A mystic's manifesto

An experiment in expressing the ineffable -- a post-rationalist statement of principles. I basically want to turn this into a sequence (in the lesswrong sense)/even a book if I ever have enough time.

Basically, reject modernist attitudes towards epistemology, and then reject postmodernism too. Reject anti-realism, reject philosophy itself. Reject all of those fundamentally, and then approach them from a new perspective.

Another way to phrase the thesis: there are fundamental and absolute limits to the logical/rational. description cannot give you prescription; you must always begin with postulates. Upon the recognition that there are limits to logic, the rational observer asks: where do I go from here?

Wrt philosophy, reason leads to non-reason by recognition of its own limits. The two coexist.

Wrt cognitive psychology, all sorts of things that aren't rational are fundamentally important to well-being: for example, logic alone cannot give you a sense of meaning. "self-transcendance," the fancy way of saying "feeling like you're part of something greater than your own individual self-interest," is very important and also very difficult to achieve when you restrict yourself to empirical thought. (hmm, I don't feel like I'm phrasing this well.) is is not ought -- just cause humans need it doesn't mean it's good -- but in this case, I kinda think is and ought are aligned.

(maybe I should write this as just an exceptionally well-sourced review of Wittgenstein's Tractatus)

Your brain can do a hell of a lot more than just rational thought. Accept the mystical, the aesthetic, the spiritual. Embrace woo. (except I want to frame this in a way that it will be potentially meaningful for someone in the position I was 6 mo ago, so i need to be careful about my phrasing here.

I think this post will feel meaningful to those who have some sense for what "spiritual" experience means. For those who do not, it will be meaningless. I am not trying to gatekeep spirituality -- in fact, a year ago I wouldn't say I was "spiritual" in any sense. That word felt stupid and meaningless to me. But now I find it to be a useful label.

Basically: logical ways of knowing are fundamental and irreparably limited.

Preliminary Sources: (guys look at my erudition!)

• Vasconcelos, Aesthetics of knowing (Tratado de metafisica, Obras completas)
• wittgenstein, Tractatus
• Montak, Postmodern spirituality
• Godel's Incompleteness theorems, Tarski, etc.; various foundations of mathematics sources
• Russell's Paradoxes
  • paradoxes in language
• Ravel, Pavane -- beauty for beauty's sake ("there's nothing underneath")
• Rorty, Contingency, Irony, and Solidarity
• Strauss, Natural right and history
  • and the Max Weber work that he cites
• Lyotard (postmodernism?)

Misc. potential reaches/literary references

• Camus, The Myth of Sisyphus
  • I don't really like atheist existentialism -- for me it felt like the sartrean insistence on "good faith" closed off the path to a genuinely meaningful life -- but Camus' symbolism is quite useful
  • Potentially the theist existentialists -- Kierkegaard in particular -- might have something to offer here.
• Godel, Escher, Bach may have elements of interest
• Borges in general