Dave Thomas said to David Buchanan:" You've already admitted that static patterns of quality change. Now you want to quibble about the "ever" part of "ever changing."
dmb says: So now I want to quibble about the "ever" part!?! No, Dave. This is not a new quibble. It is the main point. It is PRECISELY the "ever" part of "ever-changing" that is as issue. That is the heart and soul of my criticism. Also, I am NOT harping on this contradiction in order to make a case that static patterns can NEVER change. In fact, it was Plato who asserted that "Ideas" are never-changing and that's what James and Pirsig attack as vicious intellectualism. That's what I just said, in fact, in the post you're supposedly responding to. Look, I already said so.... [Copied and pasted from below]: "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 ..turned Quality into a fixed and eternal Idea," David Thomas also said: ...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. Buchanan says: Yea, I know. That's why your accusation is false. I have never even suggested that static patterns can NEVER change. The whole deal with static patterns is that they evolve. That's crucial to the MOQ's definition of the self. Static patterns preserve the evolutionary advances of the past and they serve as the launch pad for evolutionary advances into the future. This occurs on a collective, cultural level and within our individual developmental paths. Lila's battle is everybody's battle. She's engaged in an evolutionary struggle against the static patterns of her own life. We see this in the pragmatic theory of truth as well, wherein truths are provisional and plural, not eternal or singular. We see this in the creative moves in the thinking of Pirsig and James too, both of whom effected a "Copernican revolution" and a "radical reconstruction of philosophy". But they also both insist that the meanings and definitions of words are public property, that "you can't reason withou t them" without "ungearing yourself from the whole a mankind". If you think you can step outside of this mythos, Pirsig says, then you don't understand what the mythos is. Dave Thomas said: Pragmatism suggests that when two points are for all practical purposes the same, one should stop arguing. dmb says: That's true but it does NOT apply to this case because there are very important practical differences at stake here. The differerence between these "two points" is nothing other than the difference between using contradictory language and NOT using contradictory language. It's the difference between making sense and positing nonsense. Dave Thomas said: ...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. Buchanan says: No, Dave. It simply doesn't follow because there is nothing contradictory about static patterns changing over time. That's just what evolution means. But it is contradictory to say static patterns are EVER changing. Again, it is the use of the term "ever" that has always been the issue. That is my ONE AND ONLY point. That's the criticism that remains even after years and years of explanation as to why that is such an error. To address that, of course, you have to comprehend it first. I've seen no proper response to that point, and that's the only point. Addressing anything else in response is just an irrelevant distraction. > > > > > > 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 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
