I've always enjoyed the thoughts of PKD and this appears to be an excellent compilation of his philosophical corpus. In August 2006, I read A Scanner Darkly and Valis in rapid succession. At times, I found myself getting really wrapped up and carried away with the ideas in Valis. I became intrigued with the idea that there is some sort of secret knowledge to be attained and that the attainment of said knowledge could lead to the transcendence of the current level of reality.
Of course as a rational thinker, when making a coherent mental model of reality I can't completely ignore sense-data. However, as a mathematician I also feel that there are structures that are in some sense more fundamentally real then the things which I perceive with my five senses. When comparing the statements
Although mathematicians are careful creatures -- when pressed they will fall back into a more conservative outlook on the ontological status of mathematics -- when we are not observed, we tend to really believe in the Platonist outlook -- that there is a realm of fundamental forms that exists on a different level from our material universe and that the interplay between these worlds is as beautiful and intriguing as we could possibly hope for.
This leads me finally to the key word in the title of this post: Anamnesis. Lawrence Sutin describes it as "the recollection of the archetypal realm of Ideas of Plato" and he hits the nail on the head. He uses it to describe what is for PKD ideally the case, with the other option being that people like Plato, Hermes Trismegistus, The Gnostics, PKD and a lot of mathematicians (maybe not all at once) are all totally wacked out bouncing-bananas-in-straight-jackets crazy.
Of course as a rational thinker, when making a coherent mental model of reality I can't completely ignore sense-data. However, as a mathematician I also feel that there are structures that are in some sense more fundamentally real then the things which I perceive with my five senses. When comparing the statements
- Snow is white.
- Over the ring of integers, 1+1=2.
Although mathematicians are careful creatures -- when pressed they will fall back into a more conservative outlook on the ontological status of mathematics -- when we are not observed, we tend to really believe in the Platonist outlook -- that there is a realm of fundamental forms that exists on a different level from our material universe and that the interplay between these worlds is as beautiful and intriguing as we could possibly hope for.
This leads me finally to the key word in the title of this post: Anamnesis. Lawrence Sutin describes it as "the recollection of the archetypal realm of Ideas of Plato" and he hits the nail on the head. He uses it to describe what is for PKD ideally the case, with the other option being that people like Plato, Hermes Trismegistus, The Gnostics, PKD and a lot of mathematicians (maybe not all at once) are all totally wacked out bouncing-bananas-in-straight-jackets crazy.
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