[MD] "100% confident"

[David M]

Hi Ham

I'd suggest there is much about experience that is ineffable.

DM

----- Original Message ----- 
From: "ian glendinning" <psybertron at gmail.com>
To: <moq_discuss at moqtalk.org>
Sent: Friday, October 12, 2007 4:56 PM
Subject: Re: [MD] "100% confident"


> On to your actual point Ham ...
>
> In this concluding piece ...
>>
>> But I shall not pursue this line of criticism further, since it is 
>> obvious
>> that Pirsig's own pronouncement of his philosophy as "not just atheistic 
>> but
>> anti-theistic" has been taken to mean that there is no metaphysical 
>> reality,
>> and that whatever is "unknown" cannot be significant because it is
>> inexperiencable.  This of course limits the MoQ to experiential 
>> knowledge,
>> denying the ineffable, and reducing the Oneness of Eastern mysticism to 
>> an
>> amalgam of empirical patterns.  (And Marsha couldn't understand why I 
>> found
>> this philosophy nihilistic! )
>>
> I would take exception to all the "has been taken to mean", "cannot be
> signficant because", "limits" and "reduces" if we were continuing the
> debate, but since we're not ...
>
> I find this liberating rather than nihilistic. Free to turn away from
> obsession with the black hole at the core of a metaphysics, free to
> look out at value in the real world. (This is not a nihilistic denial
> of some reality existing at the centre - just the pragmatic conclusion
> that it's not the most important problem to address it.)
>
> Interestingly you bring in the "anti-theistic" angle. Dennett
> conlcudes his "Breaking the Spell" with the idea that proving the
> existence or nature of God (the first cause in the black hole at the
> centre of things) on way or another is ultimately uninteresting for
> the same reason. What is interesting is why people believe, and what
> they do with their beliefs.
>
> Ian
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