[MD] Rorty and Mysticism

[Matt Kundert]

Hi John,

John said:
I wonder if you could tell me the cash value of pre-conceptual 
experience?

Matt:
If you've been reading my replies to Dave, you'll see that I don't advise 
buying a lot of stock in that particular concept, so it is difficult for me 
to say what the cash value is because it is lower for me than others, 
which means when I try to explain why others find more value in it, it 
usually comes out in such invidious-sounding terms as Nietzsche's 
"metaphysical comfort."  But whatever it is, no, it's not usually faith.

As I see it, the attempt to recoup "pre-conceptual experience" rests 
on 1) a philosophy of language that rests on Kant and 2) a love of 
silence.  The former, I've been led to think by Rorty, Davidson and 
Robert Brandom, won't work.  It's a bad philosophy of language.  
The latter, on the other hand, is just a reference to sitting and 
watching sunsets, enjoying walks in the wilderness, etc.  There's no 
inherent problem with this at all, though it too has a contentious 
rhetorical tradition that we are becoming more and more conscious 
of in, for example, literary studies with current interest in ecology.  
Ecology has a rhetoric, and an occasionally nasty one that the great 
American progressive historian Frederick Jackson Turner first, ahem, 
pioneered in The Frontier in American History.  (And if you wonder 
why I say "nasty," ask an American Indian what "manifest destiny" is.)

John said:
It seems to me, that if something is pre-conceptual, then we can't 
concieve it, think about it, talk about it, poeticize it or contemplate it 
in any way.  Pragmatically speaking, it doesn't even exist.

Matt:
That's kind of right.  What one wants to say, on the other hand, is 
that you can still _experience_ it (which is oddly against Kant).  If 
you have no concepts, no language, you can still stub your toe.  The 
empiricist in people cries out for us to acknowledge the existence of 
the non-conceptual--stuff that isn't an idea.  We might only be able 
to do this by pointing with an idea, but how is this any different than 
the old mystic trope of pointing at the moon.  The big deal, as I see 
it however, is all in the prefix: how do we choose between "pre-" 
and "non-"?  I have no problems with "non-", but I struggle to see 
what benefit we get in distinguishing between "non-" and "pre-", 
and stressing the importance of "pre-".

For a kind of dialectical tour around the notion of Dynamic Quality 
and this issue, one that arose if I remember correctly in dialogue 
with Marsha (and so might be convenient in response to her catcall), 
you might check out this post: 
http://pirsigaffliction.blogspot.com/2006/04/dynamic-quality-as-pre-intellectual.html

For Marsha encapsulates quite well the purity-response I don't 
understand and the reality-response I think unavailable to 
pragmatists and Pirsigians (and I would think self-described relativists, 
too).  In answer to your question above, she said, "Why don't you find 
out for yourself?  Being a skeptic, I think that might be the only way 
you might appreciate its value, especially when words are so much 
less than the experience and you are prone to needing proof."  The 
rhetorical question is an echo of Bo Skutvik's much acclaimed and 
applauded response to Struan Hellier in Lila's Child: go find out more 
about reality.  It has been applauded over the years because of the 
sense most have of what DQ is, but I think that response should be 
unavailable to a properly Pirsigian believer in the relativity of static 
patterns.  And the sentiment that "words are so much less than the 
experience" exemplifies the grading we find in purity-responses (in 
this case, more a plenitude-response).  My reaction now is still the 
same as in the post on my site: the sense that words "lose 
something" when describing an experience is a function of the 
difficulty of articulation, of expressing.  If you have a high level of 
articulation or a low threshold for success, you might think nothing is 
lost between your experience and your words about the experience.  
But that relativity in levels on those two different valences obscures 
completely our ability to be able to tell if something, _in reality_, is 
lost or not.  If all we have is experience, and _not_ an invidious 
distinction between reality and experience, then it's tough to attain 
the authority to tell someone that they may _think_ they've captured 
their experience perfectly, but they are _actually_ wrong.  You might 
convince them otherwise, but that takes words.

Matt