From: David Buchanan (DBuchanan@ClassicalRadio.org)
Date: Sun Feb 13 2005 - 00:22:04 GMT
Scott, Ron and all MOQers:
On Friday, Scott said to Ron:
Any time you want to address the reasons I gave for objecting to Pirsig's
expansion of the word "empirical", let me know. Those reasons have nothing
to do with SOM vs. MOQ, and the reasons apply to James' expansion as well.
They are about keeping the useful distinction between readily sharable
experience and private experience. This does not imply that private
experience should be dismissed, just that it is useful to distinguish
between them.
dmb chimes in:
Let you know? Dude, he already addressed your objections. You claimed that
empirical experience means sensory experience within philosophy and that any
other notion was confusing. In response, Ron provided quotes from famous
philosophers who have said otherwise going back a hundred years. How is that
NOT a direct contradiction of your assertion? Sigh. There is some
consolation that comes with the realization that Scott is oblivious in
general and not just with me. And besides that, how is the "useful"
distinction between sharable experience and private experience anything
other than a slip back into SOM?
Scott said:
Wilber [in Eye to Eye] identifies three kinds of inquiry:
empirical-analytic (the Eye of the Flesh)
mental-phenomonological (the Eye of the Mind)
transcendental (the Eye of Contemplation)
All three are sources of data and knowledge, and all three (in my opinion,
as well as Wilber's) are legitimate input to one's philosophizing. So all I
am saying is that the MOQ does not need to expand "empirical", and in doing
so, creates unnecessary confusion, as Wilber said.
dmb says:
That's just plain wrong. In factr, Wilber says exactly the opposite, that
the limited meaning of "empiricial" has created the confusion and that an
expansion is what we need...
"Moving from the profoundly important notion that all knowledge must be
ultimately grounded in experience, many classical empiricists collaspsed
this to the absurd notion that all knowledge must be reduced to, and derived
from, colored patches. The myth of the given, the brain-dead flatland stare,
the monological gaze, the modern nightmare: with this impoverished
empiricism, we can have little sympathy."
dmb says:
Further, Ken Wilber uses the word in exactly in the way Scott would
prohibit. Either Wilber is fond of contradicting himself and violating his
own prohibitions, or Scott is one seriously confused guy...
"We have seen that authentic spirituality is not the product of the eye of
flesh and its sensory empiricism, not the eye of mind and its rational
empirisicm, but only, finally, the eye of contemplation and its spiritual
empiricism (religious experience, spiritual illumination, or satori, by
whatever name)."
dmb concludes:
As Ant suggested, its best if we stick to Pirsig's definitions and such. I
agree with that sentiment entirely. And so its worth mentioning that I've
brought Wilber into the discussion whenever his ideas illuminate Pirsig and
this is just such a case. Here is one of Pirsig's most concise descriptions
of this same epistemological pluralism...
"When an American Indian goes into isolation and fasts in order to achieve a
vision, the vision he seeks in not a romantic understanding of the surface
beauty of the world. (Its not seen with the eye of flesh) Neither is it a
vision of the world's classic intellectual form. (Its not seen with the eye
of the mind) It is something else. Since this whole metaphysics had started
with an attempt to explain Indian mysticism (Seen with the eye of
contemplation.) Phaedrus finally abandoned this classic-romatic split as a
choice for the primary division of the MOQ. The division he finally..."
thanks,
dmb
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