DMB said to Matt:
...I can see how these two passages might seem contradictory to those who
haven't read Pirsig's books, to those who don't know this story. But you and
Marsha should clearly see that this is an imaginary problem.
Matt replied:
Perhaps, then, you didn't read what I said. Perhaps, though, you don't know
what "misleading" means. Perhaps, again, I have a greater sensitivity to, and
desire to be sensitive to, the range of inferential pathways.
dmb says:
Are you now claiming that you did not (or do not) see these two passages as
contradictory? I thought it was pretty clear that you were taking Marsha's
claim seriously, mostly because you said it ought to be taken seriously.
"What you've presented are two conflicting passages from Pirsig," you said to
Marsha. And then you went to explain, "How I [Matt] deal with the conflict: I
[Matt} don't take his statement in 2005 seriously." Your "strategy" for dealing
with this conflict, you said to her, "is to largely explain away the passage,
to ignore it in a sense". You can sensitively take this up any inferential path
you like. It still validates an imaginary conflict and it's downright insulting
to Pirsig. You often act like Pirsig's thought would be improved by ignoring or
dismissing some part of it. That is way too presumptuous and just plain
offensive. And your denial only insults me. I know what you said. If you don't
want to stand by it, then fine. But don't pretend you weren't playing along
with Marsha's imaginary contradiction. "Seriously" was your word for how it
ought to be taken. And if you can't or won't stand it, then just don't type it
up and post it. Write it on little piece of paper, if
you must. But then burn it and bury the ashes.
"The MOQ is a continuation of the mainstream of twentieth century American
philosophy, It is a form of pragmatism, of instrumentalism, which says the test
of the true is the good. It adds that this good is not a social code or some
intellectualized Hegelian Absolute. It is direct everyday experience." (Lila
366)
"The Metaphysics of Quality is not intended to be within any philosophic
tradition, although obviously it was not written in a vacuum. ... The
Metaphysics of Quality's central idea that the world is nothing but value is
not part of any philosophic tradition that I know of. I have proposed it
because it seems to me that when you look into it carefully it makes more sense
than all the other things the world is supposed to be composed of. One
particular strength lies in its applicability to quantum physics, where
substance has been dismissed but nothing except arcane mathematical formulae
has really replaced it." (RMP, 'A Brief Summary of the MOQ')
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