dmb said to Ron:
... I was complaining that Ian responded to only one of my sentences and it was
a bland, introductory sentence in which I had said very little. It was just one
more way to complain about the lack of substance in Ian's response. ...I
reposted the entire thing and said to Ian, "here's the part you did not mention
at all, which is all of my post except for that one boring, introductory
sentence. It would be nice if you read it, thought about and responded to it
with some coherent thoughts of your own." That still has not happened. In
fact, I can't recall any legitimate responses from Ian or Marsha. It's weird.
....Apparently, they love philosophy except for that part where you have to
think and speak and otherwise grapple with ideas.
Ron replied:
...Reading it through with your intended meaning certainly makes more sense,
yet I still feel Ian's lack of substance in his response could be described as
"bland" also, It seems to me that they share a love for the deconstruction of
philosophy. [...]
Marsha bemoaned: "Are there still areas of inquiry and discovery, or should one
blindly swallow dmb's argument of "a volume of material", "the disease" and
"the cure"; therefore he is right?"
As far as I know, Dave HAS answered and explained the reasons for his beliefs
several times whereas both Ian and Marsha have yet to respond with any
explanation of their own save only to say that Dave's criticism is bogus, no
explanation as to why it is bogus. Talk about blindly swallowing!! That is
EXACTLY what they ask us to do when they refuse to explain. In fact, what I
gather about their whole argument is it all surrounds a non-thinking acceptance
of ideas, a "blind swallowing" if you will. Never mind that Robert Pirsig
himself is quoted as supporting both DMB and Dr. McWatt in their
interpretations of his work, nevermind the paragraphs apon paragraphs of quotes
supported by well reasoned explainations which renders Pirsig's MoQ as a
coherent whole concept. Nahhhh. Believe the folks who ask you not to think.
The Church and the Government agree. Please dont think..thinking is bad.
dmb says:
That's right. Ian announced his agreement with one innocuous statement and that
was the extent of his response. He didn't even bother to give any reasons for
this agreement. And the post was offered as an answer to his questions! This
sort of irresponsible behavior makes it impossible to have an intelligent
conversation about anything. And Lucy's trollish behavior is even worse. That's
what "Lucy" means. To raise an issue or ask a question and then ignore the
answer is a petty, sadistic and childish game. What I don't get is the
oblivious lack of embarrassment.
And "Blindly swallow"? Maybe the weirdness of that mixed metaphor explains the
problem. Marsha is trying to eat with her eyes, apparently, or trying see with
her throat. That's gotta hurt.
All kidding (and grammar lessons) aside, a very basic problem is on full
display here.
Marsha's dismissive comment about "blindly swallowing" my arguments is very
typical for her and it's also very weird. It simply defies the meaning of the
term "argument"!
argument. noun.1 an exchange of diverging or opposite views, typically a heated
or angry one : 2 a reason or set of reasons given with the aim of persuading
others that an action or idea is right or wrong :
That's exactly what Marsha and Ian can't or won't do; exchange views and give
reasons. That's exactly what my complaints are about.
Everybody else is tired of hearing it and probably didn't need to be told in
the first place. Like I said, it would be nice if they could read it, think
about it and respond to the arguments with some coherent thoughts of their own.
That still has not happened. Apparently, Marsha and Ian can't tell the
difference between baseless assertions and well-supported arguments. They don't
know how to read them or write them. They can't discern the difference between
a legitimate response and temper tantrum. Apparently, they love philosophy,
except for that part where you have to think and speak and otherwise grapple
with ideas.
There is no shortage of evidence and reasoned arguments for them to consider.
There is no shortage of questions and criticisms the remain unanswered. They
can pretend it's tyranny but no honest observer is going to believe that.
Ironically, the dispute is about the nature of intellect.
Here's the latest batch of arguments. No response to any of the ideas. Zip,
zero, nada. Just insults and dismissals. Ian still hasn't said a word about my
response to his questions either.
------------------------------------------------------------------
Marsha said:
Cannot help but wonder about the knower and the known, or the observer and the
observed? Has this dualist perspective vanished into a cloud of pretty
rhetorical terms such as elegance, consistency and coherence, and what of
phrases like "DQ chooses" and "SOM thinks"? Very pretty paraphrasing of few
quotes, but is the intellectual level nothing more than rhetoric?
dmb says:
A cloud of pretty rhetorical terms? Is the intellectual level nothing more than
rhetoric?
Usually, "rhetoric" is a pejorative term referring to manipulative or dishonest
speech. It's used like "spin" or "bullshit". But as Pirsig uses the term,
"rhetoric" refers to excellence in thought and speech. Phaedrus is a
rhetorician and the term is used as very high praise indeed.
"Lightning hits! Quality! Virtue! Dharma! That is what the Sophists were
teaching! Not ethical relativism. Not pristine "virtue." But areté. Excellence.
Dharma! Before the Church of Reason. Before substance. Before form. Before mind
and matter. Before dialectic itself. Quality had been absolute. Those first
teachers of the Western world were teaching Quality, and the medium they had
chosen was that of rhetoric. He has been doing it right all along."
The comments and quotes simply name SOME of the marks of intellectual quality,
of the art of rationality or the art of rhetoric. It's a partial list of what's
right when you write artfully. That's why the quotes and comments are riddled
with terms like....
...personal, heartfelt, coherently structured, and precise. ...analogies and
metaphors as much as logic and empirical evidence. ...elegance and not
sloppiness, precision and not vagueness, clarity and not confusion, definable
terms and not made up or arbitrary meanings. Truth must have logical
consistency and not incoherence, economy of explanation and not verbose,
rambling drivel, and agreement with experience. Metaphysical ideas "must be
divisible, definable and knowable". "Definitions are the FOUNDATION of reason.
You can't reason without them." ...DQ is "the value-force that chooses an
elegant mathematical solution to a laborious one, or a brilliant experiment
over a confusing, inconclusive one" and guides the selection of beautiful ideas
over clumsy and clunky notions.
That's just a fraction of the things Pirsig has said about intellect. One of
his central aims, if not the most important one of all, is a root expansion of
rationality. By equating his conception of intellectual quality with SOM, you
have certainly missed the point of his work in a very big way.
As to the fate of the dualism of knower and known, subject and object, just
look at the end of chapter 29 in Lila. As everyone knows by now, this is
explained in just a few short sentence with help from William James' radical
empiricism. "Subjects and objects are not the starting points of reality," etc..
-----------------------------------------------------------------------
dmb said to Ian:
I think it's quite clear that there are all kinds of ways to describe
intellectual quality WITHOUT getting it mixed up with SOM.
Pirsig shows us what it's like in his books. His philosophy is embedded in a
narrative and even includes autobiographical info. It's personal, heartfelt and
yet it's also coherently structured and precise. This is Pirsig demonstrating
his conception of rhetoric, his conception of excellence in thought and speech,
his conception of an expanded and improved rationality, an artful rationality.
He relies on analogies and metaphors as much as logic and empirical evidence. >
> > > Anyway, here's the part you did not mention at all, which is all of my
post except for that one boring, introductory sentence. It would be nice if you
read it, thought about and responded to it with some coherent thoughts of your
own.> > > > > > TWO FACETS OF ANY HIGH-QUALITY ENDEAVOR> > > > > > "...In
practice, this distinction [static and dynamic] refers to two facets of any
high-quality endeavour. Motorcycle maintenance and easel painting both depend
on the interaction of Static Patterns and Dynamic Quality. Pirsig made an art
out of motorcycle maintenance by first reading the manuals (with some prior
understanding of the principles on which they depend), then riding his bike
while alert to the unexpected sounds, or changes in engine performance, that DQ
might notice and diagnose. Similarly, nobody becomes an accomplished painter,
sculptor, writer, musician or architect without having recognized excellence in
previous examples of those arts, and taken that excellence as the starting
point for new work." -- (Patrick Doorly, The Truth About Art, p.129)> > > > dmb
says:I think it's quite clear that there are all kinds of ways to describe
intellectual quality WITHOUT getting it mixed up with SOM. Even after rejecting
SOM for an expanded and improved form of rationality, an artful rationality,
Pirsig still lists the basic criteria by which intellectual quality is
evaluated. This includes things like elegance and not sloppiness, precision and
not vagueness, clarity and not confusion, definable terms and not made up or
arbitrary meanings, logical consistency and not incoherence or inconsistency,
economy of explanation and not verbose, rambling drivel, and one of my
favorites that could be discussed at great length, agreement with experience. >
> > > "The tests of truth are logical consistency, agreement with experience,
and economy of explanation. The Metaphysics of Quality satisfies these." (Lila,
chapter 8.)> > > > "A metaphysics must be divisible, definable and knowable, or
there isn't any metaphysics." (Lila, page 64.)> > > > "Definitions are the
FOUNDATION of reason. You can't reason without them." (ZAMM, page 214.)> > > >
" ...the MOQ also says that DQ - the value-force that chooses an elegant
mathematical solution to a laborious one, or a brilliant experiment over a
confusing, inconclusive one... Dynamic value is an integral part of science. It
is the cutting edge of scientific progress itself. ..." (Lila, chapter 29.) > >
> > In other words, DQ is the value-force that chooses coherent ideas over
incoherent ideas, that chooses logical consistency over contradiction. It's
what guides the selection of beautiful ideas over clumsy and clunky notions.
SOM is nothing like this. According to SOM, good and true ideas are the ones
that correspond to the one and only objective reality and our values are
considered a form of pollution. Science is supposed to value-free. In the MOQ,
intellect is not polluted by values but rather intellect IS a certain kind of
value, a species of the good. In the MOQ, intellect is centered around DQ and
subordinate to DQ but SOM totally fails to acknowledge the value of values in
our ways of thinking. That's the defect, the disease. Where Pirsig emphasizes
the role of DQ, as the source and substance of everything, as the generator of
all static patterns, SOM thinks that truth is only true when it's free of
values. That's the problem. Coherence, elegance, consistency and relevant
evidence is not the problem. Those are just a few of the names we give, that
Pirsig gives, to certain kinds of intellectual excellence. > > > > "Value is
the predecessor of structure. It’s the preintellectual awareness that gives
rise to it. Our structured reality is preselected on the basis of value, and
really to understand structured reality requires an understanding of the value
source from which it’s derived. One’s rational understanding of a motorcycle is
therefore modified from minute to minute as one works on it and sees that a new
and different rational understanding has more Quality. One doesn’t cling to old
sticky ideas because one has an immediate rational basis for rejecting them.
Reality isn’t static anymore. It’s not a set of ideas you have to either fight
or resign yourself to. It’s made up, in part, of ideas that are expected to
grow as you grow, and as we all grow, century after century. With Quality as a
central undefined term, reality is, in its essential nature, not static but
dynamic. And when you really understand dynamic reality you never get stuck. It
has forms but the forms are capable of change."
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