Hi dmb, > 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.
If we think in dichotomies as if there is one 'true' explanation of things, as if it's SOM vs MOQ then I can see how you would be drawn to this conclusion. But as we both know, the MOQ isn't anti-SOM. All ideas are just as good as they always were. Including the ideas that are good in SOM. However, apart from the academic texts you mention below and a few others, there just hasn't been much interest in the MOQ. There are millions of academics who are stuck in the paradoxes and problems which SOM creates and stay stuck because they don't seem to know any better.. You seem to underestimate the power of the MOQ. It brings great perspective to a whole slew of problems created by SOM. Using the language of the MOQ, these problems are made a whole lot more clearer using the language of the MOQ than when not. > 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. Yes, american pragmatists like Dewey and James reject SOM and yet they provide the general solution (pragmatism). But do they specifically say that good should be placed before truth? Almost: "Truth is a species of good.' That was right on. That was exactly what is meant by the Metaphysics of Quality. Truth is a static intellectual pattern within a larger entity called Quality. James had tried to make his pragmatism popular by getting it elected on the coattails of practicality. He was always eager to use such expressions as 'cash-value,' and 'results,' and 'profits,' in order to make pragmatism intelligible to 'the man in the street,' but this got James into hot water. Pragmatism was attacked by critics as an attempt to prostitute truth to the values of the marketplace. James was furious with this misunderstanding and he fought hard to correct the misinterpretation, but he never really overcame the attack… What Phaedrus saw was that the Metaphysics of Quality avoided this attack by making it clear that the good to which truth is subordinate is intellectual and Dynamic Quality, not practicality." James gets caught out by not having a Metaphysics from which to make his argument. James underestimates the problem and says that what's good is what's practical because social and intellectual quality in the victorian period in which James grew up were very confused. See the problem isn't just that truth ought to be a species of good - but the problem is a whole metaphysical outlook which places truth first. If you remove truth you need to replace it with something else. And once you replace truth with something else then who's to say that the way we break up truth is the best way to break up that new thing? That's what Pirsig saw. He could see that once you replace truth with quality a whole new perspective can be found and this is a fundamental shift in the way we have thought in the Western world for the last two thousand years.. "What the Metaphysics of Quality adds to James' pragmatism and his radical empiricism is the idea that the primal reality from which subjects and objects spring is value. By doing so it seems to unite pragmatism and radical empiricism into a single fabric. Value, the pragmatic test of truth, is also the primary empirical experience. The Metaphysics of Quality says pure experience is value. Experience which is not valued is not experienced. The two are the same. This is where value fits. Value is not at the tail-end of a series of superficial scientific deductions that puts it somewhere in a mysterious undetermined location in the cortex of the brain. Value is at the very front of the empirical procession." So, there are huge metaphysical strengths to the MOQ which James never mentions: He gets close to the MOQ's first division where he writes (as you often note): 'There must always be a discrepancy between concepts and reality, because the former are static and discontinuous while the latter is dynamic and flowing.' But he claimed that (according to Pirsig) radical empiricism and his pragmatism were separate.. "The second of James' two main systems of philosophy, which he said was independent of pragmatism, was his radical empiricism." He never combined them because he never placed quality first in his Metaphysical outlook. So with this in mind, does either James or Dewey specifically say that good is best left undefined fundamentally? No. Do they say that what's good ought to be divided into how evolved it is? No. These are huge strengths of the MOQ and when things are viewed in this way things are made incredibly more coherently than when not. James and Dewey, while they are correct in the general area of philosophy which is the solution and James specifically, mentions the fact that truth is a species of good and that our concepts can never match a 'dynamic and flowing' reality, the lack the clear Metaphysical outlook which the MOQ brings. Now all that said. Does that mean your masters is bad? No. I think it's a really good thing to integrate the MOQ into academia. That's why I wrote to Dan about how it is being neglected by academia on the whole to begin with. Thesis like yours are a key part of the solution. James is indeed the closest philosopher to the MOQ and so anything linking him to the MOQ can only be a good thing. > 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. Here you seem to create a straw man where I've written "I'm not interested in truth". It is your mistake to lump me in with Marsha not mine. > 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. Right. They are similar and as I've stated thesis like yours which point out these similarities to other academics are good steps in the right direction. > 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. >From Lila: "James was furious with this misunderstanding and he fought hard to correct the misinterpretation, but he never really overcame the attack." I agree. The MOQ also has not been wholly accepted by academia. But unlike James, I don't think this is for lack of explanatory power. The MOQ can explain itself quite beautifully. > 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. Right. I agree with all of that. > 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. Right I agree. As I wrote to Dan, trying to understand things from another persons perspective, logic and reasoning are all vital to intellectual discussion. These are things which Marsha doesn't value. -David. Moq_Discuss mailing list Listinfo, Unsubscribing etc. http://lists.moqtalk.org/listinfo.cgi/moq_discuss-moqtalk.org Archives: http://lists.moqtalk.org/pipermail/moq_discuss-moqtalk.org/ http://moq.org/md/archives.html
