[MD] Rorty and Mysticism

[Matt Kundert]

Hi Marsha,

Marsha said:
Did I make sense about the actual realization not being linguistic?

Matt:
I'm not sure I caught the effect of your distinction, "That moment is 
not linguistic, it's not visual, it is realization."  I take it you're 
suggesting that the experience you are trying to point at was neither 
the word "rabbit" to "old woman" (though that is also an experience) 
nor the visual appearance of a rabbit or old woman (though that is 
also an experience), but rather the experience of realization sans any 
particular filling in of the X of what that realization was about (i.e. "I 
had a realization about X").  You wish to isolate the "ah-ha moment" 
_as_ ah-ha moment (ah-ha qua ah-ha, as it were).

I think I see how you'd isolate them, and I have no objection to so 
doing, but I don't see the end-game, what larger point this says, for 
example, about the relationship between language and experience.  
We isolate the commonality, the ah-ha moment that Kuhn called a 
"paradigm shift," between the rabbit/lady picture, the 3-D box picture, 
the shift from geocentrism to heliocentrism (thanks to Copernicus), 
object-centrism to subject-centrism (thanks to Kant), and the shift 
from S/O-centrism to Q-centrism (thanks to Pirsig), and call all of 
those moments a single kind of experience, "realization."  That makes 
sense to me, but I'm yet unclear what you think it means, at least as 
relevant to any philosophical language/experience issue.

One interesting facet of your analogy is how the ah-ha moment is 
specifically a realization of the existence of an alternative perspective, 
which does _not_ carry inherently the suggestion that one perspective 
is better than another.  I think this is a correct appreciation of 
paradigm shifts.  The mere awareness of alternatives itself does 
nothing to suggest that what used to be the only option is now 
outmoded.  Seeing finally the old woman does not get rid of the 
rabbit's viability.  Being told that we might be in a solar system and 
not a geo-system doesn't itself commend heliocentrism.  The ah-ha is 
a necessary but not a sufficient condition for a full-blooded paradigm 
shift.

Matt


> Hi Matt,
> 
> I'm not trying to be cagey, but it is more that a language 
> experience.  The truest analogy I know is the one about looking 
> at the picture that contains the image of an old woman and a 
> rabbit exclusively.  You start by seeing one, but not the other,
> and it can be some time before you shift your awareness from 
> one to allow the other to reveal itself.  There's that moment of 
> ah-ha... That moment is not linguistic, it's not visual, it is 
> realization.  The difference I had  was not between old woman 
> and rabbit, but one of one reality-perspective to another 
> reality-perspective.  Or I might say in my case, a jump from 
> subject-object perspective to a NOT subject-object perspective - ah-ha...   
> It was only for a while, minutes, I think.   
> 
> So I've described it, I've used an analogy that I hope is familiar, 
> but it doesn't even come close to describing the burst of insight.   
>   
>  
> Did I make sense about the actual realization not being 
> linguistic?   
> 
> 
> Marsha