Platt, Steve, dmb, Arlo, and others,
> > Platt said to Steve:
> > As I read this I can't help but note that you have
> faith in intellectual
> > quality (reason) even though reason cannot show by
> reason that it is
> > reasonable. What am I missing?
> >
> > dmb says:
> > Empiricism, that's what you're missing here. The
> value and validity of
> > reason is not proven by reason. It is proven in
> experience. It works, as we
> > know from experience.
Platt:
> What "works," the pragmatism you constantly appeal
> to as the arbiter of all
> that's good and true, was blown out of the water by
> Pirsig:
> "But the Metaphysics of Quality states that
> practicality is a social
> pattern of good. It is immoral for truth to be
> subordinated to social
> values since that is a lower form of evolution
> devouring a higher one."
> (Lila, 29)
SA: Platt, dmb didn't mention "practicality". He
said "empiricism". I don't know the difference, but
after reading the paragraphs surrounding what you
quoted, Pirsig also finds a difference between
"practicality" and "empiricism". Your correct that
"practicality" is a social good. Yet, Pirsig mentions
further along in the next few paragraphs that
empiricism is true and dynamic quality, and empiricism
is what dmb was talking about. Pirsig explains what
empiricism means, so on and so forth in the paragraphs
following your quote. Empiricism is value - it is
pure experience, quoted as follows:
"In his last unfinished work, Some Problems of
Philosophy, James had condensed this description to a
single sentence: 'There must always be a discrepancy
between concepts and reality, because the former are
static and discontinuous while the latter is dynamic
and flowing.' Here James had chosen exactly the same
words Phaedrus had used for the basic subdivision of
the Metaphysics of Quality.
What the Metaphysics of Quality adds to James'
pragmatism and his radical empiricism is the idea that
the primal reality from which subjects and objects
spring is value. By doing so it seems to unite
pragmatism and radical empiricism into a single
fabric. Value, the pragmatic test of truth, is also
the primary empirical experience. The Metaphysics of
Quality says pure experience is value."
SA continues: According to the moq, pragmatic value
is the primary empirical experience, and we all know
that the "primary empirical experience" is dynamic
quality. Dq is "reality..." that "...is dynamic and
flowing." Pragmatic value can be conceptualized, but
it is the "test of truth", in other words, the test of
intellectual patterns as to whether intellectual
patterns are true or not, yes, ordinary everyday
experience is this powerful, in the hands of all, so
democratic, but I'll go on.
I don't think you were on the same page as to
what dmb was pointing out, close, but a few paragraphs
back, but same chapter - chapter 29. Also, to show
more of what dmb was pointing out, a few paragraphs
later states as follows:
"The Metaphysics of Quality is a continuation of
the mainstream of twentieth-century American
philosophy. It is a form of pragmatism, of
instrumentalism, which says the test of the true is
the good. It adds that this good is not a social code
or some intellectualized Hegelian Absolute. It is
direct everyday experience. Through this
identification of pure value with pure experience, the
Metaphysics of Quality paves the way for an enlarged
way of looking at experience..."
good night,
SA
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