Hi David --
> It is the very job of the philosopher to come up with a language > and an approach to our existence that makes good sense and has > great value. But its value and meaning and use have to be found > in real lived experience. This is why I find the MOQ very useful > and beautiful. It makes good sense of the life I find I am living > and the life I need to find a way of directing and shaping. And what > I know from experience that this life is like and has been in the past > as far as we can discover. Thank you for this candid response to my question about the purpose of philosophy. It is clearly written and expresses a position that at first reading seems irrefutable. I have no reason to doubt your sincerity. And I agree that the "meaning and use" of a philosophy must be not only relevant but vital to one's life-experience. Having said that, I look at the first sentence and note that the qualifications you cite for philosophy are that it "makes good sense" and "has great value". I can accept the former as suggesting "logical plausibility", but I find the latter somewhat problematic. How do we know that a philosophy has great value? If our criterion for value is what is "useful and beautiful," which is what satisfies you about the MOQ, then your standard is utilitarian (i.e., what works) and what pleases you esthetically. Inasmuch as science and technology do a fairly creditable job of making things work--certainly surpassing philosophy's record in that regard--and literary prose and poetry both relate to life and can please by virtue of their beauty, what does philosophy offer that science and the arts don't? Since "man is the measure of all things", what he experiences as valuable is relative to his subjective experience. If the value of philosophy is measured only in terms of experience, then experience becomes fundamental and philosophy only reflects the pragmatic goals and perceived pleasures of human beings. In that case, philosophy would seem to be superfluous: it provides no more insight on what life is about than your own experience. As you said about the MOQ, "I know from experience what this life is like." Now, maybe there is something in Pirsig's philosophy that helps you in "directing and shaping" your life. You're the best judge of that, and of its value to you. But there are loads of platitudes out there that "make sense" and can be regarded as having value. The Golden Rule for one, or the old adage about people in glass houses throwing stones, for another. Such admonitions are not philosophy. They may be poetic and reasonable, but they merely reflect what we already know from experience. Pragmatism is fine for getting along with people and solving the problems of our environment. But philosophy, in my opinion, must give us something more than an experiential understanding of reality. We can (and do) learn that from a study of history, anthropology, sociology, psychology, and the natural sciences. I've forgotten just what the theme "100% confident" initially referred to, but perhaps my closing question will give it some new relevance. We humans may not be concerned about an ultimate reality beyond our finite experience, but how confident can we be that ultimate reality is not concerned with us? Essentially yours, Ham Moq_Discuss mailing list Listinfo, Unsubscribing etc. http://lists.moqtalk.org/listinfo.cgi/moq_discuss-moqtalk.org Archives: http://lists.moqtalk.org/pipermail/moq_discuss-moqtalk.org/ http://moq.org.uk/pipermail/moq_discuss_archive/
