John said:
It seems to me, dmb, that you are the one who evades contrary evidence in an
intellectually dishonest fashion. I've posted Pirsig's response to Bradley's
Absolute Idealism many, many times and you've always evaded the plain truth of
the matter. ... And every time I offer it to you, you ignore it and me in the
hopes that I'll just go away. For you certainly have no real logical arguments
of your own to counter me or you'd have offered them long ago. ... "Childish
behavior" is screwing your eyes shut in the hopes that the scary stuff goes
away. That's what YOU have been doing dave, not me. So I guess it's more of
that "projection" thing that you do.
dmb says:
Really? You're going to do the rubber and glue thing again? You're going to
pretend that I didn't already address this several times? I don't know if you
sincerely forget, if you're playing some kind of game or if you're just foolish
liar. In any case, your accusations are not true and their falsity can be
easily proven. The following is one of my responses to this same question. It
was posted on the 22nd of August and you can find it in the archives.
dmb says:
No, actually Pirsig ends up embracing Bradley because Bradley is a mystic. Here
is Pirsig's statement in a fuller context:
As was stated in ZMM there was a time many years ago when I looked through the
pantheon of philosophers for resemblances to the MOQ. Since Bradley was always
classified as an idealist, it did not seem important to investigate him
thoroughly because the MOQ rejects the metaphysical assertion that the
fundamental reality of the world is idea.But the description of Bradley as an
idealist is completely incorrect. Bradley’s fundamental assertion is that the
reality of the world is intellectually unknowable, and that defines him as a
mystic.So It has really been a shock to see how close Bradley is to the MOQ.
Both he and the MOQ are expressing what Aldous Huxley called "The Perennial
Philosophy," which is perennial, I believe, because it happens to be true.
Bradley has given an excellent description of what the MOQ calls Dynamic
Quality and an excellent rational justification for its intellectual
acceptance. It and the MOQ can be spliced together with no difficulty into a
broader explanation of the same thing.A singular difference is that the MOQ
says the Absolute is of value, a point Bradley may have thought so obvious it
didn't need mentioning. The MOQ says that this value is not a property of the
Absolute, it is the Absolute itself, and is a much better name for the Absolute
than "Absolute." Rhetorically, the word "absolute" conveys nothing except
rigidity and permanence and authoritarianism and remoteness. "Quality," on the
other hand conveys flexibility, impermanence, here-and-now-ness and freedom.
And it is a word everyone knows and loves and understands—even butcher shops
that take pride in their product. Beyond that the term, “value,” paves the
way for an explanation of evolution that did not occur to Bradley. He
apparently avoided discussing the world of appearances except to emphasize the
need to transcend it. The MOQ returns to this world of appearances and shows
how to understand these appearances in a more constructive way.
dmb continues:See? He's saying he rejects idealism and didn't investigate
Bradley because he was labeled an idealist. But Pirsig is surprised to find in
Copleston's text a description of Bradley's position that makes him a mystic
who's giving expression to the perennial philosophy. Bradley is close to the
MOQ but NOT because he is an Absolute Idealist. He rejects the notion that the
world is idea as well as the rigidity and authoritarianism of idealism, but
that's not what he finds in Bradley so he doesn't see those reasons to reject
it.
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