Ron said: ... Bob and Jimmy are talkin bout the distinction while Fred's talkin reification. [AND] Where Bob states simply that the discrepancy has value, Fred seems to cast a rather dour atmosphere in regards to the rendering of one from the many and doesn't really seem to value the disecrepancy as much as reacting to the monistic dominance of values of his day. I see Bob employing the descrepancy in a useful manner while Fred's more of a deconstructionist.
dmb says: It's pretty clear that they're all talking about the problem of reification. Fred complains about the "original model" of Honesty or the Leaf. But in other contexts we know that Fred, Will and Bob all take sides with the Sophists and otherwise oppose the "vicious intellectualism" of Plato and Socrates. Ron responds : Right, they all oppose "vicious intellectualism" (I would not include Socrates as a vicious intellectual) But my comments rest on HOW they oppose it. Fred (to me) tends to express that relativistic anti intellectual claim that to think, to understand, to conceptualize is to reify. The assertion of those that insist that intellect = SOM. Fred, in that quote is lumping together nouns and abstract nouns and rendering them as equivalent. Which begins to diverge from the meaning and aim of Bob and Will. dmb: The ever-changing flow of experience is not a crypto-religious metaphysical abstraction, Pirsig says, it is reality itself. And our ideas function well in relation to that (and in relation to all other relevant ideas) or they aren't any good. Ron: And that is the difference between Will and Bob, and Fred. Fred doesent seem to see it that way or atleast he never seems to come to that conclusion. As an aside, I would not include Socrates for merely the fact that most of his dialogs were centered around deconstructing the assumption of abstract concepts like honesty and justice, when examined no one knew what they were, which was the point and the traditional rhetorical device of the sophist. Unfortunately it seems that the Sophists pushed it to relativism and the good was defined by who could sell their version of it the best. It opened the door to hucksters. On this forum you have those who promote relativistic bullshit and you have those who promote the good in relation to experience, and you have allways struck me as supporting the latter, you value clarity and precision something a sophist would claim not to exist. From what we know of the sophist they dealt in social quality and rhetorical stratagum not in consequences in experience. This was the defining difference between the sophist and the philosopher. The philosopher dealt in explanation while the sophist dealt with arguement. The only context in which Pirsig sides with the sophist is in the idea of being able to teach Quality. This is where he gets pissed at Socrates because Socrates argues against the notion in Plato's Socratic dialog "Protagoras" in which there is a stalemate drawn. But if we take the Socratic dialog as a case history, a "koan" then what the dialog brings is a better understanding of the matter and the truly remarkable aspect that Bob achieves is actually to ADD to that dialog, he makes a case that Quality CAN be taught and his explanation holds tremendous power in doing so. .. 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
