David and Ron --
On June 1, 2011 at 11:53AM, dmb <[email protected]> wrote:
I agree with Ron. Ham's key terms are so highly abstract that they don't
even refer to anyone's actual experience. The whole system of relations
is purely verbal, untestable in experience and unusable in life. This is
exactly
what James hated most about the rationalistic philosophers, especially the
Absolutists. Ham's Essentialism seems to be a matter of moving a few
pieces
around on some metaphysical chessboard and none of those pieces makes
contact with actual experience at any point. The game is confined to those
64 squares and none of the moves makes a difference to anyone or anything.
That's vicious abstractionism. That's why reification is a real problem.
This is an abuse of concepts and such misuse is to be avoided because it
will lead you down a dead-end road, lead you into confusion and isolation
and endless arguments about nothing at all.
That's an unfair criticism, David. Actual experience is the basis of
empirical knowledge, not metaphysical conceptualization, as you should know.
Metaphysics is always "abstraction". Can you cite a philosopher, other than
Pirsig, who provided "testable" data for a metaphysical theory? Pirsig
defined four levels of DQ. I suppose you don't consider this hierarchy an
abstraction, but is it experientially testable? If the author couldn't even
define Quality, how could he posit his fundamental principle as a "reality"?
And if Quality is not an abstraction, how is it that we are still arguing
about its nature?
[DMB quoting Pirsig]:
"Historically mystics have claimed that for a true understanding of
reality
metaphysics is too 'scientific.' Metaphysics is not reality. Metaphysics
is
names about reality. Metaphysics is a restaurant where they give you a
thirty-thousand page menu and no food."
"The central reality of mysticism, the reality that Phaedrus had called
'Quality' in his first book, is not a metaphysical chess piece. Quality
doesn't
have to be defined. You understand it without definition, ahead of
definition.
Quality is a direct experience independent of and prior to intellectual
abstractions."
Pirsig had disdain for metaphysics, so he ridiculed it as "names about
reality", a "menu without food," etc. What he really wanted to do was
reduce metaphysics to the experiential level. (Oops! ...that's one he
didn't name.) Oh well, we'll just equate Quality to Experience and avoid
the need for definitions altogether. It's a nice euphemism, but hardly a
metaphysical thesis.
For one thing, we don't "directly experience Quality independent of
intellectual abstractions." Quality is an assessment of the aesthetic or
moral value of a phenomenon relative to other phenomena experienced or
observed. That involves memory recall, intellectual judgment, and
sufficient experience with the type of phenomenon in question to make such
an assessment. (And please don't quote me the hot stove analogy again.
Getting one's ass burned is not experiencing Quality--high or low, positive
or negative--it's feeling pain.)
If I'm guilty of "vicious abstractionism", your esteemed author is at least
guilty of "extreme reifiication".
IMHO.
--Ham
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