Hey SA,
Now it looks like it's my turn to apologize for touching a nerve. SA said: Matt, I'm not one to add "that's just my opinion", but I can see why somebody would. For somebody adds a suggestion, and you say, "of course these are our opinions", and yes they are, but a degree of tolerance can be also valued in the IMO or IMHO approach, which denotes democracy and the value of individuals living together, disagreeing, but picking fruit at the fruit stand together without fighting. Nobody saying your fighting, but your defining of IMO didn't cover this point. Matt: Yeah, you're right. But I wasn't attempting to "define" "IMO". I was, in the essay from which you pulled the extraction (one that sets up the context at some length before that particular paragraph), collaging some of my impressions of life in the MD with Pirsig's philosophy, because something interesting popped out when I had been thinking along those lines. I was commenting on a pattern I've seen that, on the one hand looks on the surface like the common softening, rhetorical move that we all make (it's not as if I stridently assert everything and have never used the phrase), but on the other hand might seem to maybe have, in my opinion, a possible root in something other than softening. Matt said: My confession is that one of my pet peeves are, what I see as, blithe suggestions that my life is missing something. It's not suggestions: its the ones that invoke "my life"--as if I had a huge hole in my life that I didn't even know about. While that could always be true of anyone, and I don't mind suggestions at all, I just react to that particular way of formulating the suggestion. SA said: Well, maybe your not "missing something", and say so, and then move on, correct? Why the "pet peeve"? It was a suggestion, and you know yourself better than others, so, don't accept the opinion and move on. You don't like suggestions, correct? Then how else do people talk to you without you suggesting your own opinion of what they suggested - your "pet peeve" seems circular. Matt: I think you missed what I was talking about. I _like_ suggestions, as I said explicitly three times to help people understand my meaning. My "pet peeve" is a certain way of formulating suggestions. Hasn't a person ever rubbed you the wrong way, despite the fact that they're otherwise nice, friendly, etc.? Well, I also happen to think there's a philosophical point lying underneath this particular pet peeve. I tried elaborating on it. If you didn't like it, why didn't _you_ just ignore it? Because the MD is about conversation, just as I tried continuing the conversation with Marsha by talking about my pet peeve. Matt said: At the root of my distaste is this: what is secondhand about my experience of life if I never meditate? Are not all experiences direct? My experience of a book, for instance? SA said: We've been down this path before, but you didn't respond back to me, even though you stated you would, maybe our time has come? Matt: I'm sorry for dropping the earlier conversation. I'm afraid I don't remember it. SA said: As you would properly notice yourself, don't lose out on definitions. A secondhand experience of a sitting-down-closed-eye meditation would be reading a book about this kind of meditation. Sure it is a firsthand experience, and sure it is a direct experience, but one through a book. Matt: Yeah. I'm afraid I'm missing your point, at least in relation to mine (which itself wasn't elaborated very much here). My point was another of my attacks on the direct/indirect experience distinction in philosophical discourse. While having a very good, important, perspicuous meaning in common sense, the distinction is hard to restore, in my opinion, in philosophy without resurrecting Kant's version of Platonism, which is what Northrop wanted, which is someone that Pirsig took seriously. (For various attempts at more extended explanation, one could take their pick from my review of a paper of Anthony McWatt's--http://www.moq.org/forum/Kundert/Reviews/mcwatt/mcwattreview.html--or my post "Against Northrop"--http://pirsigaffliction.blogspot.com/2006/05/against-northrop.html--"Language, Distance, and the Pathos of Distance"--http//pirsigaffliction.blogspot.com/2006/04/language-som-and-pathos-of-distance.html--or "DQ as Pre-Intellectual Experience"--http://pirsigaffliction.bl ogspot.com/2006/04/dynamic-quality-as-pre-intellectual.html) But to recapitulate my pet peeve which links to the philosophical direct/indirect distinction: If someone suggests that I should meditate because it's good to see reality directly and it's something that can really only be understood by doing it, then they are: 1) using the philosophical direct/indirect distinction to lend credence to why I should try it out. After all, according to their view, indirect experience is second-rate. 2) using the common sense direct/indirect distinction to suggest that reading about meditating doesn't quite give one a good idea about whether or not meditating is a good activity. I have no problem with people using the latter to give weight to their suggestion. That makes sense. But the former doesn't scan because I have philosophical problems with it. Marsha wasn't, I don't think, deploying the distinction self-consciously. But, whereas one can always construe a person non-philosophically, in a philosophical discussion group I often trend to the latter construal pattern. Matt _________________________________________________________________ Going green? 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