Matt and Multitude.
(before my subscription were fixed this has grown mildewed, but
...)
You said to S/A:
> I don't struggle with radical empiricism per se. The part that
> strikes me as odd is how the notion of "pure experience" even
> survives once one becomes a pragmatist/radical empiricist.
I don't know if you received my (private) letter regarding your
post of September 14 (that DMB's of 2 Oct. made me aware of).
Anyway I find your recent posts interesting. You say you don't
struggle with radical empiricism's and see it as odd that "the
notion of pure experience even survives once one becomes a
pragmatist/radical empiricist". I have a similar feeling regarding
people's preoccupation with radical empiricism once they
allegedly have become moqists. Empiricism and/or pragmatism
was instrumental for Pirsig's escaping SOM, but inside the MOQ
it's counterproductive.
> If we follow Dewey in thinking there's no difference between
> experience and reality (which I take to be the purest articulation
> of the contention of radical empiricism), then how does one wedge in
> a difference between pure and unpure experience/reality, one that
> doesn't look like the appearance/reality distinction? But more
> importantly, what would that distinction do if it wasn't leaning on
> the A/R distinction?
James and Dewey aren't mentioned in ZAMM, Poincaré is the
one who Pirsig (Phaedrus at least) saw as an ally.
"Poincaré then hypothesized that this selection is made
by what he called the ``subliminal self,'' an entity that
corresponds exactly with what Phædrus called
preintellectual awareness."
but I guess James' "aesthetic continuum" is another name for this
pre-intellectual awareness that's neither subjective nor objective.
But what does the dividing? Neither James nor Poincaré
identified any SOM. The genius of Pirsig is that he saw "intellect"
as the S/O prism. (ZAMM):
"Reality is always the moment of vision before the
intellectualization takes place. There is no other reality.
This preintellectual reality is what Phædrus felt he had
properly identified as Quality. Since all intellectually
identifiable things must emerge from this preintellectual
reality, Quality is the parent, the source of all subjects and
objects."
At this point the (final) MOQ wasn't launched thus it sounds as if
the above "Quality Event" is universal - that Stone Age
humamankind also split experience the subjective/objective way -
but that is not so - it's a 4th level value. However, let me not
delve into that, the point is that if Pirsig had transferred the S/O-
intellect (that emerged in his first proto-moq) into the final MOQ it
would have been perfect.
Another manifestation of Pirsig's genius is that he pin-pointed the
emergence of the metaphysical base of the S/O with the early
Greek philosopheres, "truth/opinion" with Socrates,
"ideas/appearance" with Plato and "substance/form" with
Aristotles ("Reality/Appearance" in general) what evolved into our
"objective/subjective" or "matter/mind".
> The gist is that if you have a notion of "pure experience," then you
> are going to need a notion of "unpure experience" because that's how
> contrasts work. In Pirsig, pure is DQ, which means unpure is
> static.
Pirsig's initial position was that DQ was pure while all
metaphysical splittings were unpure, thus the DQ/SQ is as bad
as the S/O. Later he modified this by declaring Quality identical
to the DQ of the MOQ, which means that the DQ/SQ is an
aggregate - like the S/O is - you can't have one
without the other.
>The question
> is what the role of "unpure" is in describing static patterns of
> value. If experience and reality coincide as in Dewey's radical
> empiricism, then the old idea of experience having various levels of
> contact with reality (more or less direct/pure/etc.) should be out
> the window. I would have thought. But there still exists in
> Pirsig, and James, what seems to me a survival of an older
> philosophical vision that they are otherwise out to displace.
As said, Pirsig doesn't see DQ as pure and SQ as unpure, he
never mentions Dewey, and does not embrace empiricism -
radical or otherwise. What he found familiar with James' was that
he saw the "man the measure" sentence confirmed by him (the
squirrel example). But because this sentence is what has
smuggled subjectivism into the MOQ, empiricism is a double-
edged sword.
> The importance of this issue resides in Pirsig's insistence in
> coalescing Dynamic Quality with both "direct/pure experience" and
> "betterness" (not to mention "immediate"). The fact that I see it
> as problematic is a whole other thing.
A whole other thing .. yes. Nice talking to you.
Bo
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