John said to dmb:
Are you starting to understand how Royce's Absolute is Direct Experience, or
DQ, yet dave?
dmb replies:
The stuff you quoted from John McDermott seemed quite compelling and
challenging to me and so you're more likely to convince me with more thought
along those lines.
But here, you've only provided reasons NOT to equate Royce's Absolute with DQ.
I think you were quoting Royce when you wrote, "this supposed universal knowing
consciousness, this "not ourselves" has, under the conditions stated, all the
essential characteristics of a real world. It is beyond us; it is independent
of us; its facts have a certain correspondence to our sensations."
Now compare this idea of a universal knowing consciousness that is beyond us
and independent of us to the idea of direct everyday experience. This notion of
a universal consciousness is what Pirsig is talking at the end of chapter 29,
when he says that Quality "is not some intellectualized Hegelian Absolute. It
is direct everyday experience." Those two things are very different and what
you're offering here as equivalent to direct everyday experience is just such
an Absolute. It doesn't have to be Hegel's version or come out of Hegel's mouth
for it to be objectionable. We can see this in the description you've provided.
Look at that Royce quote and ask yourself some questions.
In what sense can direct experience be equated with a universal knowing
consciousness? (The former is an empirical fact while the latter is a
metaphysical entity created by logic but is not known in experience as such.)
In what sense is direct everyday experience "not ourselves"? In what sense is
direct experience independent of us or beyond us? Pirsig's Quality is called
the primary empirical reality and the cutting edge of experience. I don't see
how this kind of immediate experience can reasonably be characterized as
transcendent or independent of us in any way. Pirsig is talking about the
experience of actual people. Royce is talking about something "not ourselves".
The incompatibility of these two ideas is obvious, don't you think?
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