On Oct 13, 2011, at 4:16 PM, MarshaV wrote:
>
> 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")
Here Bubba, here's something to take the Jamesian community:
"It says there are two basic kinds of Quality, an undefined Quality called
Dynamic Quality, and a defined quality called static quality. Static quality is
further divided into four evolutionary divisions: inorganic, biological, social
and intellectual. Our entire understanding of the world can be organized within
this framework. When you do so things fall into place that were poorly defined
before, and new things appear that were concealed under previous frameworks of
understanding. The MOQ is not intended to deny previous modes of understanding
as much as to expand them into a more inclusive picture of what it's all about.
"
(RMP, 'A brief summary of the Metaphysics of Quality")
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