On Mar 5, 2013, at 6:57 PM, david buchanan <[email protected]> wrote:
>
>
> 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)
>
>
>
>
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