MOQers:
Marsha seems to think that denigrating William James is a good way to defend
Pirsig's MOQ. She seems to think that James is obsolete, that he is only
"historically" interesting. Nothing could be further from the truth and all the
evidence is against her. The evidence is plain, explicit and unequivocal.
Everything needed to see this can be found in the last 3 or 4 pages of chapter
29. There, Pirsig says:
"...But to Phaedrus it seemed that James's generalizations were heading toward
something very similar to the Metaphysics of Quality. This could, of course, be
the 'Cleveland Harbor Effect', where Phaedrus' own intellectual immune system
was selecting those aspects of James' philosophy that fit the MOQ and ignoring
those that didn't. But he didn't think so. Everywhere he read it seemed as
though he was seeing fits and matches that not amount of selective reading
could contrive." (p. 363)
"James said, 'Truth is one species of good, and not, as is usually supposed, a
category distinct from good, and coordinate with it.' He said, 'The true is the
name of whatever proves itself to be good in the way of belief.' TRUTH IS A
SPECIES OF GOOD. That was right on. That was EXACTLY what is meant by the MOQ.
Truth is a static intellectual pattern WITHIN a larger entity called Quality."
(p. 363-4. Emphasis is Pirsig's in the original.)
"...James had condensed this description [of radical empiricism] to a single
sentence. 'There must always be a discrepancy between concepts and reality,
because the former are static and discontinuous while the latter is dynamic and
flowing.' Here James had chosen exactly the same words Phaedrus had used for
the basic subdivision of the Metaphysics of Quality." (p. 365)
"The Metaphysics of Quality is a continuation of the mainstream of twentieth
century American philosophy. It is a form of pragmatism, of instrumentalism,
which says the test of the true is the good." (p. 366)
How much selective reading would it take to ignore this and construe James's
thought as irrelevant, obsolete or at odds with Pirsig's?
How could the similarities between James and Pirsig be any clearer or more
straightforward?
Marsha's relentless campaign against James is wholly indefensible and the
evidence against her is about as powerful and abundant as these things ever
get. Her willful disregard of the evidence and her constant evasions are
downright obscene. The whole campaign seems to be carefully calculated to
arouse disgust and contempt. And she wages this dishonest attack on the core of
Pirsig's work in order to maintain her foolish solipsism, relativism and
nihilism. This is intellectual vacuous and morally outrageous. It's also not
productive, helpful or fun.
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