Steve said:
The difference between Matt (and I) and you and Pirsig is that Pirsig claims
that the fundamental nature of reality is outside of language, and Matt and I
have stopped trying to nail down any fundamental nature of reality.
dmb says:
Hmmm. No, actually, there is no difference. This is a good example of the kind
of misunderstanding that keeps happening. Let me try once more to explain what
I mean.
Pirsig's claim that the fundamental nature of reality is outside language MEANS
that you can NOT nail it down. This fundamental reality is outside of language
and language is what we use to nail things down. But when I use the terms that
refer to this fundamental reality, Matt (and now you too, apparently) takes
that to mean I'm trying to nail it down.
That's what I was trying to explain with the Fish article and the way it
revealed the metaphysical assumptions at work in that kind of misunderstanding.
If you think the fundamental nature of reality is "things in space and time"
then a phrase like "pure experience" will be taken to mean direct access to
"things in space and time". But that's not the claim at all. The things in
space and time are all secondary concepts, according to the radical
empiricists, and pure experience does not provide access to anything (or any
things) other than the experience itself. This entails no claim about nailing
anything down.
Steve said:
The assertion that the fundamental nature of reality is outside of language is
asserted using language. Doesn't this statement then
contradict itself? I mean, is it true? Does this statement really tell us
something about the fundamental nature of reality? If it is true it is false.
It would seem to Matt and I better just not to say such things. This is not a
denial or a rejection of the reality of anything. It is a preference not to
speak in certain terms.
dmb says:
Yes, I already addressed the paradoxical nature of talking about the nonverbal
and conceptualizing the nonconceptual. (Sigh. Why does everybody make me repeat
myself?) But this is not a contradiction unless you also claim your verbal
terms can capture the fundamental nature of reality. Instead, one simply
acknowledges the limits of language and then one goes forward despite the
difficulty. Why? Because there is more to life that the things that can be
nailed down. The central things in life can't be nailed down and so leaving
them out of our philosophies is one the problems we're trying to solve here.
In the past our common universe of reason has been in the process of escaping,
rejecting the romantic, irrational world of prehistoric man. It's been
necessary since before the time of Socrates to reject the passions, the
emotions, in order to free the rational mind for an understanding of nature's
order which was as yet unknown. Now it's time to further an understanding of
nature's order by reassimilating those passions which were originally fled
from. The passions, the emotions, the affective domain of man's consciousness,
are a part of nature's order too. The central part. (ZAMM p. 294)
Steve said:
We don't like this "fundamental nature talk," it's too metaphysics-y for us and
makes us fell all icky and Platonist. But if you can get some anti-Platonist
mileage out of such talk, we're all for you doing it.
dmb says:
That's another case of taking the anti-Platonic claims of radical empiricism as
if they were Platonism. You're inadvertently rejecting the rejection of
Platonism in the name of rejecting Platonism. These are just conceptual errors,
not differences of personal preference or tastes or interests. It's just about
the difference between what radical empiricism means and what you think it
means. I see this error over and over and I keep trying to show you but you and
Matt just keep making it anyway.
Again, if I seem emphatic it's only because of frustrated by the combination of
the issue's importance and its difficulty. And then there is the repetition.
That gets old anyway and John's been making me say the same thing like eight
times. Wears a guy out, you know?
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