From: Matt the Enraged Endorphin (mpkundert@students.wisc.edu)
Date: Tue Apr 08 2003 - 03:18:18 BST
Scott,
Scott said:
Returning to the subject of the thread, I have some objections to the
notion that mysticism is a case of an appearance/reality dinstinction like
the sort made by traditional metaphysicians. The first, which I think DMB
put forth, is that a mystic's Reality is empirical, not hypothetical. But,
of course, one can accept this only if one believes the mystic, so there is
no point in pursuing it.
Matt:
True enough, if one follows in enough beliefs of a mystic or a philosopher
or a priest or a politician, then one will see certain distinctions, like
between "Reality as empirical" and "Reality as hypothetical," as being
important. For the purposes of the appearance/reality rubric, I don't see
the aforementioned distinction as being important. The key word in both is
"Reality," whether or not you see Reality as something like Kant thought of
it or something like Pirsig thinks of it.
Scott said:
The second objection is one I mentioned earlier, that if the mystics are
correct, then we are insane in the narrow sense of being out of touch with
reality (aka God or Quality). The point here is that, whether or not one
accepts what mystics say, the philosophy based on what they say has a
different sort of a/r distinction than in other philosophy. That difference
is that while a traditional metaphysics simply states that Reality is other
than appearance, mystical philosophy says that, through the appropriate
discipline (or God's grace or what have you) one moves into that Reality.
Matt:
Actually, I read this objection as more or less the same as the first
one. If I'm correct, the difference between the mystic's a/r distinction
and the metaphysician's a/r distinction more or less rests on the
difference between the mystic's "empirical Reality" and the metaphysician's
"hypothetical Reality." It's why I think you say, "a traditional
metaphysics simply states that Reality is other than appearance," like
Kant's noumena, which resembles the "hypothetical Reality" position, and
"mystical philosophy says that, through the appropriate discipline ... one
moves into that Reality," which resembles the "empirical Reality"
position. I mention this only because, again, under the appearance/reality
rubric (by my lights) there is no difference between "permanently
separated" and "moves into." As a quirk of intellectual history, there's a
difference. But for the purposes of Rorty's representationalist rubric, I
don't see how, as DMB might say, the magical words "empirical Reality"
allow the mystic to escape some of the consequences Rorty draws from using
that kind of vocabulary. True, the mystic is not trying to "represent"
Reality, she is trying to move into it. But I see that difference as
trivial compared to the retainment of an appearance/reality distinction,
whether its hypothetical or empirical.
Matt
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