Matt, I agree, I have tried to start from square one. But it seems prejudices have been built as you clearly stated.
I also agree that the main focus should be on value relationships It hink the problem Bo has is the universal application of pirsigs concepts accross multiple contexts. Thus he adheres to an intellectual context as a measure. -Ron ________________________________ From: Matt Kundert <[email protected]> To: [email protected] Sent: Sunday, February 1, 2009 2:49:24 PM Subject: Re: [MD] The Quality/MOQ dichotomy. Bo said to Andre: In the non-SOM MOQ there is no real/theoretical distinction (this is the 4th. level's value) the DQ/SQ split has taken over from the S/O split. DMB said: Oh, I see. I think you're suffering from a misconception that is easily clear up by a simple statement. DQ and sq are both real. They're different to be sure and so it makes tons of sense to split things up that way but this distinction shouldn't be taken to mean that static quality is unreal. Here it can help to recall that other simple statement; experience is reality. That's the easiest formulation of radicial empiricism. DQ and sq are both known in experience. Bo said: I am the one who have kept repeating that the DQ/SQ has taken over from the S/O and - further - that these splits are NOT of any pre-existing reality sitting up there waiting to be split (Matt Kundert agreed.Please come forward Matt!) How you read any misconception of the DQ/SQ not being real is beyond me. Matt: Personally, I think if any dialogue is going to happen between the various parties to dispute (_any_ of the disputes that have been going on for years), all sides need to ramp back the rhetoric, all sides need to stop thinking they know the other person and what they want to say, all sides need to go back to square one, and everyone needs to go slowly, one step at a time, in figuring out what each other thinks, why they think it, and where the real disagreements lie. As long as people keep jumping to conclusions--even if they are in the long-run right--and triumphantly trumpeting "I've been saying this for years!" or "you've been saying the same stupid shit for years!", or if they keep imputing that the other person has just been too stupid to understand the obvious, then conversational will stall on the issue of dickish behavior. We need to stop treating each other like children that need to be condescended to, and more like conversational peers that are to be treated with respect (even if, in your heart of hearts, you think the other is acting like a child and not really a peer). That's just a suggestion, if people really want to discuss stuff with each other. If we just take the above passages from Bo and DMB, without any other gloss on the statements--I don't see the difference between what Bo said and DMB said. Bo wants to eliminate a pernicious distinction (that I would suggest is inherited from Lockean/Humean empiricism, only updated after Kant) that the "analytic knife" section in ZMM can be taken to illustrate: there is a pre-existing reality (the sand) that our concepts can divide up as we want. This section can breed a philosophical position that perceives the sand as real, and the divisions we make as arbitrary add-ons. This leads to regrettable statements like, "value is more immediate, more directly sensed than any 'self' or any 'object' to which it might be later assigned. It is more real than the stove." (Lila, 76) We just should not use "more real" rhetoric to make our point. Pirsig wants to avoid the same thing, and spends much of his time fighting these distinctions. DMB registers the same rejection of this distinction, which Bo formuated as the real/theoretical distinction, when he forwards the pragmatist slogan common to James, Dewey and Pirsig--experience is reality. This is what I call panrelationalism--not only are relations between objects as real as the objects, there is nothing more to any object than a series of relations. (What are these relations? _Value_ relations.) Bo said: Again, the radical empiricism postulate a something ahead of S and O. Matt: Not really, at least not a good formulation of it. It is radical exactly because everything is now real--relations, concepts, and objects--unlike before where something was only real if it could stretch back to some strange thing called an "empirical object" which philosophers had a tough time explicating. Matt _________________________________________________________________ Want to do more with Windows Live? 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