Hi David --
Ham, I don't think anyone said the MOQ "cannot be criticized by someone who doesn't accept Pirsig's concept of holistic Quality". I sure hope not, anyway, because that doesn't even make sense.
On 1/20 Steve Peterson, who is launching a blog site for "non-materialist" atheists, wrote me as follows:
Quality as a monism is an intellectual postulate. You can accept it and see where it takes you, or you can leave it be. This forum is concerned with seeing where this intellectual postulate takes us. If you are unwilling to accept it for the sake of argument and at least try to understand what Pirsig means by it then your posts will be of little interest to most people here. ... You are playing a different game than the other members of this forum. There is just nothing to say to someone who is not interested in Pirsig's Quality.
To me this is saying that anyone who does not accept Quality as a monism has no right to criticize it.
[DMB]:
You simply can't criticize something until you understand what it is. This is not an arbitrary rule. It's a logical necessity. People keep asking you if you've read either of Pirsig's books because it's obvious that you don't understand what he's saying at all. (Have you ever answered that question?)
Yes, but I'll answer it again. I have read both ZMM and LILA, as well as Ant's doctoral thesis on the MoQ. And if I didn't understand what Pirsig is saying I would no grounds for criticizing it. The MoQ is a metaphoric synthesis that seeks to unify existence as an aesthetic property.
The name of this thread is a dead give away, in fact. Pirsig's attack on objectivity is an attack on foundationalism and yet you criticize the MOQ for not having "a proper foundation".
I am no more an objectivist than Pirsig is. But "foundationalism" is hardly a defining characteristic of objectivity, and one doesn't have to be a foundationalist to realize that philosophical theories generally have a metaphysical basis. Arbitrarily naming something "quality" but refusing to define it does not constitute a philosophy. The concept of Value as an adjunct of experience is a worthy theme, but Pirsig does not develop an epistemology for this concept. Rather than relate value to human sensibility, he "externalizes" value and reduces human beingness to a collection of patterns. His thrust and perspective are more anthropological than philosophical, referring to mankind in the collective sense, as an emerging product of nature rather than as the cognizant locus of experience. Nor does Pirsig's disdain for metaphysics help his cause.
That's like criticizing a democracy for not having a proper King. It simply shows that you do not understand the basic concept that you pretend to criticize. Informed criticism is helpful and fun. It's a real game and a real fight about the actual issues but your "criticisms" are anything but that.
You may not like my criticism, but I assure you that it is genuine, as is my interest in this forum. I'm not looking to score points in a debating "game". The points I've raised are legitimate, and I would expect the "informed" intellectuals here to attack the issues raised instead of the messenger.
Regards, 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/
