Steve said to dmb:
...My understanding of you position is that there is always a discrepancy
between primary reality and concepts 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.
dmb says:
Huh? The discrepancy between concepts and reality IS the distinction between
static quality and Dynamic Quality. Understanding DQ and understanding that
discrepancy is practically the same thing. That distinction is philosophical
and conceptual. I can't know anything about what Matt and you do to "get in
touch" with DQ. I only know about the words and sentences you post here and on
that basis I'm saying simply, "you don't get it".
Steve said:
...Here is how pragmatism dissolves the supposed problem of the discrepancy
between concepts and primary reality so that no consolation is even needed:...
A pragmatist is one who has given up the idea that descriptions ought to be
adequate to reality... 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. ...Now, before you respond with a bunch of quotes
suggesting that Pirsig still sees a worrying problem to be solved in the
concepts/reality discrepancy. That may very well be the case, 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, 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 co
nstantly say that there is a discrepancy between concepts and reality, then
I'd be interested to hear about it.
dmb says:
Like I already said, "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". Your response only repeats
the mistake, as if you were not responding to a post in which I already
explained how and why the MOQ's primary empirical/secondary conceptual
distinction is NOT equivalent to the Platonic reality/appearance distinction.
You're responding as if I didn't just say, "ideas 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 Seigried says, "The
pragmatic stance is that we seek to know, not for its own sake, but to enable
us to li
ve better." Or, as James says, 'The world is surely the TOTAL world,
including our mental reaction."
Why are you asking the question AFTER it's been answered? Don't you read the
posts you're supposedly responding to?
It makes no sense to push back against this discrepancy or distinction with
pragmatism because the claim is one pragmatist approvingly quoting another,
namely Pirsig quoting James. At the end of chapter 29, Pirsig says...
" 'There must always be a discrepancy between concepts and reality, because the
former are static and discontinuous while the latter is dynamic and flowing'
Here James had chosen exactly the same words Phaedrus had used for the basic
subdivision of the Metaphysics of Quality."
You and Matt are reading this as if it were a Platonic claim about the real
reality beyond appearances. It ain't. That's WHY you don't get DQ and the MOQ
central distinction. You've seen these words many times and you think you know
that they mean but I'm telling you that you've attached the wrong ideas to
those words and you are fundamentally confused about the MOQ as result.
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