Hi All, As with any movement with those devoted to its cause, there are those who take a dogmatic stance. I have had discussions with Christians who quote the bible to me as if it were truth, and Buddhists who have done the same. There are those who try to use whatever coercive rhetoric they can so that their opinions appear to be the most credible.
Dmb appears to be one of these people. I was interested why dmb was so fanatical about James, so I took some time to reread some of his stuff. Sure, James is spiritual, but we knew that from this Varieties essays. I appears to me that dmb quotes James completely out of context. It is as if he scours the literature to find some quote which will support his position. I can easily find selective quotes from James which will completely deny dmb's position. He seems to do the same with Pirsig by carefully selecting quotes so that he appears to be right. This is not worthy of this forum, and dmb is rapidly loosing his credibility. He pretends that he is on James' or Pirsig's side when he provides selective quotes, and then berates us for being against Pirsig (see below) if we don't agree with him. Not only is this misleading, but it lacks honesty. To claim a Truth is out of order in MoQ, we should all know that. To say that something is not true (see below) is missing the whole point and relies on some Western concept of truth. This certainly sets MoQ back. I am fine with contributors expressing their opinions, but when they say that they speak for Pirsig, I find it annoying. I would hope that some will desist from taking selective quotes out of context and then admonish us for not believing what they are proposing. It is not conducive to progress in this discipline. Of course, people can do anything they want, and this is just my humble opinion. Regards, Mark On Fri, Mar 18, 2011 at 6:45 AM, david buchanan <[email protected]> wrote: > > Mary said to Arlo: > I'm exposing the idea that Pirsig's MoQ offers a metaphysics with much > greater explanatory power than James'. James' ideas are provincial. If you > were not human, you would find his theories quaint and limited. The MoQ, on > the other hand, proposes a static evolutionary system that would be true no > matter what the starting point of a universe. > > dmb says: > That's not true, actually. James says that we can think of the entire > universe as noetic all the way down, but not in a grand unified way. It's a > Pluralistic universe in which "everything gets known by something". Also, > James and Pirsig are both radically humanist but neither is a subjectivist or > a solipsist. > > Mary continued: > Let's say time and mass were not the initial SPOVs in some alternate > universe. I am suggesting that the SQ evolutionary logic Pirsig has employed > would hold equally well under any conditions while James' would not have > relevance. > > dmb says: > Actually, that's not true either. James talks about how some genius in the > distant past invented the idea of objects and he says that it could have > turned out differently. > I strongly suspect that you don't know much about James and you've certainly > offered no reason or basis for making these claims. And I happen to know that > they're simply wrong. > Besides, since Pirsig it was himself who decided to write and published those > chapters in Lila comparing James with the MOQ, dismissing James is to > disrespect and disregard the views of the thinker you are ostensibly > defending. > > > > > > 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/md/archives.html > 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/md/archives.html
