[MD] DMB and Me

[John Carl]

Hi Steve,

I don't have much directly to say about absolutes, but I can try to
> explain my understanding of Pirsig and pragmatism with regard to
> mysticism and transcendence.
>
>

I was doing some research yesterday and came across a passage by James that
pointed out that Pragmatism isn't really a philosophical endeavor.
 Pragmatism is a method of approaching philosophical endeavor.  I thought
that was interesting and rang of truth.  But I'm not sure how to apply it's
understanding to our discussion.  But I like it.



> Both the pragmatist and the mystic urge us to drop the project of
> nailing down the fundamental nature of reality with words. Nailing
> down fundamental natures of things is a linguistic practice, so the
> mystic's claim that the fundamental nature of reality is outside of
> language it to say that such a "nailing down" can't be done.
>
>

For some people, language is a "nailing down" and encapsulation.  For
others, it's a process of freedom, opening up.  It's like saying we
shouldn't fly because we can't escape earth's gravity forever.

No, we can't.  But we can climb higher and enjoy broader views than if we
left language alone.



> The mystic maintains the Platonist notion that reality has a
> fundamental nature, but asserts that that fundamental nature cannot be
> accessed with words. Thoughts are veiwed as an impediment to getting
> in touch with this fundamental nature called God, the Tao, the ground
> of being, etc. Thoughts, they say, stand between us and reality as it
> really is. That is why they say that to get in touch with reality, we
> need to stop thinking. This is the anti-intellectual bit in Pirsig's
> philosophy that I wish weren't there--as if we would all be better off
> if we just stopped thinking. As if language can take us further from
> or closer to reality.
>


There is that claim, but I don't think the point being made is that we
should therefore stop, I think the point being made is regarding
over-attachment to our verbal formulations - getting us out of our
stucknessess.

That's how I took it anyway.  I mean, obviously if the guy was denigrating
language he was doing it somewhat ironically with all those words, words,
words!


>
> The pragmatist addresses the same issue (the failure of language to
> hand us the fundamental nature of reality) by avoiding ontology. The
> pragmatist suggests we should stop viewing reality as the sort of
> thing that has a "fundamental nature," and she (he, really since I'm
> always talking about Rorty's view of pragmatism) urges us to stop
> viewing language as something that tries to nail down other things.
> For the pragmatist, language doesn't fail to adequately represent
> reality because it doesn't represent at all. (It does in the common
> sense way, but not in the metaphysical or Platonist way.)
>
>
If formulation of a fundamental nature of reality helps me to navigate
better the mysterious seas of my existence, even if it's ultimately invalid,
pretending it is valid helps me do a better job in the long run and thus, is
pragmatically valid!

While assuming I can't ever do it, and thus shouldn't even attempt the
degenerate activity, keeps my boat safely in harbor.

But that's not what boats are for.



> Language is one human practice among many pursued for various purposes
> such as helping us get what we want and predicting what other humans
> will do.. Pragmatists drop the notion of language as the attempt to
> adequately represent reality in favor of a notion of language as a way
> of using reality for various purposes. "Representing reality" in the
> metaphysical sense is just one of these purposes that humans first
> started having only very recently in the history of language use, so
> even if language actually does have a "fundamental nature,"
> "representing reality" is certainly it.
>
> The failure of language to nail down the fundamental nature of reality
> then amounts to nothing more than the problem of using the wrong tool
> for the wrong job. Once you have dropped the metaphysical
> appearance-reality dualism, the mystic's claim that the fundamental
> nature of reality is outside of language is no more deep than saying a
> hammer isn't very helpful for turning screws or saying that the screw
> in question is one that need not be turned.
>
>
In his four conceptions of being, Royce, like Pirsig, is beguiled by
mysticism but ultimately rejects it.  Some people want to sail the seven
seas, regardless of the consequences.





> Language can't separate us from reality. Language is a part of
> reality. Coming up with new words and new descriptions of reality is
> to add something new to reality rather than to encapsulate a
> preexisting static world. The pragmatist agrees with the mystic in
> that reality can't be nailed down with words because words can never
> exhaust reality. We can come up with an unlimited number of
> descriptions of reality, but no particular description or set of
> descriptions will ever offer us a substitute for reality and hand us
> reality's "fundamental nature."
>
>
So the main point is we have a goal, but not a stopping place.

I agree completely.




> The difference between the pragmatist and the mystic here is that
> transcendence for the mystic is getting past language to reality as it
> really is while the pragmatist doesn't see why we need to think of
> ourselves as out of touch with reality to begin with. How could humans
> invent a tool that could take them outside of reality? What are we if
> not a part of reality?
>
>
I definitely lean toward the Pragmatic side of the debate.  For another
thing, what if my verbal encapsulation comes real close?  What if I get
lucky and nail it exactly on the head?  Since nobody else can disprove my
encapsulation by trotting out "real" reality then it's truer to my mind to
say we can't really know, rather than we can't really get there.

Maybe we were even all there as infants, but then lost our way as adults and
since we've been there before, there's SOME hope of return, neh?



> While language itself is not something seen as the sort of thing that
> can be transcended or something needing to be transcended,
> transcendence for a pragmatist lies in unleashing the creative
> possibilities for the use of language. Language as a whole is not a
> pragmatist's target for transcendence as it is for the mystic.
>

Yup.  I definitely prefer Pragmatism to Mysticism.


>
> To use some of Rorty's turns of phrase, while Platonist philospher may
> see transcendence as concerned with "perceiving an order that brings
> together all possible worlds," the pragmatist may be more likely to
> relish in diversity and see language use as "commanding new worlds
> into being." While the notion of transcendence for the mystic is about
> getting in touch with something that has always been around, the
> pragmatist who has replaced certainty with hope, sees language as a
> way for us to bring something new and awe-inspiring into the universe.
>
> As my favorite amature philosopher, Matt Kundert, explained to me, "to
> transcend one bit of language would simply mean to call another bit of
> language into existence that can encapsulate the old and extend into
> something new." As an example he points out that Einstein's notion of
> curved space-time can hold Newton's gravity, space, and time in its
> grasp, and also give us more.
>
>
As one of my many favorite amateur philosophers reinforces the point:

Quality is undefined because it is inexhaustably

describable.




> I have a feeling that this is not the sort of transcendence that you
> were interested in when you asked the question. Your idea of
> transcendence seems much more concerned with the rreligious impulse of
> orienting yourself at the deepest level toward something pre-existing
> yet personally transformative.



Well no.  You are warmer with "the sort of transcendance" that you already
described.

My stance  is that viewing a personal relationship with the cosmos through a
conceptualized "God" is also an intellectual tool of utility with many
differing uses - easing the fear of death for instance.  Encouraging
reasonable rules of morality upon a society for another.  One of the most
important, to my mind, is the use of such ideas in helping children develop
into free and autonamously moral beings.

In other words, it's one concept of reality that has many useful functions,
as demonstrated by human development throughout history and we shouldn't
discard it just because so many priests and authorities have misused the
concept to control and manipulate.






> As William James described the
> religious impulse in The Varieties of Religious Experience, "it
> consists of the belief that there is an unseen order, and that our
> supreme good lies in harmoniously adjusting ourselves thereto." Since
> you've supported theism in your recent posts, you may be quite
> disposed toward the notion of an unseen order with which we would do
> well to get in touch. Obviosly there is MOQ support for such an order
> if you try to read it as traditional metaphysics.
>


I believe the best metaphysical stance puts Quality as Primary - that is,
the conceptions of God are to be weighed as "good" or not depending upon
their relations to Quality, and that such should be intellectually weighed
and analyzed rather than tossed out like dirty bathwater because of bad
experiences and prejudice.

Plus, I have a lot of experience in that odd little collection of writings
known as "THE bible" and have found much of value in it's mythopoetic
stories of DQ breaking free from sq, over and over.


>
> Transcendence for the pragmatists is not seen as a matter of getting
> in touch with the Truth or an unseen order, but as making fruitful use
> of our imaginative power--the power that human beings have to
> transform our future into something richer than our past. The power
> that Jesus and the other religious prophets wielded was the ability to
> use metaphor to redescribe the familiar in unfamiliar terms to open
> hearts to the possibility of new conceptions of community. This power
> seems to me to be the similar to the power of such scientific prophets
> as Newton and Einstein to imagine new and transformative pictures of
> the physical universe.
>
>
Good.  I like this.  These new conceptions of community were highly needed
and relevant in the face of the new powers of civilization introduced by the
Roman dominance of the world.


> Scientific, moral, and artistic uses of imagination all can enable us
> to transcendently understand ourselves in new ways. They can remake us
> into something new. The MOQ is also itself such a use of human
> imagination that enables us to see ourselves in new previously
> unimagined ways and invites us to become something new.
>
>
AMEN brother.  Preach it!


> It would help if you explained what you mean by an absolute. An
> absolute in the above seems to me a teleology for what that something
> new must be to qualify as transcendence. Such a notion is tied up in
> the philosphical urge to try to, as Rorty put it, "lend our past
> practices the prestige of the eternal." It is the sort of notion that
> has the danger of putting undue limits on our imagination of
> possibilities for the future. It sounds like looking toward a power
> not ourselves to do what we ourselves ought to be doing.
>
>

Quality is Absolute.  This would have been realized much sooner if "certain
people" (yeah, I'm talking to YOU Bob) wouldn't have confused things so much
with all that "connotation talk.

:-)


Thanks Steve, and your amateur philosopher buddy Matt, for some excellent
dialogue.

John



> Best,
> Steve
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