Ron said:
The question of the self, freewill, morality, are those terms used in an MoQ,
should they be used, are best understood when we understand the aim of the
expansion of reason. "Greater explanitory power" means just that. Greater
explanitory power, not rejection of old concepts, the expansion of their
meaning. Therefore we should revel in the expansion of old ideas we should get
excited over discussing how they fit into a larger understanding.
dmb says:
Good point. The MOQ vastly expands upon the notion of morality, for example.
Lila's subtitle is "An Inquiry into Morals" and, as we all (except Steve,
perhaps) know, Pirsig's conception of morality is much, much broader than
usual. What usually passes for morality is just the what the MOQ calls social
level morality or church morality, which opposes vice and otherwise puts
restraints on biological urges and instincts.
Freedom is similarly expanded so that it goes all the way down, as opposed to
being limited to "rational" agents. Pirsig, James and Dewey are all on the same
page in this regard. As they see it, the disinterested observer is less likely
to see the truth of the matter, not more likely. As they see it, we can't think
very well unless we also include the aesthetic and affective dimensions, not to
mention the concrete particulars of life as it's lived. Rationality is going to
be enriched and expanded by adding these very real factors.
"In her pioneering book "Love's Knowledge", Martha Nussbaum reveals the
dominant modes of Western philosophy to be significantly at odds with Dewey and
Pirsig's express commitment to everyday experience. Her central claim is that
the expositional style typical of academic philosophy, and of twentieth century
Anglo-American analytic philosophy in particular, routinely lends an abstract,
formalistic character to its content - a character that tends to diminish
contextualized matters and belies this particularity. ...In reading much
Anglo-American philosophy, for instance, we are often confronted with an array
of prescribed methodologies - syllogistic procedures, hypothetical scenarios,
puzzles, and dilemmas - that almost invariably (and hence suspiciously) manage
to achieve the writer's aims neatly and efficiently. Yet they do so at the
expense of the concrete particulars of lived experience." (David Granger, page
10)
Take the beer can for example. If you're stuck on the idea that it can only
ever be a thing for holding beer, you'll never see what a beautiful shim it can
be. And yet, if you don't understand what shims do, you're going to stuck with
loose handlebars, which is the kind of mechanical problem that might kill you.
You send away to Krupps, spend way too much money and wait for a few weeks or
you can get out your tin snips and take any old can out of the recycling bin.
Bam, you're in business. It's about seeing things for what they are. It's about
really perceiving the situation for what it is, rather than snapping everything
into neat intellectual categories. We see a very similar lesson in his advice
to the dull writer who was told to begin her essay with a single brick. It
forced her to see for herself with fresh eyes, rather than trying to imitate
things she had heard before (which is only okay if you're a parrot).
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