dmb said to Matt and Steve:
...really shows that you're both misreading the central concepts as well as the
main point and purpose of the MOQ. I mean, the over-arching theme is that, "our
current modes of rationality are not moving society forward into a better
world. They are taking it further and further from that better world," because,
Pirisg says, "the whole structure of reason, handed down to us from ancient
times, is no longer adequate. It begins to be seen for what it really
is...emotionally hollow, esthetically meaningless and spiritually empty." He
says this problem "can't be solved by rational means because the rationality
itself is the source of the problem". That's the problem you just denied. And
you reject the solution to the problem you don't recognize as legitimate.
Steve replied:
I did no such thing. ..Matt and I are talking about philosophy in terms of
making the world better. What I am trying to distinguish is the real problem of
making the world better from the fake problem of being out of touch with
reality. You seem to see the way to make the world better as to get in touch
with it while I see us as always already in touch with reality.
dmb says:
You deny that you are denying the problem and then you deny the problem again.
Unbelievable. Pirsig says our modes of rationality tend to prevent us from
seeing quality. It's the problem of squareness and attitudes of objectivity and
value-free science. If you ask, "how can the problem be that we aren't in
proper relation to it?", then you are saying that Pirsig's work is aimed at
solving a fake problem. The MOQ's solution IS exactly what you say it isn't.
Pirsig is saying that the world will be improved by a rationality that isn't
value-free, that prioritizes the empirical reality from which our concepts come
and to which they must answer. It is NOT concepts RATHER than an intimacy with
reality that will improve things. It is a form of rationality that has a
working concept of Quality built right into it, from the ground up.
The discrepancy, properly understood, puts concepts into a secondary role so
that they are subservient to Quality instead of the other way around. Concepts
are functional tools that operate within reality, and this reality is directly
empirical so that the LAST thing you'd contrast it with is the world of
appearance or the phenomenal. In that sense, in the MOQ the "real" reality is
just what appears in the immediate flux of life, in direct everyday experience.
This is as far from any objective or Platonic reality as one can get. The
"real" Platonic reality and the pre-existing objective reality are considered
to be secondary concepts, reified secondary concepts, in the MOQ.
"Subjects and objects are secondary. They are concepts derived from something
more fundamental which [James] described as 'the immediate flux of life [DQ]
which furnishes the material to our later reflection with its conceptual
categories [sq]'."
" '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."
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