[MD] Experience, essentialism, physicalism

[david buchanan]

Matt and all MOQers:

Matt said to dmb:
Right, that's what ineffable has meant (intellectually unknowable, beyond 
verbal definitions) 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.

dmb says:
I've issued declarations and blocked the road of inquiry? So sorry. I'm just 
trying to explain what DQ means because I think you have the wrong idea 
about it. I mean, I don't KNOW its unknowable, just that terms like 
ineffable", pre-intellectual, pre-linguistic, pre-rational, direct, 
immediate, undifferentiated and even pure are all used to refer to a certain 
kind of experience. In this context, all those terms mean roughly the same 
thing. You'll notice that these terms do not define DQ, they only describe 
it in terms of what it is NOT. Now there is also the kind of DQ experience 
where you're fixing a motorcycle or astonished by something new. Ultimately 
and in everyday life, DQ and sq are not so clearly distinct, but for the 
purpose of clarity in a metaphysical system... Well, it is the first and 
probably the most important distinction in the MOQ.

Let me try another approach. The DQ/sq distinction is made clear by mystical 
experience insofar as it is so extremely Dynamic and distinctly different 
from ordinary experience. Plus I think that the desire to include the 
mystical experience is behind this distinction in the first place. You know 
the quote. The MOQ was made to overcome a blindspot in the West on this very 
point and so I think that your attempts to grapple with it by way of Plato 
and Kant is bound to confuse. As Ant suggested, Pirsig and Northrop are both 
doing an East meets West kind of thing. You may recall that passage where 
Pirsig replaces DQ for the Tao in a text and says it fits perfectly. But the 
West has its mystics too. You may also recall that Plotinus is very close 
too. This is where I come back to the idea that the ineffable is a certain 
kind of experience rather than an undiscovered territory or whatever. This 
is where I come back to the idea that the ineffable is known through 
non-rational means. Emphasis is Wilber's...

"Scholars usually take Plotinus's system to be primarily a form of 
philosophy of 'metaphysics': the various levels, particularly the higher 
ones, are imagined to be some sort of theoretical contructs that are 
deduced, logically or postulated, speculatively, to account for existence 
and manifestation. But in fact these systems are, through and through, from 
top to bottom, the results of actual comtemplative apprehensions and direct 
developmental phenomenolgy. The higher levels of these systems connot be 
experienced or deduced RATIONALLY, and nobody from Plotinus to Aurobindo 
thinks they can. However, AFTER THE FACT, of direct and repeated 
experiential disclosures, they can be rationally reconstructed and presented 
as a 'system'. But the 'system', so called, has been discovered, not 
deduced, and checked against direct experience in a community of the 
like-minded and like-spirited. (Its no accident that Inge refers to 
Plotinus's spiritality as being based on 'experimental verification'. - 
'faith begins as an experiement and ends as an experience.) Not a single 
component of these systems is hidden to experience or nestled safely away in 
a 'metaphysical' domain that cannot be checked cognitively with the 
appropriate tools...  In short, they follow all three strands of valid 
knowledge accumulation - and one can 'dismiss' these higher levels of 
development only on the same grounds that the Churchmen refused to look 
through Galileo's telescope; dogmatic stubbornness tells them that there's 
nothing to see."

Matt said:
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.

dmb says:
I don't think anyone is talking about rediscovering the From of the Sun or 
any such thing. But I have to say that I'm skeptical about your skepticism 
here. I mean, let's say I've never been punched and I've never punched 
anyone. Is that really a good reason to doubt the existence of punching? 
What if I've read punching reports from all over the world and watched the 
thrilla in Manila on TV? I don't mean to be snide, but I believe that people 
go skydiving even though I've never personally done it. How is a mystical 
experience so different? Granted, you can't see it on TV, but there is no 
shortage of literature. There are actual living practicioners who will tell 
you about it. If you wanna dispose of the notion that we can re-discover the 
Form of the Sun that's one thing, but what I don't understand is how 
experience counts as anything less than knowledge. Granted, we wouldn't call 
it static intellectual knowledge or otherwise subject it to a physics 
experiment, but it is known in experience...

"Some of the most honored philosophers in history have been mystics: 
Plotinus, Swedenborg, Loyola, Shankaracharya and many others. They share a 
common belief that the fundamental nature of reality is outside language; 
that language splits things up into parts while the true nature of reality 
is undivided. Zen, which is a mystic religion, argues that the illusion can 
be overcome by meditation."

Matt said:
...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.)

dmb says:
I deleted most of your Plato/Kant stuff. Sorry. I don't get what you're 
saying and it seems to be taking you down the wrong road. In any case, what 
I see you doing here is deleting DQ from the equation. You keep wanting to 
convert DQ into new sq otherwise make it go away. To make matters worse, you 
don't seem to understand what you're getting rid of. See, its not that I 
think your ideas about DQ are a little less than perfect or not quite right. 
I think you're completely disoriented. You need Buddha and Plotinus where 
you're using Kant and Rorty, etc.

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