[MD] Kant's Motorcycle

[david buchanan]

Case said to Laramie:
I have listened to several of Wilbur's books or lectures on tape. I think he 
is a wacko. Color coded stages of enlightenment, multidimentional maps of 
lines and levels... puuulezzzz.

dmb says:
Wacko? He is the most widely translated philosopher in the english language. 
One can get a Ph.D. from Ivy League schools on his work. There are hundreds 
in the U.S. and Canada already. I'm not saying he's above criticism or that 
his ideas are entirely mainstream but "wacko" is just not an accurate way to 
characterize his work. As far as such things can be "proven", his work is 
already shown itself to be academically viable. If it weren't for that fact 
I might agree with you. I mean, anybody who uses maps or charts has to be 
totally insane. You should check out Wilber's work on serial killers and 
their apparent fascination with colored pie charts, for example.

Case said:
I liked his borrowing of holons and enjoyed his review of Piaget but all 
this talk of higher levels of transcendental consciousness is just silly. We 
are not evolving TOWARD anything. We ARE consciousness. ...

dmb says:
Hmmm. If we are consciousness and we are evolving, then why should 
transcendental consciousness strike you as silly? I think you might be 
objecting to the mystical modes of consciousness, but as I read it he is 
only talking about the evolution or rather development of consciousness. 
He's only saying that there are stages of development so that we transcend 
old modes of consciousness. He's only saying that the transition from 
childhood to adulthood is one of many such transitions, if you're doing it 
right anyway. And I don't think he says we're evolving TOWARD anything in 
particular. Like Pirsig, he's only saying that evolution, in general, moves 
in a direction. There is no teleology per se, but a general movement toward 
betterness gives it a direction from within, so to speak. Anyway, I don't 
think its one bit silly.

Thanks,
dmb

P.S. I read the post in which you confess your fondness for Kantian TITs. 
Just wanted to say that I appreciate your points. They were firm and well 
supported. But the idea of TITs asks us to suppose a gap, a cleavage if you 
will, between the TITs and ourselves. You see, TITs are extremely comforting 
when viewed from inside a SOM framework where they save us from solipsism. 
But this only sets up a situation where we end up having to settle for fake 
TITs and are forever cut off from the real thing, from the very TITs we 
found so warm and soft and comforting in the first place. Radical Empiricism 
says there is no cleavage, there is no gap between us and TITS. There are no 
TITs behind experience. Things are secondary, they are derived from 
experience. TITs don't cause experience, experience causes them, so to 
speak. TITs, by definition, are always outside of your experience. That is 
just way too sad to bare. TiTs are lovely. Men have held them as truth for 
hundreds of years. And nobody ever said Kant was a fool for holding his 
position on TITs. But Pirsig is saying that reality is entirely pervious, 
much more pervious than TITs and the cleavage that goes with them. But 
still, you had a couple of really nice points there.

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