On 2/22/13 9:44 AM, "David Buchanan" <[email protected]> wrote:
OK, Dave you're just vicious for no purpose, then. You've already admitted that static patterns of quality change. I get, and believe Marsha gets, from the start the point you make below. Now you want to quibble about the "ever" part of "ever changing." Since you imagine yourself a fine wordsmith let's consider language from an evolutionary perspective. American English is what 100 years old? English, what maybe a thousand? The history of language shows a steady, constant change over time. How long does it take a new slang word to move through a culture? Does this not change the stable patterns of value called "language"? I could go on and on and then switch to concepts of science and illustrate how these so called "static" patterns change all the time. In fact one of main premises of James radical empiricism was created to account for these changes. And you know it. Pragmatism suggests that when two points are for all practical purposes the same, one should stop arguing. I'm done. Marsha's saying, "ever changing static patterns" does nothing to destroy Pirsig's metaphysics because over time our ideas, concepts, words, and definitions do change sometimes very slowly, sometimes blindingly fast. Get over it. Dave > > Dave Thomas said to Dave Buchanan, February 20th: > All your ranting to about this issue is what James characterizes as "vicious > intellectualism." > > > dmb says: > Just for the record, vicious intellectualism or vicious abstractionism has > nothing to do with the tone or tenor of criticism. The idea behind those > phrases is a complaint about prioritizing concepts over empirical reality, > putting ideas above reality. In the MOQ we see this idea is Pirsig's attack on > Plato, particularly the way he made Quality (empirical reality) subordinate to > Ideas, the way he subordinated the Good and elevated the True. > > As Charlene Seigfried puts it, paraphrasing William James, "abstractionism had > become vicious already with Socrates and Plato, who deified conceptualization > and denigrated the ever-changing flow of experience, thus forgetting and > falsifying the origin of concepts as humanly constructed extracts from the > temporal flux." (William James's Radical Reconstruction of Philosophy, 379.) > > Please notice how this quote also supports my contention that experience is > the "ever-changing" part. Vicious intellectualism is vicious because of the > way it DENIGRATES "THE EVER-CHANGING FLOW OF EXPERIENCE". James and Seigfried > define vicious abstractionism in that quote. It says that Plato "deified > conceptualization", which is to say he turned it into a god. The form of the > Good not only turned Quality into a fixed and eternal Idea, it more or less > evolves into the God of monotheism. This move, they say, "denigrated" the > ever-changing flow of experience. That means an unfair criticism or > inappropriate disparagement of empirical reality. > > See? Vicious intellectualism is a phrase that identifies the problem that > James and Pirsig want to solve. In both cases, they want to reverse the > mistaken priority by subordinating concepts to the flux of experience, by > showing that static concepts are always secondary, always derived from the > ever-changing flux of experience (DQ or Pure Experience). > > C'mon, be reasonable. Who is more credible on this topic? A professional > academic philosopher like Charlene Siegfried or Marsha? The former has > published books on the topic while the latter can't quite construct a proper > sentence. There is no contest and no reason to doubt that Seigfried knows what > she's talking about. > > And finally, there is no reason to think that James and Buddhism are mutually > exclusive so that the MOQ can only be rightly compared to one or the other. In > fact, at least one James scholar says quite explicitly that the Buddha himself > was a pragmatist and a radical empiricist, which is what James and Pirsig call > themselves. That's WHY it is so wrong-headed for Marsha to use Buddhism > against James. Remember when Marsha used the biggest William James fan in the > world in her attempts to belittle James? What does THAT tell you about the > quality of Marsha's thought? It ain't pretty. > > > > > > > > > > > > > > > > > > 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 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
