We do have it both ways all the time. A hurricane, a
vacation, a sail boat, a cretive impulse, a new song, a mystical experience.
Most of us know this kind of experience first hand, its just that Pirsig is
saying it ought not be dismissed as an aberation, fantasy or hallucination.
He's saying emptiness is huge.
Matt said:
With the picture of Dynamic Quality as unmediated experience, we can read
another piece of evidence as not just an over-embellishment. In Ch 8
(beginning), Pirsig uses the glasses analogy. He says, "The culture in
which we live hands us a set of intellectual glasses to interpret
experience with...." This is great. However, historicists say that its
intellectual glasses all the way down. Pirsig however says, "If someone
sees things through a somewhat different set of glasses or, God help him,
_takes his glasses off_, [my emphasis] the natural tendency of those who
still have their glasses on is to regard his statements as somewhat weird,
if not actually crazy." It might be easy to try and gloss this as Pirsig
simply going a little too far over the top and that we shouldn't take him
so literally. However, in light of "DQ as unmediated experience" and his
later discussion of insanity, it seems to me clear that Pirsig does think
we can get behind our language, our concepts, our appearances.
DMB says:
I've already commented on the issues of mediated and unmediated experiences,
and on the difference between mysticism and empiricism, but let's take a
look at the "interpretive glasses" that Pirsig is talking about. I think
they have very little to do with the appearance/reality distinction. I don't
even think that Pirsig is doing epistemology with these glasses. No, Ahab, I
think he's talking about cultural relativity, a topic near and dear to the
postmodern heart. He's acknowledging the important postmodern insight that
our values and beliefs are determined by a particular cultural context.
Unlike the extreme pomos, however, he does not take that to mean that values
and beliefs are arbitrary or meaningless. In fact, the MOQ says that our
social and intellectual constructs have a structure, serve a purpose, are
just as real as rocks and trees, and that the failure to recognize this is a
disaster with real consequences. I think the nihilistic kind of
postmodernism you seem to be asserting is actually the kind of thing the MOQ
is supposed to cure. It represents the kind of moral relativity that makes
the Rigels so angry, but Pirsig explains why Rigel is wrong to think he was
one of them, remember?
Thanks for your time.
MOQ.ORG - http://www.moq.org
Mail Archives:
Aug '98 - Oct '02 - http://alt.venus.co.uk/hypermail/moq_discuss/
Nov '02 Onward - http://www.venus.co.uk/hypermail/moq_discuss/summary.html
MD Queries - horse@darkstar.uk.net
To unsubscribe from moq_discuss follow the instructions at:
http://www.moq.org/md/subscribe.html
This archive was generated by hypermail 2.1.5 : Sun Mar 30 2003 - 20:24:11 BST