[MD] Rorty and Mysticism

[Matt Kundert]

Hi Marsha,

Matt said:
You wish to isolate the "ah-ha moment" _as_ ah-ha moment (ah-ha 
qua ah-ha, as it were).

Marsha said:
It will be a false isolation, but yes, I am addressing what I see as an 
experience of realization. (Btw, that isolating to theorize is an 
example of reification and typical of intellectualizing, imho.)

Matt:
I like that qualification, and it adds important implications to the 
understanding we think we get from addressing an experience "in 
isolation" (since all isolating maneuvers are abstractions by their very 
definition).  But I'm not sure I have a sufficient or systematic 
understanding of what all of those implications are.

Marsha said:
But I am not talking about what Kuhn said, or Kant said, or even what 
Pirsig said, I am trying to express what is directly experienced, directly 
discovered, directly known.

Matt:
I think this is a reflex reaction on your part to my involuntary, reflexive 
thinker-mapping (or "philosophology" as some still derogatorily put it).  
Because if what you express about what you experience directly is to 
have any relevance to what anyone else experiences directly, then it 
would be in relationship to how they express what they experience 
directly.  Right?

Marsha said:
If philosophical intellectualizing is the point, than direct experience 
may not be very meaningful, but if the point of philosophy is to add 
appreciation to the living experience than knowing for oneself 
through direct experience becomes more meaningful.  -  If you are a 
literary man than the two may not be so easily separated, but the 
distinction may still be important if your intent is to gift potential 
experience to your reader.

Matt:
Well, I prefer "literary person," but aside from that I'm not sure how 
to understand the notion of "direct experience" as you use it here.  
Something that becomes blurry for a literary person, which I take it 
is someone who enjoys reading over sunsets (though there is nothing 
better than reading in front of sunset).  However, I'm also not sure 
how to take the distinction between "philosophical intellectualizing" as 
the point of philosophy vs. "adding appreciation to the living 
experience" as the point.  Put the way you did, I'm not sure there _is_ 
a point to "philosophical intellectualizing" if it doesn't add to our living 
experience (with the important caveat that the import of such isolated 
intellectualizing is sometimes dormant and obscure for generations).

Marsha said:
What do we know, and how do we know it?  Those are questions I 
seem to have been born asking?   But I don't want to be told, I want 
to discover.

Matt:
All philosophers are born wondering such things, but I'm also not sure 
I've ever encountered one who wanted to be told.

Marsha said:
I would say my direct experience was more a discovering first-hand 
what was false.  It is one thing to have a rational understanding that 
my notions of my self and objects has been a misconception.  It is 
quite another to experience the falsity of such a notion directly.  I 
have read the only way to approach Ultimate Truth (Quality) is though 
discovering what is false. And this has proven to me to be moving in 
the right direction.

Matt:
I guess I'm not sure what you mean by "experiencing the falsity of 
such a notion directly."  I guess a lot rides on what counts as a 
"direct experience" and what counts as a "first-hand discovery."  
Because, as I understand the practice of a reflective individual, the 
experience of falsity and truth is always direct, a matter of 
self-discovery as one hears about ideas and test drives them in their 
own experience.  That's the default position of life for James.  I've 
discovered all kinds of truths in the last three months, though many 
of them were from reading books, and the test driving occurred on 
paper and in my mind as I moved ideas from one mental context to 
another.  Does this kind of activity not count?

Marsha said:
What do you think is required to make a full-blooded paradigm shift?

Matt:
Ah, that was probably misleading, or not carefully thought out.  What 
I had in mind is the fact that, though we may suddenly change our 
minds radically by force of single experiences, those shifts may not 
be justifiable at the time.  So, I guess the blood I'm talking about is 
the blood of static patterns that come in the wake of the initial 
perspective shift.  The blood might not come--nothing guarantees 
ahead of time that a perspective shift is Dynamic Quality or degenerate 
(what I've called Pirsig's "indeterminacy of DQ thesis").  A good 
example is Copernicus: the state of the discipline of astronomy at the 
time made the initial thought of heliocentrism not particularly attractive, 
certainly no more so than geocentrism.  And it had nothing to do with 
the authoritative hold of tradition: it was just that heliocentrism had as 
many, though different, problems as the Ptolemaic system, if not more.  
It wasn't until the addition of Kepler's elliptical orbits and Galileo's 
mechanics that heliocentrism became demonstrably better at predicting 
the movements of planets and setting up further physical and 
astronomical discoveries.  (If I remember my history correctly, it was 
German mathematicians that kept Copernicus alive in the interim, 
because it made the math potentially so much easier.)

Matt