TheAncientGeek comments on Rationality Quotes May 2014 - Less Wrong
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I don't think there's such a thing as "unmediated experience of the world".
(I like the quotation a lot for giving a plausible, lucid reason why Zen might spurn the usual sort of analytical discourse. But it's so clear an explanation of an idea that I think it's revealed a basic problem with the idea, namely that it points towards a non-existent goal.)
You can construe the goal as non existent, but that is an uncharitable reading.
Whether the goal exists is an empirical question, no...? I don't understand where (a lack of) charity enters into it.
The principle of charity relates to what people mean by what they say. Unmitigated experience might be empirically nonexistent under one interpretation of unmediated but not under another. If someone claims to have had unmediated experience , that is evidence relating to what they mean by their words.
I see. What more charitable interpretation of "unmediated experience" would you prefer?
Maybe the PoC would be an easier sell if it were phrased in terms of the "typical semantics fallacy".