David --
Ham said to dmb:
Why is the MoQ vigorously anti-essentialist? Maybe you can explain
that to me.
If essence is the ultimate reality that philosophers since Plato have
searched for, by what postmodern hubris is its rejection praised?
Is not Quality the very essence of reality for MoQists? How can you
say that a philosophy based on Quality is anti-essentialist?
dmb says:
Bo asked the same question recently. After reading my description of
essentialism he said, "Yes if that is essentialism I'm very much so" and
he
also said, "but because DQ is part and parcel of the MOQ I wonder
how you avoid being a Quality essentialist too". Here's how I answered
the question... (It's mostly Pirsig quotes.)
"That was why the Quality that Phædrus had arrived at in the classroom
had seemed so close to Plato's Good. Plato's Good was taken from the
rhetoricians. Phædrus searched, but could find no previous cosmologists
who had talked about the Good. That was from the Sophists. The
difference was that Plato's Good was a fixed and eternal and unmoving
Idea, whereas for the rhetoricians it was not an Idea at all. The Good
was not a form of reality. It was reality itself, ever changing,
ultimately
unknowable in any kind of fixed, rigid way."
.....................
"What is good, Phædrus, and what is not good...need we ask anyone
to tell us these things?
"It is what he was saying months before in the classroom in Montana,
a message Plato and every dialectician since him had missed, since they
all sought to define the Good in its intellectual relation to things."
But, David, these quotations relate to Plato's 'summum bonum' -- moral
goodness -- not to his theory of essence. Essence is not a synonym for The
Good. Here's a clear definition of Plato's essence by the webmaster of a
philosophy site:
"Plato thought what we see in the physical world is a dim reflection of the
true ideal thing. For example circular objects are crude approximations to
the ideal perfect circle. Platonic philosophy aims to understand reality in
terms of the ideals that capture the real essence that is dimly reflected in
physical existence. ...The problem is that the essence we attribute to
external objects is from our own experience. It is not something that is
part of the external objects. A soft touch, sharp slap, beautiful sunset or
ugly wound, are things created in us when we have particular experiences.
We are not perceiving external reality as it truly is nor are we dimly
perceiving some ideal platonic reality. We are creating the world in our
conscious experience. There is a related external structure that our
perception is causally connected to. But the perception of, for example,
color is far more a construction of our sensory and nervous system than it
is an effect from light of a particular frequency." -- www.mtnmath.com
Essence is the true nature of reality. Pirsig alone posits it as Areté,
Goodness, or Quality. And this moral inference is not only epistemically
incorrect, it dismisses the primary source of experiential reality upon
which metaphysics is founded. Morality is a social construct of man, not an
indigenous property of existence. That the physical universe is a "moral
system" is a theistic concept that has nothing to do with classical
metaphysics. So here you are, claiming that the MoQ is anti-essentialist
and anti-theist, while neither is true.
...dmb continues:
We see this same paradox in LILA, where Pirsig says that philosophical
mystics have historically shared, "a common belief that the fundamental
nature of reality is outside of language; that language splits things up
into
parts while the true nature of reality is undivided". He says,
"Historically
mystics have claimed that for a true understanding of reality metaphysics
is too 'scientific'. Metaphysics is not reality. Metaphysics is NAMES
about reality." He says, "The central reality of mysticism, the reality
that
Phaedrus had called 'Quality' in his first book, is not a metaphysical
chess piece. Quality doesn't have to be defined. You understand it
without definition, ahead of definition. Quality is a direct experience
independent of and prior to intellectual abstractions".
That Pirsig statement, "Metaphysics is not reality. Metaphysics is NAMES
about reality." is simple-minded, to put it kindly. Metaphysics, Cosmology,
and Ontology are all approaches to the study of reality. Metaphysics is
that branch of philosophy which deals with reality beyond the physical
world. It names theories and principles in the same way that applied
science does. To say that metaphysics in only "names" is like saying that a
novel is only words, or that music is only notes.
Ham said:
I would submit that Essence has at least as much empirical relevance as
Quality does, plus a metaphysical foundation that the MoQ lacks.
dmb says:
This is a good example of what I mean when I say the MOQ is not
compatible with your thing. You've aired this complaint many, many times.
The MOQ does lack a metaphysical foundation. That's pretty much
what it means to be an anti-essentialist, a particular way of being an
anti-essentialist. In that sense, it is not a lack at all. From a MOQer's
perspective getting rid of foundationalism is like getting rid of poison.
The MOQ is the antidote of choice. In this analogy, what you offer is
poison.
I would also point out that Quality is not based on the evidence of
experience. It is experience itself. Thus the alternative name for DQ
is the primary empirical reality.
I don't know about you, but a lot of my experience is of the non-Quality
kind.
A philosophy without foundation is a ship adrift in an ocean of ignorance.
Where would science be without a foundation of laws and principles? Should
scientific researchers avoid them as "poison"? Should philosophers reject a
metaphysical foundation for fear that the truth about reality may poison
them?
I could be insincere, but at least I'm right.
The tragedy is that your are sincere in your irrationality.
--Ham
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