Marsha quoted Pirsig:
"I also have a concern of my own. This is the concern that philosophers,
instead of coming to grips with the philosophy at hand, sometimes dismiss it by
saying, “Oh he is saying the same as someone else,” or “someone else has said
it much better.” This is the latter half of the well known conservative
argument that some new idea is (a) no good because it hasn't been heard it
before or (b) it is no good because it has been heard before. If, as has been
noted by R.C. Zaehner, once the Oxford University Professor of Eastern
Religions and Ethics, I am saying the same thing as Aristotle; and if, as has
been noted in the Harvard Educational Review, I am saying the same thing as
William James; and if as has been noted now that I may be saying the same thing
as Spinoza: then why has no one ever noticed that Aristotle and Spinoza and
William James are all saying the same thing?" (RMP, 'A brief summary of the
Metaphysics of Quality, October 2005).
dmb says:
That would be a fine warning if I were using James to "dismiss" the MOQ. It
would be a good counter example if I were using James to say the MOQ is "no
good". As far I can see, nobody has ever tried to do that. And I'm certainly
not doing any such thing. Marsha's suggestion that I am has no basis at all;
it's just another straw man made of nothing but hostile dishonesty. In Lila,
Pirsig tells us this same story about the three reviewers, one comparing his
work to Aristotle, one to Hegel and one saying James's were comparable. Leaving
this part of the story out is a pretty serious distortion. In fact, it's
downright misleading to tell only half of this story.
"If everyone was right he had certainly achieved a remarkable synthesis. But
the comparison with James interested him most because it looked like there
might be something to it. It was also very good philosophological news. James
is usually considered a very solid mainstream American philosopher, whereas
Phaedrus' first book had ofter been described as a 'cult' book. He had the
feeling the people who used that term WISHED it was a cult book and would go
away like a cult book, perhaps because it was interfering with some
philosophological cultism of their own. But if philosophologists were willing
to accept the idea that the MOQ is an offshoot of James' work, then that 'cult'
charge was shattered. And this was good political news in a field where
politics is a big factor." (Lila 324)
And about 40 pages later he tells us that his investigation into James seemed
to justify the reviewers claim.
"...But to Phaedrus it seemed that James's generalizations were heading toward
something very similar to the Metaphysics of Quality. This could, of course, be
the 'Cleveland Harbor Effect', where Phaedrus' own intellectual immune system
was selecting those aspects of James' philosophy that fit the MOQ and ignoring
those that didn't. But he didn't think so. Everywhere he read it seemed as
though he was seeing fits and matches that no amount of selective reading could
contrive." (Lila 363)
Marsha said to dmb:
...You like the James-Pirsig connection, good for you, but others may not care.
I don't,..
dmb says:
As the textual evidence from Lila shows, Pirsig also likes the James-Pirsig
connection. Marsha's much-repeated declaration of apathy toward James is, in
effect, a much-repeated dismissal of Pirsig's text. What's even worse, the
James quotes employed by Pirsig are used to explain and illuminate the basics
of the MOQ, which is exactly where Marsha is getting it wrong. She needs help
from James on these particular issues. If she understood what James and Pirsig
are saying about the static and the dynamic, she wouldn't be using
contradictory phrases like "ever-changing static patterns". If she understood
what James and Pirsig are saying about subjects and objects, she would not
equate the intellectual level with SOM and if she understood what they were
saying about pure experience and the immediate flux of life, etc., etc..
Marsha fabricated many straw men with which to do battle. One of these fake
Daves doesn't want the MOQ to be compared to Buddhism, (even though James has
many fans among the Buddhists), one doesn't get it because he's unfamiliar with
process philosophy (even thought James is considered to be a process
philosopher by other process philosophers like Whitehead, another Dave wants to
limit the MOQ by jamming into some other philosophic tradition, one denies that
Pirsig ever said anything original, and all of them have a hidden and sinister
agenda, etc.. I'll just roll my eyes a dozen times and skip to the last one.
dmb said:
How much selective reading would it take to ignore this and construe James's
thought as irrelevant or at odds with Pirsig's text? It IS Pirsig's text. How
could the similarities between James and Pirsig be any clearer or more
straightforward? Is there any reasonable way to disregard or dismiss this
evidence? I don't see how. Evade and insult, evade and insult. That's been
Marsha's style for a long time now and that's totally bogus, illegitimate and
very, very dishonest. Even her insults are predicated on lies. It's disgusting.
Marsha replied:
William James was an interesting guy, but from my perspective, only from a
historical point-of-view. If serving up radical empiricism on a bed of
theoretical pages is what you crave and fetishizing a dead philosopher
satisfies your need for ancestor-worship, by all means, stick to your
philosophologizing. If to read what Hildebrand, Granger, Stuhr, Hickman,
Anderson, Richardson and 'Charlene' think about what James thought gets you
high on life instead of experience, go for it. But don't suggest that you are
looking out for purity of RMP's distinctions, definitions and ideas, because in
saying so you are just shoveling more Blarney.
dmb says:
See how that works? An avalanche of textual evidence from a wide range of
scholars, according to Marsha, is just "shoveling more blarney". It's just a
personal perversion of mine, not Pirsig himself saying, "the comparison with
James interested him most because it looked like there might be something to
it". And it's just satisfies my kinky needs and it doesn't matter that Pirsig
himself says, "James's generalizations were heading toward something very
similar to the Metaphysics of Quality" and "Everywhere he read it seemed as
though he was seeing fits and matches that no amount of selective reading could
contrive." This is the kind of bullshit response I'm talking about when I say
Marsha style is to evade the evidence and insult the messenger. Evade and
insult, evade and insult. It's so old, so dishonest and just plain dumb. Anyone
who consistently ignores the evidence, ignores the explanations, or builds
straw man to debate rather than engage in a grown up conversation - especially
when it's presented as a way to correct long standing errors - is simply not
competent to play this game. That is not what reasonable people do. Anyone with
average intelligence should be embarrassed to do stuff like that.
"...James had condensed this description [of radical empiricism] to a single
sentence. 'There must always be a discrepancy between concepts and reality,
because the former are static and discontinuous while the latter is dynamic and
flowing.' Here James had chosen exactly the same words Phaedrus had used for
the basic subdivision of the Metaphysics of Quality." (p. 365)
"The Metaphysics of Quality is a continuation of the mainstream of twentieth
century American philosophy. It is a form of pragmatism, of instrumentalism,
which says the test of the true is the good." (p. 366)
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
