dmb said to Marsha:
...These are metaphysical posits and that's what is being rejected, the notion
that there is some kind of entity behind thoughts and things.
Marsha replied:
Which exact "metaphysical posits" are you talking about. Posted by Pirsig's?
By Descartes? By Santa Claus's?
dmb says:
Wow. You're even more confused than I thought. The metaphysical posits I'm
talking about are subjects and objects and yes, they were posited by Descartes.
That's why Pirsig and lots of other philosophers call this subject "the
Cartesian self". It is the conception of the self adopted by most Modern
philosophers. That's what Pirsig and James are rejecting, not to mention John
Dewey and a whole bunch of other pragmatists. But, like I said, that doesn't
mean that Robert Pirsig is a fiction. Somehow, miraculously, he can reject the
Cartesian self and still collect royalty checks at his fixed address. Like I
said, Pirsig is saying that you and he are better conceived as a complex
ecology of processes rather than some essential thing. Pirsig is saying that
there is no entity that does the thinking or rather that the thinking itself is
the thinker.
Marsha said:
Ohhhhh, you have left the MoQ for a higher, broader intellectual context.
From what theoretical platform are these statements being made? Do I get a
hint?
dmb says:
No, I haven't left the MOQ. I'm simply telling you that the MOQ rejects what
SOM says about the self. And you're confusing that with the MOQ's conception of
the self. You're rejecting the complex ecology of static patterns along with
the Cartesian self, as if they were the same thing. They are not at all the
same. You're rejecting the MOQ's conception of the self as a ridiculous
fiction. Like I said, you're totally missing the point and you have a deeply
confused notion of what is being rejected.
Again - and it is not hyperbole - the consequences of your view is that it
leads to a rather vacuous nihilism. If you and me and Pirsig are all just
useful fictions, then the notion that static reality is made of value all the
way down is completely wrecked. In your hands, the whole evolutionary moral
hierarchy becomes some meaningless dream. Why worry about all the suffering
people in the world if they're just illusions?
No, that's just a disaster and it's also wildly incorrect. I mean, Pirsig is
asserting the reality of Quality and he's saying that our conceptual
understanding have real consequences in the world. Rejecting SOM isn't just
some academic exercise. It's about correcting the negative consequences at the
cultural and personal levels. Isn't the main point of the MOQ to assert that
excellence is the most real of all? The source and substance of everything.
Pirsig is saying it would be best to act as if reality - yes, all the normal,
conventional static realities, including ourselves - is made of values all the
way down. Treat the world and ourselves as static patterns of VALUE is going to
have very different consequences than would follow if we treated the same as a
fiction. The latter is a complete reversal of the MOQ's world and it would
result in an outrageous moral nightmare. Ironically, SOM already led us to the
same vacuous nihilism where nothing is right and nothing is wrong
because values aren't real. Everything just functions, like machinery. That's
the central problem the MOQ is supposed to address but your reading just puts
us right back in the meaningless soup of it all.
Look, on the common sense level the MOQ is just saying that the self is not
some disembodied soul or entity. INSTEAD, the MOQ says the self is a thing like
any other thing and exists in relation to things. The self is also a biological
organism with eyes and ears and everything and it exists in relation to other
biological organisms. The self is also a social being, a language user and
exists in relation to other members of the society. The self is also
(hopefully) an intellectual being whose understandings exist in relation to
wider discourse. And that complex ecology of static patterns exists within the
ongoing flux of life. Betterness is the game. Caring, engaged, artful living is
what it recommends.
Provisional does not mean fictional. Plural truth does not mean truth is an
illusion. Rejecting Descartes does not mean you get a life-long moral vacation.
Rejecting essentialist notions of fixed and eternal truths does not mean that
life is but a dream. If your ideas stink, reality will smack you up side your
head. These are concrete, empirical realities, not metaphysical speculations
about entities beyond our experience or the ultimate nature of the universe.
It's about what's good and right and true, right now, in English, here on
earth.
We don't need to make any questionable metaphysical claims to assert that
Robert Pirsig said this or thinks that. To pretend that we cannot cite the
author for mystical reasons is just completely ridiculous. Something like six
million copies of Zen and Art have been published so far. In what sense is that
not real? In what sense are concepts not real?
See you're conflating the problem with the solution all the way across the
board. The say that Pirsig has no inherent or independent existence is to
reject a specific essentialist or Platonic conception of existence, but it is
NOT a rejection of existence itself. C'mon, think about it. How would that
work? The MOQ rejects the fixed and eternal and replaces that conception with
one of process and evolution, a living, breathing reality. But you've taken
this to mean that nothing is real. You've turned it into new-age nonsense that
makes contact with concrete reality at no point. It's just nihilistic,
free-floating, relativistic dream.
Yuk. No thanks.
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