"the only pragmatist element I see in the Metaphysics of Quality is Pirsig's desire and intention to get to real life - to get to "the stuffy, hot-ground floor of life as soon as possible" as Matt poetically puts it. But the actual tool of thought which the concept of Quality provides is miles away from pragmatism. The problem Pirsig had was there was no rationalist framework in which his magisterial tool could make sense and unfold. For, if you say that Quality presupposes an intelligence in the world in which human reason can share and participate, because this intelligence partakes of a deep structure common to both the world and to human minds, where's the dynamic element in reason itself? It is at this point that Owen Barfield's insights bring considerable assistance, for Barfield speaks of an evolution of reason, or rather of an evolution of consciousness. This concept is the missing key, for it enables us to attach the concepts of Static and Dynamic Quality to reason itself."
"I would agree with Matt that Pirsig is not free of subject-object metaphysics. Nor do I think that Pirsig claimed to be altogether free of it. What is significant in Pirsig is that he provides indications for a route to take outside of the particular cul-de-sac which SOM has led to in post-Enlightenment philosophy. And that particular cul-de-sac is not so much the subject-object distinction in itself (which is an ancient distinction going back to the earliest beginnings of human thought and which may indeed be an inescapable feature of any form of thought) as it is the particular twist it has taken through Cartesian and modern philosophy." -Caryl Johnston source: http://meta-q.blogspot.com/ Ron: I think Bo's SOL interpretation provides the framework, but if he maintains that SoM is the Intellectual level itself then SOL might fall to the same trap as SOM by believing it is the ONLY Way to interpret a Quality reality. The one true path is never the only true path. Therefore James Radical Empiricist method may indeed be a more suitable rational framework for MoQ. As Caryl Johnston states, "The problem Pirsig had was there was no rationalist framework in which his magisterial tool could make sense and unfold" I feel she suspected the same thing as Bo but fail to see the cultural implications that SOM brings to the MoQ table in contrast to the "Big picture" that MoQ Ultimately supplies. It's tying these two together that brings the weirdness. Especially when you start making the shifts from SOL to MOQ As DmB said "things get weird." But I truly believe in my "softened " explanation, it works. "Newly acquired insights are at first only half understood by the one who begets them, and appear as complete nonsense to all others... Any new idea which does not appear very strange at the outset, does not have a chance of being a vital discovery." -- Niels Bohr 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/
