Hi dmb, > 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. See how I've highlighted the word specifically? James's problem wasn't > one of understanding the problem. He understood the problem. It was one of > how he went about articulating his understanding of the problem and his > solution to it. James gets caught out articulating his solution to the > problem because he fails to tackle the problem in the fundamental way Pirsig > does. Pirsig realised the source of the problem extends all the way back to > ancient greek times and that many of our modern day philosophical problems > can be traced back to this time when truth was placed before what was good. > He thus realised that the problem was a metaphysical one and that thus a new > metaphysics is what is required because it doesn't logically follow that the > best way to break up what's true is the same as the best way to break up > what's good. He gave these *two metaphysics* two different names to > highlight their fundamental difference. Again, no other philosopher that you > mention below has done this.. > > dmb says: > So now you are objecting because James doesn't articulate the problem and > solution in the same specific terms? Well, even if that were true, it would > still be a very silly and trivial reason to reject anything. But it's not > even true, David. Pirsig himself tells us that William James rejects SOM and > instead puts forth a metaphysic of Pure Experience and the term "Pure > Experience" is what Pirsig calls DQ. What purpose does it serve to be so > inflexible with respect to names and labels? What purpose would it serve to > be so unimaginative with respect to ideas? With all due respect, your > objections are baseless and petty. Since you continue to demand what was > contained in the textual evidence I already presented, I can only conclude > that you're just not understanding the facts of the matter. And so I don't > have the gumption to try any further. > > "Metaphysics has usually followed a very primitive kind of quest. You know > how men have always hankered after unlawful magic, and you know what a great > part in magic words have always played. If you have his name, or the formula > of incantation that binds him, you can control the spirit, genie, afrite, or > whatever the power may be. Solomon knew the names of all the spirits, and > having their names, he held them subject to his will. So the universe has > always appeared to the natural mind as a kind of enigma, of which the key > must be sought in the shape of some illuminating or power-bringing word or > name. That word names the universe’s principle, and to possess it is after a > fashion to possess the universe itself. ‘God’, ‘Matter’, ‘Reason’, ‘the > Absolute’, ‘Energy’, are so many solving names. You can rest when you have > them. You are at the end of your metaphysical quest. > But if you follow the pragmatic method, you cannot look on any such word as > closing your quest. You must bring out of each word its practical cash-value, > set it at work within the stream of your experience. It appears less as a > solution, then, than as a program for more work, and more particularly as an > indication of the ways in which existing realities may be changed. > Theories thus become instruments, not answers to enigmas, in which we can > rest. We don’t lie back upon them, we move forward, and, on occasion, make > nature over again by their aid. Pragmatism unstiffens all our theories, > limbers them up and sets each one at work." -- William James, Pragmatism
I keep saying I like James dmb. I like the quote you provide above. But what I don't like is where he starts saying we "must bring out of each word its practical cash value". He's trying to communicate his ideas in a way which people understand, but it's so open to criticism and confusion he just loses me there. This is all I've ever been saying. You can go back and have a look at my writing and that's all you will see.. As Pirsig makes clear - saying that things are good for their practical value opens oneself up to criticism that all things are good because of their social value. The Nazis could say James' practicality was good because their social programs were 'practical'… The MOQ creates a second Metaphysics which isn't based on practicality or anything else. It is intelligently divided into levels of quality based on how evolved they are.. These divisions and the separation from SOM make it immune to such attacks of mere practicality and many other typical SOM attacks.... So really, it's interesting to me that you disagree with Pirsig dmb, where he writes: "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. The misunderstanding of James occurred because there was no clear intellectual framework for distinguishing social quality from intellectual and Dynamic Quality, and in his Victorian lifetime they were monstrously confused. But the Metaphysics of Quality states that practicality is a social pattern of good. It is immoral for truth to be subordinated to social values since that is a lower form of evolution devouring a higher one. The idea that satisfaction alone is the test of anything is very dangerous, according to the Metaphysics of Quality. There are different kinds of satisfaction and some of them are moral nightmares. The Holocaust produced a satisfaction among Nazis. That was quality for them. They considered it to be practical. But it was a quality dictated by low-level static social and biological patterns whose overall purpose was to retard the evolution of truth and Dynamic Quality. James would probably have been horrified to find that Nazis could use his pragmatism just as freely as anyone else, but Phaedrus didn't see anything that would prevent it. But he thought that the Metaphysics of Quality's classification of static patterns of good prevents this kind of debasement." Thanks dmb, And I hope that you find the gumption within yourself to respond. -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
