On Oct 13, 2011, at 2:31 PM, david buchanan wrote:
>
> Matt said to Ron:
>
> As I see it, great thinkers are worlds unto themselves in their writings, and
> knowing your way around them is knowing the hidden roads that connect those
> worlds, like worm holes. Or to vary to maps, I say "hidden" because it's not
> as if the map of Jamestown connects to Deweyland and Pirsigtopia at the
> edges, one map ending and another picking up where it left off. Every map
> describes the same world, and flipping back and forth between them, finding
> the hidden roads, is a matter of figuring out how they describe the same
> landmarks. "Oh, see, Pirsig calls that hill 'direct experience,' but Dewey
> calls it...wait, that's not that hill. Oh, this must be it: 'habits.' Boy,
> that's kind of weird..." It is an active, live investigation of flipping
> back and forth. And then, of course, one has one's own map...
>
>
>
> dmb says:
>
> Since James, Dewey and Pirsig all call themselves pragmatists and radical
> empiricists, flipping back and forth between them and otherwise using their
> terms interchangeably is not very difficult and, in fact, that's exactly what
> I've been doing.
>
> And even if you knew very little about Pirsig or Dewey, how could you fail to
> detect the similarities between phrases like "static intellectual patterns"
> and "thought habits". The only thing required to see a parallel here is
> familiarity with the english language. How is it possible for an educated
> person to fail to detect the similarity between, for example, "direct
> everyday experience" and "the immediate flux of life". There is nothing
> particularly hidden about the way these artists use the language. In the most
> crucial cases, James and Pirsig use EXACTLY the same terms; static and
> Dynamic and they both use them to mean the same thing. Pirsig praises James
> as an ally and James praises Dewey as an ally. It's all quite explicit and
> they all speak in standard American english.
>
> The problem is certainly not the inscrutable, cryptic or hidden nature of
> their work. The problem is that your man Rorty doesn't do empiricism or
> epistemology and so he has no use for that part of James and Dewey. If one is
> trying to see how they are parallel to Pirsig, Rorty is the wrong kind of
> pragmatist and he's not a radical empiricist at all. There is nothing Zen
> about him either. Obviously, it's a terrible mis-match (which is basically
> what Rorty himself told you about ten years ago). Your tenacious grip on this
> ill-fitting perspective has you intellectual paralyzed - as far as "getting"
> the MOQ is concerned. It's no accident, I suppose, that you end up
> eviscerating the MOQ in the same way that Rorty eviscerates James and Dewey.
> Apparently, this tenacious grip even prevents you from seeing the obvious
> parallels, as explained in previous paragraph above.
>
>
> The similarities between their terms, labels and ideas are so obvious to me
> that I'm really quite stunned by your baffled reaction. When this is added to
> the fact that you almost always delete all the evidence and the explanations
> from your responses, it does seem like you are simply being contemptuous,
> disingenuous and evasive. Why do you refuse to engage the substance of this
> debate? How many times have you bailed out?
>
"I also have a concern of my own. This is the concern that philosophers,
instead of coming to grips with the philosophy at hand, sometimes dismiss it by
saying, “Oh he is saying the same as someone else,” or “someone else has said
it much better.” This is the latter half of the well known conservative
argument that some new idea is (a) no good because it hasn't been heard it
before or (b) it is no good because it has been heard before. If, as has been
noted by R.C. Zaehner, once the Oxford University Professor of Eastern
Religions and Ethics, I am saying the same thing as Aristotle; and if, as has
been noted in the Harvard Educational Review, I am saying the same thing as
William James; and if as has been noted now that I may be saying the same thing
as Spinoza: then why has no one ever noticed that Aristotle and Spinoza and
William James are all saying the same thing?"
(RMP, 'A brief summary of the Metaphysics of Quality")
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