Re: MD Pure experience and the Kantian problematic

From: MarshaV (marshalz@charter.net)
Date: Wed Feb 23 2005 - 18:32:40 GMT

  • Next message: Ant McWatt: "MD Pure experience and the Kantian problematic"

    Thank you Scott.  I appreciate the explanation.  I suppose I am an nihilist, because I think nothing can be known, not really.  But I am not afraid, it makes me laugh with a feeling of freedom.  Not freedom to do what I choose, but freedom to be who I am. 

    Thanks.

    Marsha


    At 10:22 AM 2/23/2005 -0700, you wrote:

    Scott:
    A handy definition is that a nihilist is one who holds that nothing exists,
    or that nothing can be known, or that there is no value in anything. But
    then there are large difficulties in what is meant by these denials. For
    example, I would say that a pragmatist like Matt is on the nihilist side,
    but he would say that I am begging the question, and he is correct. This is
    because a pragmatist finds no use for saying that anything "exists", beyond
    our conventional use of the word. The conventional use is, for example, if a
    student of mathematics asks: does a proof of such-and-such exist? Well, if
    it does, a teacher can point it out. If it doesn't, it doesn't. But I would
    say that if one does beg the question, by continuing to ask philosophical
    questions about existence and knowing and value as such, one can move beyond
    both a substantialist and a nihilist viewpoint, while a pragmatist will see
    any such questioning as presupposing a substantialist viewpoint.

    In philosophies of mysticism, the same question pops up. I call the MOQ
    nihilist because the way it talks about intellectual static patterns of
    value is, in my opinion, denying that anything can be known in itself. It is
    saying that all that we know consists of intellectual SPOV, but that such
    SPOV covers up the true reality: DQ, which is unknowable except through
    mystical transcendence. In my view, this way of talking about SQ is
    nihilistic, but the way it talks about DQ is substantialistic (so overall,
    the MOQ is nihilist, since it itself is SQ).

    - Scott



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