dmb said to Harding:
It seems pretty clear to me that you raised all of these objections before you
even finished reading the post. If you'd continued to read carefully, you might
have noticed that your main objection (that James's pragmatic truth lacks the
metaphysical framework of the MOQ) simply isn't true. ...Let me repeat the
crucial moment for you: "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."
David Harding replied:
Quoting yourself is no proof dmb. I have offered quotes where Pirsig disputes
the fact that he and James were saying exactly the same thing. You might find
my line of reasoning a little less bizarre if you stopped for a second to try
and understand what I am saying.
dmb says:
But that is a case of disputing a claim that nobody made. Nobody said they were
exactly the same AND I explicitly denied making any such claim. I'm not going
to defend a position I do not hold and I'd be happy to talk about the
differences between Pirsig and James - but not right now. I'm NOT quoting
myself in order to "prove" anything so much as I'm repeating myself because
you're not understanding what my actual claim is. In fact, your main objection
was already addressed by my actual claim before you even raised it.
I realize that you're raising other objections, David. But please let us focus
on your main objection. We can get to the other issues later, if you like, but
let's take a look at your main objection first. This is not an evasion, I
swear. In fact, I've already worked out a good reply to the objections you've
raised with respect to the misinterpretation of James's Pragmatic truth as
"cash value" and I'd be happy to discuss other related issues but not right
now. Other issues like that will be much easier to deal with if we address your
main concern first. And this time I will include textual evidence on that
point. Okay?
David Harding said to dmb:
Did James ever *specifically* say that he thought the problem was one of
metaphysics? No. Did James ever *specifically* say that the world is best seen
when one places quality first metaphysically and everything else second? No.
...The MOQ, unlike James alternative, goes much deeper than problems of utility
or the stock exchange. It goes to the problem which is at the very heart of
Western philosophy - SOM. The MOQ is a metaphysics which is an answer to the
problems created by SOM over the last two millennia. This was never
articulated by James because he never saw it worth mentioning. Critics of
Pirsig cannot say he was trying to replace truth with values of the
marketplace. Pirsig has clearly identified the problem (SOM exclusivity) and
the solution - the MOQ.
dmb says:
I take this to be your main objection. That is the point I'm addressing in this
post and I'm going to show you that your objection is unfounded. (I think I
already did, actually, but you're not yet seeing that I did.) In direct
opposition to your negative answers to these questions, I can answer "yes" in
each case. Did James think the problem of truth was one of metaphysics? YES.
Did James put Quality first and make truth a secondary manifestation? YES. Did
James specifically attack SOM as the problem at the very heart of Western
philosophy? YES.
William James in “A World of Pure Experience”:
“The first great pitfall from which a radical standing by experience will save
us is an artificial conception of the relations between knower and known.
Throughout the history of philosophy the subject and its object have been
treated as absolutely discontinuous entities” and their relations have “assumed
a paradoxical character which all sorts of theories had to be invented to
overcome.”
Robert Pirsig explaining James's radical empiricism in Lila:
“The second of James’ two main systems of philosophy …was his radical
empiricism. By this he meant that subjects and objects are not the starting
points of experience. Subjects and objects are secondary. They are concepts
derived from something more fundamental which he described as ‘the immediate
flux of life which furnishes the material to our later reflection with its
conceptual categories’. In this basic flux of experience, the distinctions of
reflective thought, such as those between consciousness and content, subject
and object, mind and matter, have not yet emerged in the forms which we make
them. Pure experience cannot be called either physical of psychical: it
logically precedes this distinction” (LILA 365).
And here is the contemporary scholar John Stuhr explaining Dewey's rejection of
SOM:
“In beginning to understand his view, it cannot be overemphasized that Dewey is
not using the word ‘experience’ in its conventional sense. For Dewey,
experience is not to be understood in terms of the experiencing subject, or as
the interaction of a subject and object that exist separate from their
interaction. Instead, Dewey’s view is radically empirical” wherein “experience
is an activity in which subject and object are unified and constituted as
partial features and relations within this ongoing, unanalyzed unity”.
Here is Dewey explaining his rejection of SOM in “The Need for a Recovery of
Philosophy”:
“The characteristic feature of this prior notion [SOM] is the assumption that
experience centres in, or gathers about, or proceeds from a centre or subject
which is outside the course of natural existence, and set over against it”
(PCAP 449). This “prior notion” is what radical empiricism is rejecting. It is
seen as a mistake and as the source of many fake problems in philosophy. As
Stuhr puts it, “the error of materialists and idealists alike” is “the error of
conferring existential status upon the products of reflection” (PCAP 437).
And finally, David Granger neatly includes all three of our radical empiricists
on this point:
"...Dewey and Pirsig also argue that experience or Quality is ultimately a
continuous, ongoing phenomenon. The sorting process [into conceptual categories
upon reflection] never effects a complete break in the course of events.
Experience, they claim, really begins with the initiation of life and ends with
its cessation. [As Pirsig says, the only ones who don't do metaphysics are the
unborn.] One is at no time 'outside' of it, in other words, because the
'interaction of the live creature and environing conditions is involved in the
very process of living'. And because it is born of the continual interaction
between organism and environment, qualitative immediacy is what James famously
called 'double-barrelled,' meaning that it 'recognizes in its primary integrity
no division between act and material, subject and object'. This
double-barrelledness,.. is a key feature of the theory of sense-making that
came to be known as 'radical empiricism'."
dmb continues:
See, here you have five different voices (James, Dewey, Pirsig, Stuhr and
Granger) using slightly different terms and yet they are all attacking SOM in
the same way. Actually, there are six if you count my voice too.
Now it seems to me that this is more than enough textual evidence to meet your
objection. This is more than enough to shatter that objection into a million
tiny pieces. These quotes are going to be totally convincing if and only if you
understand their meaning. This quotes will register as a valid response to your
objection only if you're able to see that they're all talking about the same
concepts despite the use of various terms for those concepts. In other words,
you have to do some translations. In the last quote from Granger, for example,
we see that in talking about Dewey and Pirsig, he uses the phrase "experience
or Quality" because they are interchangeable terms, because they both refer to
the same idea. This same notion is variously referred to as "the immediate flus
of life," as "Pure Experience," as an "ongoing, unanalyzed unity," which is
very much like Pirsig's "undivided experience" and his "pre-intellectual
cutting edge of experience," and as a "qualitative immediacy".
You can see this in the Stanford Encyclopedia of Philosophy too:
"For Nishida [leader of the Kyoto school of Japanese Philosophy back in
James's day], experience in its original form is not the exercise of
individuals equipped with sensory and mental abilities who contact an exterior
world; rather it precedes the differentiation into subject experiencing and
object experienced, and the individual is formed out of it. ..'Pure experience”
names not only the basic form of every sensuous and every intellectual
experience but also the fundamental form of reality, indeed the “one and only
reality” from which all differentiated phenomena are to be understood. [As
Pirsig puts it, 'Quality is the source and substance of everything'.] Cognitive
activities such as thinking or judging, willing, and intellectual intuition are
all derivative forms of pure experience but identical to it insofar as they are
in act—when thinking, willing, etc. are going on. ...Pure experience launches
the dynamic process of reality that differentiates into subjective and
objective phenomena on their way to a higher unity, and the recapture of our
unitary foundation is what Nishida means by the Good. Nishida would deny that
his position is a kind of idealism, either subjective or transcendental,
because no subjective mind, human or divine, is the origin of what is taken as
reality, and no personified or ego-aware spirit is its beginning or end. His
notion of pure experience clearly shows the influence of William James, Ernst
Mach, and others, but it differs from their notions as well..."
dmb says:
Pure experience is the centerpiece of a larger, radical empiricism, one that
rejects the assumptions that created the epistemic gap between subjects and
objects in the first place. This gap is predicated on “an artificial conception
of the relations between knower and known,” James says, and this fake problem
is his first target. The history of philosophy has shown that all sort of
theories have been invented to overcome this gap, he says. Some theories put a
mental representation into the gap, common-sense theories left the gap
untouched, believing that our minds could just make the leap and, he tells us,
and the Transcendentalists brought their Absolute in to perform this epic task.
James and Pirsig, on the other hand, say that subjects and objects are not the
conditions that make experience possible. The are not the starting points of
reality, they are products of reflection or secondary concepts. As James puts
it, inner and outer are just names for the way we sort experience. They are
static concepts derived from experience. To supposed that these terms mirror
Nature’s own divisions or otherwise correspond to pre-existing ontological
categories is to reify these concepts. This reification, as Stuhr puts it, is
“the error of conferring existential status upon the products of reflection”.
Under our radical empiricists, subjects and objects are de-reified or
un-reified. They are stripped of their metaphysical, ontological status and
otherwise demoted to the rank of mere concept – thereby eliminating SOM's
dualism and replacing it with an experiential monism. For our radical
empiricists, experience and reality amount to the same thing. This is the
context in which James and Pirsig make their claims about pure experience or
the pre-intellectual cutting edge of experience. This is how they share a
common metaphysical framework and their common pragmatic theory of truth fits
into that framework in the same way.
That was EXACTLY what is meant by the MOQ. Truth is a static intellectual
pattern WITHIN a larger entity called Quality." (Lila -- Emphasis is Pirsig's)
Do you see how all this defeats your objection, David? If not, feel free to ask
for clarifications.
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