[MD] Experience, essentialism, physicalism

[Matt Kundert]

DMB,

DMB said:
"Mystery and ineffability are just things we haven't figured out yet"? I 
think that's wrong. Ineffible doesn't mean undiscovered or not-yet-known. It 
means that its intellectually unknowable, beyond verbal definitions but it 
is something we can and do know through non-rational means.

Matt:
Right, that's what ineffable has meant in the philosophical tradition.  I've 
talked about this before with you.  What I can't figure out is how you 
_know_ that "it" is unknowable?  Simply throwing up your hands and declaring 
something unknowable is clearly a case of violating Peirce's "never block 
the road of inquiry," baptizing a problem instead of dealing with it, so 
there has to be a reason for doing so.  The only two basic responses I can 
think of are Plato's and Kant's ways.

Plato's way was to say that we just _know_ it, through non-rational means of 
(re)discovering the Form of the Sun.  (If I remember correctly, this fits in 
with your desire to reappropriate Plato for the mystics.)  It's basically 
like a punch in the face.  You can't deny it.  But neither can you 
rationally explain why it happened.  If you could, it wouldn't be 
non-rational anymore.  The trouble is, until you've been punched in the 
face, you have no reason to think being punched or ineffability is an 
occurence.

Kant's way was to say that we could rationally outline the area around the 
ineffable, thereby saying we could rationally explain ineffability.  The 
trouble here, I think, is that a) transcendental argumentation can be shown 
to fail and b) I don't think Kant and Plato's ways can be used together.  I 
think it's roughly the difference between picturing DQ as the paper and the 
circle drawn on the paper static (Pirsig's image) and picturing DQ to be 
what is inside the circle and static surrounding it (which would be Pirsig's 
critique of, ironically in this case, Plato for ecapsulating Quality).

So, Plato's angle has to be the better avenue, but I don't think we should 
use ineffability to describe it.  Subscribing to the eternally ineffable 
makes one a dogmatist.  Because if I ask, "Well, _what_ is ineffable?", one 
either has to describe the unknowable in terms of the knowable (thus 
refuting oneself) or simply reassert that "it" is unknowable, and so can't 
be described--thus making one a dogmatist (and blocking the road of 
inquiry).  Now, the funny thing that I see is that Pirsig isn't being a 
dogmatist.  But if he insists on holding that DQ is ineffable, what he is 
doing with DQ is encircling it in the manner of Kant (and the Plato he 
attacks in ZMM).  We all give descriptions of DQ, but they must encircle it 
if they don't get at it (because its ineffable).

I think the way out of it is to drop ineffability in favor of 
not-yet-knowable, as you said I was saying.  This plays well for the idea 
that static patterns keep growing, taking up more and more ground as DQ adds 
more and more to them, making advances and such, through history.  The 
circle keeps getting bigger and bigger on the page (and the page always gets 
bigger, too).  This way we don't get caught in such dead ends as 
ineffability and instead describe us as being able to know more and more 
because of DQ.

(This is obviously all of a piece with my describing knowledge and knowing 
as internal to static patterns.  These are just more reasons for my doing 
so.)

Matt

_________________________________________________________________
Is your PC infected? Get a FREE online computer virus scan from McAfee® 
Security. http://clinic.mcafee.com/clinic/ibuy/campaign.asp?cid=3963