Re: MD Pure experience and the Kantian problematic

From: Scott Roberts (jse885@localnet.com)
Date: Sat Jan 29 2005 - 17:02:55 GMT

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    All interested,

    My last post in the "Them pesky pragmatists" got kind of mixed up at the
    end, so I want to try to clarify it a bit, but since the clarification
    brings in the Kantian problematic, I'm putting it here.

    What I said is that mysticism, and religion in general, always contains an
    appearance/reality distinction in the form of recognizing our current state
    as one of ignorance or illusion, of being out of touch with Ultimate
    Reality. Plato's A/R distinction can be seen in this way, as the parable of
    the cave shows. A philosophy of mysticism will attempt to analyze the nature
    of the illusion, which means saying something about the Reality..

    Kant's A/R distinction is different. He says that there is a reality which
    our conceptual structure turns into appearances, and that we can never know
    what that reality is in itself. He also says that that conceptual structure
    is fixed and necessary, the Categories, e.g., of space, time, causality,
    etc.

    The MOQ differs from Kant in that it does not assume that the conceptual
    structure is fixed and necessary, but keeps the idea that it is conceptual
    structure (static intellectual patterns of value) that cuts us off from
    reality (DQ). The MOQ claim that DQ is "pre-intellectual" is a Kantian
    pattern. The main conceptual structure that produces non-real appearances is
    the subject/object form.

    Hence the MOQ includes both types of A/R distinction, the Kantian and the
    mystical. That is, it advocates a mystical program of putting intellectual
    SPOV to sleep in order to experience reality. So in this means of getting
    back into touch with reality, it also reinforces the Kantian duality
    between the conceptual and reality. As James, and most philosophies of
    mysticism have done since Kant.

    - Scott

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