Matt said to Ian: Perhaps DMB's reading is the accurate one. Or, perhaps, DMB's right _and_ Pirsig sees himself as having a unified concept in DQ with a single, extended sense (which is either tenable or untenable). I'm not sure. If the radical empiricism reading of DQ is accurate, so much the better, since I've been talking like that for a while, though I've not committed to a self-description as "radical empiricist." (And I apologize to everyone who sees such an assertion on my part as strange, perverse, and disingenuous. I think it simply a problem of communication.) If it's not, I'm not sure why anyone, say DMB, should abandon it if they think it's the way to go. Being inconsistent with Pirsig does no harm to a living philosophical tradition, which is the only point in saying there exists a class of philosophers called "Pirsigian." And if there isn't such a thing, then I don't know what the hell we're all doing here.
dmb says: I suppose everybody thinks their own reading is accurate and so anyone would naturally be reluctant to abandon their own reading. And it's probably also safe to suppose Pirsig's claims about the simplicity, coherence and logical consistency of the MOQ were written quite sincerely. His self-description as a pragmatist and a radical empiricist ought to be taken as sincere too. Even if my radical empiricist reading of DQ (of the MOQ, actually) is not accurate, that reading doesn't suffer from the problems of inconsistency that seem to come from your reading. And I'd like to suggest that if one understands Pirsig's books in such a way that any given quote makes sense next to any other quote such that everything fits together coherently, then you are probably reading his books rightly. Or, to say the same thing from the other direction, if Pirsig's claims seen inconsistent or contradictory, then you are probably not reading him rightly. I'm not saying his books are absolutely perfect, of course, but I really do not remember any case in which a perceived inconsistency between claims was not a result of a misreading of those claims. This present case is no exception. In that sense, at least, my reading works. There was a time when some of Pirsig's claims didn't make sense to me and they didn't fit into the MOQ as I understood it. They seemed inconsistent to me. But now, after having studied pragmatism and radical empiricism in James, Dewey and others, everything fits into place without contradiction. Matt said:I don't know what the answer is--I haven't spent time researching or excavating Pirsig's philosophy in a long time. But I don't know how one puts together 1) DQ as force (from the stove) 2) DQ as the purpose of life (in the alteration of evolution) 3) DQ as better than static patterns (as in the "all things being equal" clause, p. 183 dmb says: That would be a good example. As I read it, the hot stove example, the direction given to evolution and the primary status of DQ all fit quite neatly together into one coherent picture. As you read it, apparently, there is an inconsistency problem in these claims. As I see it, assuming that Pirsig is a smart and careful guy who knows what he's saying, it's your reading of the MOQ that doesn't work and the MOQ itself is just fine. And yet you are a very smart guy and you understand it better than almost everybody else. Ever notice how the worst of the mis-readers are forever blaming Pirsig while also completely missing the point and flatly contradicting his claims? For example, Bo's claim that the intellectual level is equal to SOM flatly contradicts Pirsig's own description of where SOM fits into the MOQ. (Pirsig says the first and second levels are "objective" while the 3rd and 4th levels are "subjective".) Ham's emphasis on subjectivity and Krimel's emphasis on objectivity both show that they don't even understand the problem that the MOQ's radical empiricism solves. Platt's emphasis on social level values distorts the MOQ so that it's FUBAR. These readings aren't even close and yet they are among the most stubborn, uncomprehending contributors here. I think it is no accident that everyone of them rejects and/or misunderstands the MOQ's mysticism and radical empiricism. Without that, as I see it, the MOQ can't be understood coherently. I would even go so far as to say that this is the only thing that stands between you and a completely coherent understanding of the MOQ. Maybe that's why it seems I'm so hard on you. You have the intelligence and the philosophical background to incorporate this part and so I want to push you in such a way that you'll do just that. Maybe that's why I get so annoyed when you shrug off that part of the MOQ, cause I think it's the element that makes the whole thing work, that makes the MOQ coherent. _________________________________________________________________ Lauren found her dream laptop. Find the PC that’s right for you. http://www.microsoft.com/windows/choosepc/?ocid=ftp_val_wl_290 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/
