[MD] Language Games (was Theatre and Definitions)

[Matt Kundert]

DMB,

Firstly, thank you for your carefully considered response.  I hope my 
response will be as equally careful and considered.

There actually isn't much to my response because I'm just not sure what's 
going on.  I think I just don't see what picture it is you're offering.  I'm 
confused by the the distinction between "how things really are" and "how 
things hang together" being okay, but irrelevant, that "Pirsig is rejecting 
Plato's move in order to restore DQ as Brahman, not just to reject anything 
like Platonic forms."  I can understand having different motivations, but a 
thorough rejection of Platonism would still look the same, wouldn't it?  
That, whatever the reconstruction plan afterwards, we still need to avoid 
the same things.

It is along those lines that my mind travels.  Western?  Surely.  Those are 
the only eyes I have.  We can't just trade our own for somebody else's 
without reasons (or causes), that would be irrational.  That's why I need to 
know what the intuition/postulation distinction is for, how it functions, 
where it comes from, that kind of thing.    Prima facie, it looks like a 
typical Western distinction.  But that's why I'm asking what its doing, to 
make sure it stays away from all the Western things that are bad.  If it is 
intended to replace Western purposes with Eastern ones (replacement being 
what's involved if the Eastern stuff you have in mind has nothing to do with 
Western stuff), the Western mind certainly will be confused because it 
doesn't have Eastern purposes.  The trouble is: what are these purposes and 
why should I have them?

Take another example of a prima facie red flag: Northrop says, "the mystical 
and the ineffable is not off in some far distant speculative heaven, but in 
immediately apprehended fact directly before our eyes."  Immediately 
apprehended fact?  My Western mind has been taught to treat such a thing as 
dirty, tainted with Platonism.  So what is it for?  What is the concept 
doing, what purpose is it serving that allows it to steer clear of the 
Western purposes that Plato gave us, and therefore steer clear of 
Platonism's taint?  (How about that for an image?)

The question is: can I steer completely free of Platonism and still not 
believe in Brahman?  If the answer is yes (which is what it sounds like 
currently, given the irrelevancy of the two), then I need to know why I need 
to believe in Brahman.

The thing I don't think you get to say, because to do so would be to steer 
towards Platonism, is that I have to believe in Brahman, I have to use a 
distinction between intuition/postulation, because to not do so would be to 
get something wrong about reality.  That they are facts that are being 
neglected by Westerners like myself.  People who've rejected Platonism 
wouldn't say something like that.  Whenever I have these types of 
conversations, I feel everybody veer towards that response, that I'm not 
adequately describing reality because I'm leaving something out.  I keep 
throwing up my hands and warning them away, and they say all my hand waving 
is for naught, but then they either leave me without Eastern purposes 
(giving me no reason to desire the picture they're offering) or they step in 
it, and say that I'm missing something, blind to something.  The only 
response I have to that is: 1) you can't say that I'm blind to reality 
without becoming a Platonist and 2) I am missing something, but it isn't 
reality, only Eastern purposes.

Why should I become a Buddhist?

Matt

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