[MD] snippet on rationalism vs. empiricism

[plattholden at gmail.com]

Hi John C, 

For a long time philosophers have wondered why mathematics, a purely human 
creation, has proven so useful in uncovering nature's secrets. That there 
appears to be a harmony between man's mind and the physical universe is just 
another chink in the armor of subject-object metaphysics -- a chink Pirsig has 
exploited with vigor along with other chinks such as how the mind of science 
and reason emerges from a congregation of mindless brain cells. It's high time 
the Church of Reason is challenged as viciously as the Church of God. Pirsig 
began the assault in ZAMM, then backed away in Lila, probably because hitting 
reason's "wall of prejudice" again and again caused him to conclude that 
discretion was the better part of valor. 

Platt    



On 15 Oct 2010 at 9:32, John Carl wrote:

Ok, I came across something in my travels that finally explained what so
many on this forum have been trying to get across about uber-control of
all-knowing mind or whatever...


"If we can reason, it is because our thoughts can obey the order of the
logical relations among propositions-- so here again we depend on a Platonic
harmony.... I call this view alarming... [because] it is hard to know what
world picture to associate it with, and difficult to avoid the suspicion
that the picture will be religious, or quasi-religious.  Rationalism has
always had a more religious flavor than empiricism.  Even with God, the idea
of a natural sympathy between the deepest truths of nature and the deepest
layers of the human mind, which can be exploited to allow gradual
development of a truer and truer conception of reality, makes us more at
home in the universe than is secularly comfortable."

The Last Word, Thomas Nagel