On Mon, Dec 13, 2010 at 10:38 AM, Horse<[email protected]> wrote to
Platt:
This worries me in that a simple phrase/verb such as "to know"
should cause a problem in relation to what you have called
the 'real' world of mystic reality. It makes me think that what
you have said has no bearing on what you believe, in the sense
that mystic reality is devoid of concepts and knowing is the
creation of concepts.
Knowledge of, knowledge about or knowledge that etc. X
refers to something that can be known. The whole point of
DQ/Mysticism in the MoQ sense is that it can only be experienced and not
known.
Or perhaps I've got it wrong. Anyone else agree or disagree?
I would only point out that "understanding" goes hand in hand with
knowledge. If we don't comprehend X we don't really "know" it; whereas we
can experience X without comprehending it.
As a non-mystic, the "real world of mystic reality" is meaningless to me.
For all I know, it may be an experience, a concept, or a fantasy of some
kind. I'm fairly certain that it isn't direct knowledge, however.
This gives me an opportunity to express one of my peeves about the Quality
thesis; namely, Pirsig's use of the term "direct experience". "Quality is a
direct experience independent of and prior to intellectual abstractions," he
says. It implies that we can have an "indirect experience", which is
nonsense leading to confusion. All experience is direct. The experience of
sitting on a hot stove is no more "direct" than empathizing or identifying
with a character in a fiction novel. Even "second hand" experience is
direct.
What I think he means is that the sense of quality is intrinsic to man and
precedes experiential judgments. This is why I refer to "sensibility"
(rather than experience) when speaking of value realization. Value
sensibility is the very core of subjective consciousness from which (I
maintain) all experience is generated.
This epistemology, of course, reverses the common sense notion that
experience is the passive process of interpreting external information
received from the sense organs. Instead, it requires us to accept the idea
that the world of concrete things and passing events is a product of our own
value-sensibility, the form and order of which is a differentiated
manifestation of its uncreated source.
I keep hoping that someone here with better expository skills will seize
upon this concept and apply it to the MoQ. It would resolve many of the
perennial problems hashed and rehashed on the MD.
Thanks for the opportunity, Horse.
Essentially speaking,
Ham
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