Hi dmb, We can look at whether or not RMP invokes an appearance-reality problem at some point, but we ought to focus on the question of what (if anything) Matt and I getting wrong with regards to DQ? My understanding of you position is that there is always a discrepancy between primary reality and concepts (this much is granted for what it's worth) and that that discrepancy constitutes an important philosophical problem to be solved (this part is under dispute). You are insisting that Matt and I fail to make enough of the discrepancy between concepts and reality to be getting DQ right. In contrast you feel that you have a proper understanding of Pirsig's concept of DQ which helps you constantly keep that discrepancy in mind and in doing so are able to get in touch with DQ in ways that Matt and I can't. I noted that since this discrepancy is a problem with our concepts, then it is merely secondary. If it is a problem at all, it is not the problem you say it is. It is not a problem with being in touch with primary experience (DQ). You don't find any therapeutic value (philosophical consolation) in that idea. Ok, fine. Here is how pragmatism dissolves the supposed problem of the discrepancy between concepts and primary reality so that no consolation is even needed:
Consider that our descriptions are always descriptions for a purpose. Our descriptions can only be thought to fail to capture primary reality if it is thought that "capturing reality" was the purpose of describing to begin with. A pragmatist is one who has given up the idea that descriptions ought to be adequate to reality and replaced it with the idea that descriptions ought to be adequate to the human purposes for which the descriptions were made. The discrepancy between concepts and reality, is only a problem for one who still hopes to find that one set of true descriptions of The Way Things Really Are. But we have agreed that none of us are that sort of person. We've absorbed the lesson that there is always a discrepancy between our concepts and reality so well, that "Is this description adequate to reality?" is a question we are no longer inclined to ask (or are you still so inclined?). At this point, our descriptions NEVER fail to adequately capture reality. It's not a problem. You know why? Because that was not the goal we have for describing. We can't fail at something we weren't trying to do. Now, before you respond with a bunch of quotes suggesting that Pirsig (or some other scholar) still sees a worrying problem to be solved in the concepts/reality discrepancy. That may very well be the case (some people surely do), but that is a separate question and no _argument_ about whether there is something important that Matt and I are missing in our own philosophies. However, if you have some _argument_, some line of reasoning, (or if you find Pirsig or anyone else to have one) for why one who does not think of descriptions as having the purpose of constituting an adequate representation of reality should nevertheless find it problematic and important to constantly say that there is a discrepancy between concepts and reality, then I'd be interested to hear about it. Best, Steve On Sat, Oct 8, 2011 at 7:40 PM, david buchanan <[email protected]> wrote: > > Steve said to dmb: > What I am disagreeing with is the idea that we ought to privilege certain > experiences as "primary" while trivializing others as "secondary" along the > lines of concepts being distinct from rather than part of reality. ...Ideas > aren't any more secondary than anything else though he > [Pirsig] seems to say they are in some places. As Matt said previously and I > agreed with him, Pirsig seems to backslide into some Platonic > appearance-reality crap at various points, and we would prefer that he hadn't > done that (or leave himself so open to being construed that way if he wants > to avoid it). > > dmb says: > You are disagreeing with your own misreading. I'm convinced the distortion is > a result of reading the MOQ with a Rortian lens, as I explained in the last > post. You're interpreting the MOQ's first and most basic distinction as if it > were a version of the appearance-reality distinction and then rejecting it > for being a form of Platonism. Platonism? C'mon guys, that's hardly > plausible, maybe even laughable. Phaedrus called Socrates and liar and > Aristotle and asshole. He says Plato is a low, mean, vicious slanderer. He's > not exactly subtle about it, you know? > > Plato is the father of rationalism while Pirsig is radically (all the way > down to the roots) empirical. Philosophers don't get much more opposed than > that. Pirsig is on the side of Plato's enemies, a defender of all the artists > who were denigrated by the Socratic demand intelligibility (just like > Nietzsche did in his Birth of Tragedy). In fact, set of the ground rules in > radical empiricism is to rule out Platonic metaphysics. It was virtually > designed to sink Absolutism or any kind of excessively intellectualist > approach. To translate the first rule into the contemporary American > vernacular, radical empiricism says reality is what we actually experience > and everything else is bullshit. The pragmatic theory of truth says that if > your ideas don't make a difference in experience, they're bullshit. ( I love > how much bullshit there isn't.) The main thrust of this, of course, is to > insist that there is no reality (worth discussing) beyond reality as it > appears to us. There is no ve > il to be lifted here. > > If the MOQ's primary empirical/secondary conceptual distinction were > equivalent to the Platonic reality/appearance distinction, then DQ would > somehow have to be equal to the Platonic Forms or Ideas and static concepts > would have to somehow be equal to the world of sight and sound. Clearly, > that's backwards. Unlike Plato's "real" reality, DQ very empirical and is > nothing like an ideal form. Unlike Plato, Pirsig says ideas are always > secondary in the sense that they are derived from experience and their value > lies in their ability to work in experience. Ideas are not outside of reality > and they aren't supposed to represent the real reality, but they have to > function in reality. They have to agree with reality in the sense that they > serve life, in the sense that they have to answer to life as it's actually > lived. That is where our concepts and abstractions come from and that's where > they are tried and tested. That's what our ideas are about; life as it's > lived. As Charlene Seigr > ied says, "The pragmatic stance is that we seek to know, not for its own > sake, but to enable us to live better." (Seigfried in "James's Radical > Reconstruction", page 323.) Or, as James says, 'The world is surely the TOTAL > world, including our mental reaction." (Seigfried, 356.) 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