Hi dmb,
Let us not forget what RMP wrote in October 2005:
"The Metaphysics of Quality is not intended to be within any philosophic
tradition, although obviously it was not written in a vacuum. My first
awareness that it resembled James' work came from a magazine review long after
“Zen and the Art of Motorcycle Maintenance” was published. 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.
...
"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?"
(http://www.robertpirsig.org/Intro.htm).
Marsha:
I am very interested in investigating the MoQ as a bridge between the East and
West. From RMP's initial interest in Northrop's 'Meeting of East and West: An
Inquiry Concerning World Understanding' and his recommendation of Steve Hagan's
book ‘Buddhism: Plain and Simple’, I think he is quite interested in
accommodating both East and West philosophies.
Thanks,
Marsha
On Sep 18, 2012, at 2:21 PM, david buchanan <[email protected]> wrote:
>
>
> dmb said to Arlo:
> I agree. If everything outside the MOQ is viewed as SOM, then that view will
> simply dismiss academia, science and philosophy. It's not very hard to see
> how this absurd position leads directly to an excessively robust
> anti-intellectualism.
>
>
> David H replied:
> I'm not sure how you could draw this conclusion. Far from rejecting
> academia, science and philosophy I think they would benefit greatly from the
> metaphysical language which the MOQ brings with it. Wouldn't you agree?
>
> dmb says:
> I agree that the MOQ is intended to improve rationality itself but that's not
> the point, David. The problem is misreading the scope and scale of SOM in
> such a way that it can be used to dismiss or condemn academia (and intellect)
> in general. The problem is this weird attitude that Pirsig is the only person
> in the world with a valid outlook, that no other philosopher ever escaped the
> grip of SOM. If that were true, then academia, science and philosophy would
> all be trapped in SOM unless and until they reformed themselves into the MOQ.
> That is way too stark and grandiose and it is profoundly anti-intellectual.
> It produces a contemptuous attitude toward intellectual work of just about
> any kind, of anything intellectual outside the MOQ. That's way too stark,
> grandiose and fantastic.
>
>
> David H continued:
> There might be other philosophies which reject the SOM outlook, but they
> would still all pretty much value truth as the most important thing and how
> it is supreme above all would they not? I would classify metaphysical
> outlooks which do not replace truth with something else as SOM based. ...The
> person who comes closest to the MOQ, as you note below, is James. This is
> confirmed by Pirsig in Lila. However James still didn't appreciate the
> magnitude of the problem.. He tried to explain himself but was still caught
> up in the SOM thinking of everyone else. He couldn't explain himself in a way
> that others would understand.
>
> dmb says:
> See, that's what I'm talking about. I'm quite certain that James was NOT
> caught up in SOM. It could be that you weren't hanging around when I posted
> ample evidence showing that James, Dewey and the contemporary scholars who
> write about them are quite explicit about rejecting SOM. James and Dewey are
> definitely in agreement with Pirsig on this point AND they also agree on the
> basic solution, on the alternative to SOM. See, so if James and Dewey are
> attacked as part of the problem, you've mistakenly attacked the solution.
> This is one of Marsha's crucial errors and it's contagious, apparently.
> This is what I've been saying about the pragmatic theory of truth, in fact.
> It is the solution, not the problem. The pragmatic theory of truth is what
> you get after you reject SOM's correspondence theory of truth. To say, "I'm
> not interested in truth," as Marsha does, is to say "I'm not interested in
> the MOQ's answer to the problem of SOM". The effect is to reject the MOQ's
> expanded rationality. Supposing I'm right, can you see what a HUGE mistake
> that would be? I'm constantly hammering this point against
> anti-intellectualism for that simple reason; because it is such an EPIC
> blunder.
> It is totally unreasonable to expect complete agreement between any two
> philosophers and nobody ever claimed that Pirsig and James were identical in
> every way. But they are so similar that it's downright spooky, especially
> considering that he never even mentioned James in his work until it was
> pointed out to him after his first book was published. Amazingly, Pirsig
> tells us, James had even adopted the terms "static" and "dynamic" to describe
> the relation between concepts and the immediate flux of experience. For both
> James and Pirsig, not to mention Dewey, truths exist within a larger entity.
> Pirsig calls it DQ whereas James calls it Pure Experience but both of their
> terms refer to the primary empirical reality, refer to cutting edge of
> experience. The objective truth of SOM is nowhere to be seen in their
> pragmatic theory of truth. Truths are true in relation to experience, not in
> relation to objective reality.
> And finally, while it's true that James has been misinterpreted since the day
> he was first published, it would be quite an exaggeration to say that nobody
> ever understood him. Dewey and Schiller did. Pirsig does. I do, thanks to
> Pirsig. And I was able to find contemporary scholars who seem to understand
> it as Pirsig does. In fact, Pirsig's idea of getting James two doctrines
> together, of fusing the pragmatic theory of truth with his radical
> empiricism, was already taking shape in James's mind and there are
> contemporary scholars who also think it's best to view pragmatism as "a
> special chapter" within radical empiricism.
>
>
> David H said:
> Right, well to defend myself here I was not bashing academia, I was doing the
> opposite in noting how important it is and how great it would be if the MOQ
> was accepted by academia.
>
>
> dmb says:
> Again, I'd say that paints a picture that's unrealistically stark and
> grandiose, as if Pirsig's work could single-handedly transform the whole
> academic world. It just doesn't work like that. It's more like a complex
> eco-system with many different ongoing conversations such that one can only
> realistic hope to have some real influence and impact on some of them.
> Pirsig's second book took that idea seriously, which is exactly why we find
> Pirsig preforming a little philosophological work with respect to his own
> MOQ, identifying it with mainstream American Pragmatism in general and
> William James in particular. Granger's thesis on Dewey and Pirsig was
> accepted by "academia" in Canada. McWatt's thesis on Pirsig (the world's
> first) was accepted by "academia" in the UK, not to mention the MOQ study day
> at Oxford. My little Master's thesis on James and Pirsig was accepted by
> "academia" in the USA. IN that sense, the MOQ has already been officially
> launched and is already part of "acade
> mia". There has been a resurgence of pragmatism among academic philosophers
> and so in terms of getting the MOQ into the mix, Pirsig's positioning and
> timing could hardly be better. BUT it's not as if the whole of academic
> philosophy marches in lockstep with the current fashions, which healthy and
> democratic. It's not like some academic Pope sets the doctrines down for
> everyone. It's always in motion, always a jungle of disagreements, disputes,
> dialogues and debates. All anyone can do is get in there and try to say
> something convincing and helpful. If this task is approached with
> anti-intellectual attitudes or the presumption that academic professionals
> are all guilty until proven innocent, there'd be zero chance of success.
>
> Don't take this criticism personally. I mean, the idea here is simply to
> criticize anti-intellectual interpretations of the MOQ, to explain why such a
> reading is wrong and - hopefully- how to eliminate that mistake and adopt a
> reading that doesn't make that mistake. All I have to go on, of course, is
> what people write. Beyond that, I can only guess at how others understand
> things, what their exact conception is like. But I think a real discussion of
> the matter absolutely depends on whether or not a person can honestly assess
> the substance of the criticism - as opposed to some kind of face-saving
> evasion or back-peddling. That's just pride getting in the way, you know? Is
> it really so horrible to be corrected. Are some people traumatized at the
> thought that somebody might be able to teach them something? That sort of
> attitude is extremely destructive in a situation like this, you know? A
> philosophy discussion group can't function rightly if the participants are
> unwilling to be
> criticized. Lashing out in anger is exactly the wrong reaction - assuming
> the criticism is reasonably fair, intelligent and directed against actual
> comments and assertions. The right reaction, obviously, is to make a sincere
> effort to understand the criticism and to answer it. We don't need a lot of
> fancy rules. It's just about being honest, fair, relevant and clear. We're
> supposed to be looking at ideas together precisely because there's always
> somebody who thought of something that you didn't see, because everybody
> needs to be corrected about something.
> What's the big deal about that, anyway. Is there any living person who isn't
> wrong about something every day? And yet there's always some hairy ego-drama
> going on. It spoils the party like nothing else. The egotistical reaction
> acts like cotton in the ears every time. I guarantee it. C'mon, admit it. We
> see it every freakin day in this place. It's almost nothing but. That's a
> shame. Literally.
>
>
>
>
>
>
>
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