do you suppose one can have an experience that has as a prerequisite, a particular state of being?
(No need to get particularly esoteric here - the same general principle holds for the experiences of particle physicists as well as well as great saints)
Of course. Easy example: a thought is an experience which can only be had by a being with the ability to think. To see, you need eyes; to hear, you need ears; etc.
Furthermore, we have built instruments capable of sensing what we cannot. The non-visible EM spectrum is THE example of this. But there are more. Individual electrons are not only known to exist, we can actually interact with them without directly sensing them at all. How do you suppose this is possible?
if we want to accept that all states of beings follow experience, there would be no need to endeavor to challenge one's mind ...
What we want to do is allow experiences to affect the antecedent rationalities (or "states of being") which ground our understanding of them. Otherwise there is no real progress in understanding, just an accumulation of trivia.
In fact, when a monk enters a deep meditative state, or when a shaman imbibes ayahuasca and trips on the DMT in it, isn't
precisely what is going on an alteration of the state of being, on the
mode of rationality, by the mystical experience itself? Yet we are still able to reason about this experience. It is just very difficult because we must find a rationality so extremely abstract and general as to be able to cover both the operations of reason in our normal waking mode and in the altered state. We know we must do this because both experiences have occurred in the same universe and so must have something in common.
Let me be perfectly clear: empiricism is a necessary but insufficient condition for knowledge. Popper (whose theory of falsification I am constantly returning to) got the "necessary" part of this formula right. He was a brilliant critic of all kinds of dogmas of reason. What he was unable to do was cede his own rational dogmas (like his liberalism, and his materialism). Like all modern men, Popper went so far as to deny that he had any metaphysical biases whatsoever(!). I suppose this sort of denial is why you apparently hate empiricism. Materialism is a metaphysical position, though, and empiricism doesn't depend on it. In fact, if you want to adhere strictly to a scientific method, you are forced to refute materialism. The world as we experience it ultimately doesn't make sense in terms of substances with primary and secondary qualities. You're throwing out the baby with the bathwater here.
you mean conclusions such as these?
Empiricism is not only sensory perception, but experiential knowledge; it is how we differentiate between appearances and reality; illusion and actuality.
Yes, exactly like those. Which is a good conclusion actually, not because it is true but because it offers an enlightening perspective. Knowledge
does come from experience and we
can discern illusion from reality to an extent. Obviously we can't do this in an absolute sense, because, well, there are no absolutes in the realm of experience.
(How could there possibly be when every experience is a transient event?) But what do we do when we realize this: dwell on it and continue to criticize everything as if it were a stifling absolutism? Or do we deal with it passively, simply ignoring dogmatisms of any sort?
