[MD] DMB and Me

[david buchanan]

Steve said this and lots of stuff like it:

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 notion of transcendence for the mystic is about getting in touch with something that has always been around,..


dmb says:

You know how I was trying to tell you that this is a misreading of the mystic's claims? Remember when I tried to explain that it's a mistake to read the claims of radical empiricism as if they were like the claims of traditional empiricism? It turns out that G. William Barnard makes the same argument in his book. 

"In this chapter, I also note that in the context of James's radical empiricism, even the very notion of a separate 'knower' and 'known' becomes problematic when viewed through the lens of James's theory of 'pure experience.' This theory postulates that everything that exists is inherently neither physical nor mental, but rather, is an expression of a more primal nonduality (pure experience) that forms the basis for traditional dualisms, such as subject/object or mental/physical. The notion of pure experience is significant to the study of mysticism not only because it overcomes the often negative assessment of mystical experience as a purely subjective event, but also because it overturns the philosophically problematic understanding of mystical experience as an interaction between two ontologically separate 'things': the mystic and what the mystic experiences. ....I seek to demonstrate that the truth-claims that James makes for the reality of these 'unseen worlds' are justified not by any alleged correspondence to some predetermined paradigmatic reality, but instead, by the positive transformative effects 'on the whole' and 'over the long run' which come about as a result of those mystical experiences."

Does this make sense to you, Steve?



 		 	   		  
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