Re: [MD] Rest In Peace RMP

[David Harding]

Sad news. Thanks for sharing Ron.


Here’s RMP on the death experience and the The Dharmakaya light:


"He thought it was probably the light that infants see when their world is 
still fresh and whole, before consciousness differentiates it into patterns; a 
light into which everything fades at death. Accounts of people who have had a 
'near death experience' have referred to this 'white light' as something very 
beautiful and compelling from which they didn't want to return. The light would 
occur during the breakup of the static patterns of the person’s intellect as it 
returned into the pure Dynamic Quality from which it had emerged in infancy."




> On Apr 25, 2017, at 9:52 AM, X Acto  wrote:
> 
> 
> http://www.npr.org/sections/thetwo-way/2017/04/24/525443040/-zen-and-the-art-of-motorcycle-maintenance-author-robert-m-pirsig-dies-at-88?utm_source=facebook.com_medium=social_campaign=npr_term=nprnews_content=20170424
> 
> 
> Sent from my iPhone
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[MD] ZMM and Lila - Contradiction on emotion.

[David Harding]

Hi All,


There’s an apparent contradiction between ZMM and Lila (LC) on the role of 
emotion in our lives..


"In the past our common universe of reason has been in the process of escaping, 
rejecting the romantic, irrational world of prehistoric man. It's been 
necessary since before the time of Socrates to reject the passions, the 
emotions, in order to free the rational mind for an understanding of nature's 
order which was as yet unknown. Now it's time to further an understanding of 
nature's order by re-assimilating those passions which were originally fled 
from. The passions, the emotions, the affective domain of man's consciousness, 
are a part of nature's order too. The central part.” - ZMM




"As I understand it the term “emotivism” is a way of reducing all value to 
biology, thus making it a part of the SOM universe. The MOQ sees emotions as a 
biological response to quality and not the same thing as quality. There are 
many cases, particularly in economic activity where values occur without any 
emotion.” - Lila’s Child.


Emotions - are they good or are they a low quality biological responses?  How 
do you reconcile these two statements?



Thoughts?


djh


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Re: [MD] Annotations to LC

[david]

dmb wrote:

I could make many, many more corrections but that doesn't sound like much fun. 
Let's just say you're quite mistaken about every key term you've put to use. I 
don't know what you're talking about but it sure isn't the MOQ. I don't see any 
understanding of Pirsig's work in your comments. 

djh:

Yes I agree here.  Tuukaa’s starting point mistake seems to be an 
over-valuation of logic.   Putting it before everything else - including 
Quality.

The MOQ changes the value of things compared to our current Metaphysics and 
explains the mistake.  But why, now being shown something better, does Tuukaa 
value logic so much that he can't see that it's Quality that drives it?  I mean 
- there is a better perspective.. Can you see it Tuukka?  The MOQ is logical, 
it’s just not built on top of it.
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Re: [MD] The Heinous Quadrilemma

[david]

Tuukka said:

Consider this statement: "The experience itself contains no logic and
no distinctions but it 'furnishes the material for our later
reflections'"

If so, how can one say that "Pure experience" or Quality "logically
precedes this distinction", if logic doesn't exist at that stage but
instead begins to exist only after we start thinking or writing
logically? Shouldn't the citation read that "Pure experience" or
Quality "metaphysically precedes this distinction" or simply that
"Pure experience" or Quality "precedes this distinction"?


dmb replies:

One say that "Pure experience" or Quality "logically precedes this distinction" 
just as one can say sleeping logically precedes waking. In both cases, logic 
doesn't exist in that first stage but logic does obtain when we start thinking 
about it or talking about it. The logic can also be expressed as a little 
argument: Since concepts are derived from experience, the experiential material 
from which they are derived must come before the concepts.



> The second of James two main systems of philosophy, which he said
>  was independent of pragmatism, was his radical empiricism. By this
>  he meant that subjects and objects were not the starting point of
> experience. Subjects and objects are secondary. They are concepts
> derived from something more fundamental which he described as the
> immediate flux of life which furnishes the material to our later
> reflection with its conceptual categories. In this basic flux of
> experience, the distinctions of reflective thought, such as those
> between consciousness and content, subject and object, mind and
> matter, have not yet emerged in the forms which we make them. Pure
> experience cannot be either physical or psychical: It logically
> precedes this distinction. (Pirsig 1991, 364-5).




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[MD] John Carl: Ignoramous or Troll?

[david]

From: Moq_Discuss  on behalf of John 
Carl 
Sent: Tuesday, November 1, 2016 11:48 AM
To: moq_disc...@moqtalk.org
Subject: Jeez, what a Fraudulent Ignoramus!

John said to dmb,

So... Pirsig would fit well with Whitehead except that  Whitehead isn't
anti-theistic enough?

For my part, I'd rather see RMP aligned with a prominent and accepted
philosopher, but hey, thats just me.


dmb says:

RMP has aligned himself with mainstream American philosophy, with Pragmatism 
and Radical Empiricism, and there is a mountain of evidence for that as well as 
clear and explicit claims by Pirsig in Lila. Whitehead, on the other hand, is 
not particularly prominent or accepted among philosophers BECAUSE of his theism 
and his metaphysics. This is not my opinion but rather a fact about the world 
of philosophy. Here is some clear and simple evidence from the Stanford 
Encyclopedia of Philosophy:


6. Whitehead's Influence

Unlike the logical apparatus Whitehead developed with Russell, Whitehead's 
attempt to provide a metaphysical unification of space, time, matter, events 
and teleology has been less than enthusiastically embraced by members of the 
broader philosophical community. In part, this may be because of the 
connections Whitehead saw between his metaphysics and traditional theism. [...] 
Thus, although not especially influential among many Anglo-American secular 
philosophers, Whitehead's metaphysical ideas continue to have influence among 
some theologians and philosophers of religion.




Will this evidence have any effect on your easily defeated claim, John? I 
seriously doubt it. Are you even capable of being persuaded by evidence or 
reason? I've never seen any evidence of that.


I suggest a different hobby, one that involves your hands but not your 
intellect.



>
> [http://robertpirsig.org/MOQ20Shop20April202011.jpg] tp://robertpirsig.org/SneddonThesis.html>
>
> robertpirsig.org : A Process Analysis of Quality org/SneddonThesis.html>
> robertpirsig.org
> a process analysis of quality: a.n. whitehead and r. pirsig on existence
> and value . by. andrew sneddon
>
>
>
>
> 
> From: Moq_Discuss  on behalf of
> Andre Broersen 
> Sent: Saturday, October 29, 2016 8:47 AM
> To: moq_disc...@moqtalk.org
> Subject: [MD] "RMP: Ignoramous or fraud?
>
> John:
> So "ignoramous" non-perjorativel then, but the fact is, he DID at least
> read some AN Whitehead.  Quotes him
> from reading his book on history of philosophy, in the bowels of the
> troopship.
>
> dmb:
> And speaking of fraudulent ignoramuses, nobody around here will be
> surprised if John has tried to slander Pirsig or if has dishonestly tried
> to smuggle in a theistic view. Again. It's like a hobby, I guess. Trolls
> will be trolls.
>
> Andre:
> And not only that but John bases the slander on false claims he invents
> himself. Phaedrus did not read A.N. Whitehead at all in the bowels of the
> troopship! He was reading F.S.C. Northrop ' The Meeting of East and West".
> A simple reference to page 117 of ZMM will suffice (Corgi edition).
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> MOQ Online - MOQ_Discuss
> moq.org
> Robert M. Pirsig's MoQ deals with the fundamentals of existence and
> provides a more coherent system for understanding reality than our current
> paradigms allow
>
>
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--
"finite players
play within boundaries.
Infinite players
play *with* boundaries."
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[http://robertpirsig.org/MOQ20Shop20April202011.jpg]
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[MD] John Carl: Ignoramous or fraud?

[david]

From: Moq_Discuss  on behalf of Adrie 
Kintziger 
Sent: Friday, November 4, 2016 12:48 PM
To: moq_disc...@moqtalk.org
Subject: Wait, who's the fraudulent Ignoramous?



John said to Adrie:

"So you agree with Auxier that Pirsig derived his MoQ entirely from Whitehead?  
To tell you the truth, I don't mind at all, it's just a shock to find out after 
all these years."



dmb says:

John's approach is outrageously dishonest. It's slanderous bullshit from 
beginning to end. Not only is it a wild distortion to claim that you "agree 
with Auxier that Pirsig derived his MOQ entirely from Whitehead," it's simply 
not true that Auxier said anything like that. His claim was far more modest; 
there is zero chance that Pirsig didn't encounter Whitehead while he was in 
Chicago.


But what makes these slanderous, fake debate even worse, is that it's really, 
really stupid. John would have us believe that Pirsig "is perpetrating one of 
the most elaborate frauds ever known" if he ever had actually read Whitehead. 
As if Pirsig had kept his Whitehead reading a big secret and then passed off 
Whitehead's thinking as his own thinking. But if Pirsig was trying to hide a 
secret connection to Whitehead, why would he quote the man in both of his books?


If John were an honest person, he'd admit defeat when this simple evidence is 
presented and if were a moral person he'd apologize for making such ugly and 
baseless accusations. Let's ask Randy Auxier if there is a zero percent chance 
of that.


Who wants to talk with a person who admits no such thing and apologizes for 
nothing - but instead doubles down in this bullshit? Not me.


Disgusting.



Randall Auxier wrote to John:

Zero. Chicago wasn't analytical at that time, and McKeon despised analytical 
philosophy. That day and age at U Chicago was 100% process philosophy, both in 
the Phil. dept and in every committee, including the Divinity School. The list 
of process-professors is endless. Zero.



John wrote to Auxier:

There are some pertinent biographical facts you're ignoring, Randy. You're 
thinking "he'd have to be crazy to be in Chicago and not have heard of 
Whitehead"  What you're forgetting is that he was crazy, and got so crazy he 
had to be locked up and given electroshock therapy where he had to reconstruct 
his earlier work by looking at notes he'd kept.I offer a few pertinent 
comments from Pirsig, to illustrate my point that he wasn't much of a 
philosophy student. So Professor, are you still sure there is a ZERO chance 
that Pirsig didn't understand or read Whitehead?  If he did, then he's 
perpetrating one of the most elaborate frauds I've ever known.



Auxier's reply:

Zero. You don't understand what actually happens in graduate seminars in 
philosophy, such as McKeon's. I have spent a lifetime both doing this and 
listening to it. You don't understand how students talk on their way into and 
out of class, or what they discuss on the days between. The entire heady scene 
of graduate school, which Pirsig describes quite nicely in Zen, includes all 
kinds of things that won't show up in books and letters. I assure you, he knew 
and heard about and probably read Whitehead while at Chicago. If his memory was 
wiped out, that is hardly evidence against what I'm saying. It helps my case. 
He relieved these ideas from the recesses of a damaged cerebral cortex. Nothing 
unusual about that.


MOQ Online - MOQ_Discuss
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Robert M. Pirsig's MoQ deals with the fundamentals of existence and provides a 
more coherent system for understanding reality than our current paradigms allow


>



--
parser
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Re: [MD] Annotations to LC

[david]

Tuk wrote:

The question is, if idealism and the MOQ are both bad ideas, can  idealism 
still be good for understanding the MOQ?

Why start with ‘the MOQ is a bad idea’?  If that is your starting point, why 
should Dan or dmb or anyone bother to discuss the MOQ with you?  

On Sat., 05 Nov. 2016 at 12:40 am m...@tuukkavirtaperko.net <
mailto:m...@tuukkavirtaperko.net
> wrote:

a, pre, code, a:link, body { word-wrap: break-word !important; }

dmb, all,

I'm pleased by your reply, dmb. It will take some time for me to write

mine. I've began writing a response but it's a work in progress.

However, at this point I might summarize what I found in LC that

pertains to the Heinous Quadrilemma.

Pirsig does state that idealism is good for understanding the MOQ.

The question is, if idealism and the MOQ are both bad ideas, can

idealism still be good for understanding the MOQ?

I think so. Smoking cigarettes and jumping off the roof of a tall

building are both bad ideas, but sometimes someone might attempt to

persuade a smoker to quit by asking: "Why wouldn't you as well jump

off a tall building?" This way the persuader attempts to make the

smoker associate smoking with death. It probably doesn't usually work

but sometimes it might.

So, yes, a bad idea can be good for understanding another bad idea,

but the ideas are still bad.

The Heinous Quadrilemma remains.

Regards,

Tuk

Lainaus David Harding <
mailto:da...@goodmetaphysics.com
>:

> Tuk,

>

> FWIW I can find very little I disagree with dmb here. Main difference being

> dmb has been kind enough to spend the time to go through each of your

> comments and reply.

>

> I hope you take on board what he says here.

>

> Thanks,

>

> David.

>

> On Nov. 4, 2016 at 5:46 am, david <
mailto:dmbucha...@hotmail.com
> wrote:

>

>

>

>

> 

> Tukka said: Dan and I were just arguing whether truth is equivalent with

> good. Seems

> like I was right. The word "mainly" implies there's also something else

> to good than truth.

>

> dmb says: Pirsig identifies the MOQ with Pragmatism (a theory of truth) and

> approvingly quotes William James saying, "Truth is a species of the Good".

> More specifically, the MOQ divides the Good into four levels of static

> values so that health is a biological species of the Good, wealth and fame

> are a social species of the Good, and truth is an intellectual level kind

> of Good. So truth isn't equivalent to the Good simply because it's not the

> only kind of Good.

>

> "[44] RMP: It is only Dynamic Quality I think is impossible to define. I

> think definition is both possible and desirable for the static levels. I

> just didn't do it because these levels seemed so obvious. But in view of

> all the trouble people are having, I'm doing it now in these notes."

>

> Tukka said:

>

> Pirsig fails to mention an important point. Static quality is also

> impossible to define. I have demonstrated this with formal logic in an

> article I offered to a peer-reviewed journal perhaps 2008. The journal

> rejected the article on grounds of the conclusion being "obvious".

> However, make no mistake! We didn't demonstrate that the theory of

> static value patterns is impossible to define. It can be defined. It's

> just the general notion of static value that's undefinable.

>

> dmb says:

>

> This is very confusing. (A) You say Pirsig fails to mention a point that he

> just mentioned, (B) you contradict that point for no apparent reason, and

> (C) you say the theory can be defined but the general notion can't be

> defined for no apparent reason. I'd be surprised if anyone can make sense

> of that.

>

>

> Tukka said: ...we here are obviously incapable of innovation if it

> involves criticism of Pirsig. Even if the need for innovation could be

> deductively proven we just wouldn't do it because, instead of

> understanding that the MOQ requires us to replace worse ideas with

> better ones, we'd be socially loyal to Pirsig and that's it.

>

>

> dmb says:

>

> While I agree that social level values shouldn't get in the way of seeking

> truth, I also think any fair and neutral observing would say that you're

> letting pride stand in the way of getting questions to your answers. You're

> letting ego stand in the way of even entertaining the possibility that

> somebody might teach you something, aren't you? Please consider the obvious

> hostility with which you responded to my answers: "You've pretended you're

> my mentor and then posted me a pep talk," you said. "Because, if someone

> reads that really carelessly, he or she might actually believe you're my

> mentor. That I'm 

Re: [MD] Annotations to LC

[david]

Tukka said:

Pirsig does state that idealism is good for understanding the MOQ.
The question is, if idealism and the MOQ are both bad ideas, can
idealism still be good for understanding the MOQ?

dmb says:

In ZAMM the reader is introduced to the basic positions of Hume and Kant and 
they represent Modern Empiricism and Idealism, respectively. This part happens 
early in the book to "prepare" us for the high country of the mind. The book 
includes some serious bashing of the founding Kings of Empiricism and Idealism, 
namely Aristotle and Plato. And both schools more or less buy into SOM but each 
school of philosophy is defined by picking one side or the other. This is what 
Pirsig is up against, this is the genetic defect, and understanding the problem 
with these schools is important for understanding the solution the Pirsig 
offers in the shape of the MOQ.


Tukka said:

The Heinous Quadrilemma remains.


dmb says:

Pretty sure that problem is just a product of some misconceptions on your part.


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Re: [MD] "RMP: Ignoramous or fraud?

[david]

From: Moq_Discuss  on behalf of John 
Carl 
Sent: Friday, November 4, 2016 1:32 PM
To: moq_disc...@moqtalk.org
Subject: Re: [MD] "RMP: Ignoramous or fraud?

John said to Adrie:

I have had conflicts in the past, with dmb and ant, over various positions
I've taken or arguments I've put forth.  That is true.  The fact that they
then decided I wasn't worth any intellectual consideration at all, was
theirs, after all, and what could a guy do from there but throw up his
hands and walk away? ...


dmb says:

In your recent posts it is completely obvious that you have no problem with 
distorting and misconstruing anything that is said to you in conversation. 
That's why you're not "worth any intellectual consideration at all". You're a 
clown that mocks intellectual competence at every opportunity. You're not a 
victim. You're the perpetrator. Unless you get serious and start being honest, 
normal people won't want to talk to you for those kinds of obvious reasons.

I don't think you really have any arguments, by the way, just a persistent 
desire to align Pirsig with your favorite theists - neither of which you 
understand.







> --
--
"finite players
play within boundaries.
Infinite players
play *with* boundaries."
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Re: [MD] "RMP: Ignoramous or fraud?

[david]

There's pretty good evidence that Pirsig has heard of Whitehead, although the 
center of the Whitehead universe had shifted from Chicago to Claremont, a 
theology school in California, by 1958.

''It certainly felt right. Not subject and object but static and Dynamic is the 
basic division of reality. When A.N. Whitehead wrote that 'mankind is driven 
forward by dim apprehensions of things too obscure for language,' he was 
writing about Dynamic Quality. Dynamic Quality is the pre-intellectual cutting 
edge of reality, the source of all things, completely simple and always new. It 
was the moral force that had motivated the brujo in Zuni. It contains no 
pattern of fixed rewards and punishments. Its only perceived evil is static 
quality itself - any pattern of one-sided fixed values that tries to contain 
and kill the ongoing free force of life." Pirsig, chapter 9 of Lila.



From: Moq_Discuss  on behalf of John 
Carl 
Sent: Friday, November 4, 2016 11:17 AM
To: moq_disc...@moqtalk.org
Subject: Re: [MD] "RMP: Ignoramous or fraud?

PS:  If there is some antipathy toward Pirsig on Auxier's part, you can
certainly see why in that passage I quoted from Lila!  It just about NAILs
the academic know-it-all attitude to the wall, which admittedly, Auxier
generates from his pores.  But I still like the guy a lot and appreciate
y'all's help in reconciling two men whom I appreciate.



On Fri, Nov 4, 2016 at 10:14 AM, John Carl  wrote:

> Adrie,
>
>
> On Thu, Nov 3, 2016 at 10:49 AM, Adrie Kintziger 
> wrote:
>
>
> But this aside, and adopting the term for metaforical purposes ,Pirsig
>> is a beachcomber in the intellectual landscape ,beachcombing the giant,
>> and the world in wich we live, to show wat was laid bare by the storm so
>> to
>> speak.
>>
>
>
> So you agree with Auxier that Pirsig derived his MoQ entirely from
> Whitehead?  To tell you the truth, I don't mind at all, it's just a shock
> to find out after all these years.
>
> Here is our conversation (mine and Auxier's) up to date.
>
> --- my email to Auxier:
>
> Randy,
>
> On Wed, Nov 2, 2016 at 12:15 PM, Randall Auxier 
>  wrote:
>
>> Zero. Chicago wasn't analytical at that time, and McKeon despised
>> analytical philosophy. That day and age at U Chicago was 100% process
>> philosophy, both in the Phil. dept and in every committee, including the
>> Divinity School. The list of process-professors is endless. Zero.
>>
>> RA
>>
>
>
> There are some pertinent biographical facts you're ignoring, Randy.
> You're thinking "he'd have to be crazy to be in Chicago and not have heard
> of Whitehead"  What you're forgetting is that he was crazy, and got so
> crazy he had to be locked up and given electroshock therapy where he had to
> reconstruct his earlier work by looking at notes he'd kept.His story
> isn't  made up although his story isn't so much a biography as it is a
> novel - it's a novel about a man trying to reconstruct himself, which is
> hard to wrap your mind around (is this first person or third?)   Paranoid
> schizophrenics can't be judged on the basis of what a normal person or
> student would do.  Pirsig passed over American Theistic philosophers (or
> inasmuch as he'd heard) like Whitehead and James.  His goal was blending
> eastern philosophy with western, as the title of his best selling book
> illustrates.   THAT was the direction at which the old zen archer aimed his
> intellect.
>
> But whatever he was aiming at,  he completely forgot in the aftermath of
> electro-convulsive therapy.
>
> I offer a few pertinent comments from Pirsig, to illustrate my point that
> he wasn't much of a philosophy student.
>
> Taken from  Robert Pirsig's commentary on Frederick Copleston's 'History
> of Philosophy', in a personal note to Anthony McWatt, who has a Ph.D in the
> MoQ, from Oxford (although ant isn't much of a philosophologist either - he
> was an art major)
>
> January 2000
>
> *Dear Anthony McWatt,*
>
> *You asked in one of your letters how the MOQ compares with late 19th
> Century idealism. The answer that follows copies part of Frederick
> Copleston’s summary of that group in Volume 8 of his “History of
> Philosophy” and inserts comparisons the MOQ. As I’ve said before,
> philosophology isn’t my field, and I assume that Copleston’s understanding
> of the positions of the various idealists is correct. Certainly it’s better
> than mine, and using it and trusting it filters out a lot of red herring.*
>
> Ok, right there.  The only thing he knows about British Idealism is what
> he reads by another man.  How could this happen? Furthermore, he expresses
> absolute surprise at what Coppleston describes of Bradley,  but then, how
> many philosophers read Bradley?  So understandable to an extent.  But in
> Lila he discovers William James(!)  Like, for the first time?  Sort of.
> 

Re: [MD] Annotations to LC

[David Harding]

Tuk,

FWIW I can find very little I disagree with dmb here. Main difference being
dmb has been kind enough to spend the time to go through each of your
comments and reply.

I hope you take on board what he says here.

Thanks,

David.

On Nov. 4, 2016 at 5:46 am, david <dmbucha...@hotmail.com> wrote:





Tukka said: Dan and I were just arguing whether truth is equivalent with
good. Seems
like I was right. The word "mainly" implies there's also something else
to good than truth.

dmb says: Pirsig identifies the MOQ with Pragmatism (a theory of truth) and
approvingly quotes William James saying, "Truth is a species of the Good".
More specifically, the MOQ divides the Good into four levels of static
values so that health is a biological species of the Good, wealth and fame
are a social species of the Good, and truth is an intellectual level kind
of Good. So truth isn't equivalent to the Good simply because it's not the
only kind of Good.

"[44] RMP: It is only Dynamic Quality I think is impossible to define. I
think definition is both possible and desirable for the static levels. I
just didn't do it because these levels seemed so obvious. But in view of
all the trouble people are having, I'm doing it now in these notes."

Tukka said:

Pirsig fails to mention an important point. Static quality is also
impossible to define. I have demonstrated this with formal logic in an
article I offered to a peer-reviewed journal perhaps 2008. The journal
rejected the article on grounds of the conclusion being "obvious".
However, make no mistake! We didn't demonstrate that the theory of
static value patterns is impossible to define. It can be defined. It's
just the general notion of static value that's undefinable.

dmb says:

This is very confusing. (A) You say Pirsig fails to mention a point that he
just mentioned, (B) you contradict that point for no apparent reason, and
(C) you say the theory can be defined but the general notion can't be
defined for no apparent reason. I'd be surprised if anyone can make sense
of that.


Tukka said: ...we here are obviously incapable of innovation if it
involves criticism of Pirsig. Even if the need for innovation could be
deductively proven we just wouldn't do it because, instead of
understanding that the MOQ requires us to replace worse ideas with
better ones, we'd be socially loyal to Pirsig and that's it.


dmb says:

While I agree that social level values shouldn't get in the way of seeking
truth, I also think any fair and neutral observing would say that you're
letting pride stand in the way of getting questions to your answers. You're
letting ego stand in the way of even entertaining the possibility that
somebody might teach you something, aren't you? Please consider the obvious
hostility with which you responded to my answers: "You've pretended you're
my mentor and then posted me a pep talk," you said. "Because, if someone
reads that really carelessly, he or she might actually believe you're my
mentor. That I'm a novice, struggling to understand the MOQ, but you
already do and you're so generous you give me a pep talk," you added. I
think that sort of reaction is intellectually immature and irresponsible
and that no fruitful conversation can occur under such conditions.


Tukka said: I'd like a more precise definition of "objective scientific
instrument". Are questionnaires and social sciences objective? If not, why
not? [...] Generally speaking, social sciences are considered empirical
sciences as opposed to normative sciences. And don't we subscribe to
empiricism? Well, a social scientist could distinguish a king from a
commoner.


dmb says:

There's a long discussion in Lila concerning the problem with "objectivity"
in the social sciences. That section would supply some answers. But it's
also an issue with which social science still grapples constantly. Since
the subject matter is not purely physical, the standard scientific methods
used in the physical sciences have to be adapted. The methods and
procedures used by social scientists are usually explained in great detail
so that each paper or Journal article will include a fairly substantial
section devoted to those methods. Ideally, anyone working at the graduate
level of any field will be able to explain what counts as valid evidence
and truth within that field so that they are, in effect, philosophers of
that discipline. Basically, the methods and standards need to be
appropriate to the nature of the subject matter and, obviously, physics and
anthropology have very different objects of study.

"[50] RMP: This seems too restrictive. [To say SOM is identical to the
intellectual level of the MOQ] It seems to exclude non-subject-object
constructions such as symbolic logic, higher mathematics, and computer
languages from the intellectual level and gives them no home. Also the term
'quality' as u

Re: [MD] The Heinous Quadrilemma

[david]

Tukka said:

>> I wish to provide maximum clarity for my argument. The argument is about
>> the logical consistency and logical implications of LC RMP annotation 67.
>> The annotation includes the following statement:
>>
>> MOQ idealism: "The MOQ says that Quality comes first, which produces
>> ideas, which produce what we know as matter."
>>
>> The concept of Quality is undefined. The notions of logical consistency
>> and logical implications can only be applied to defined concepts. They
>> cannot be applied to the concept of Quality. Therefore, even though MOQ
>> idealism includes the concept of Quality, the notion of MOQ idealism is
>> logically equivalent to the ordinary notion of idealism.


dmb says:

What you are calling idealism here is actually radical empiricism. The MOQ says 
experience comes first, that experience is the primary empirical reality. 
Idealism says that mind comes first.

But let me address the issue of logical consistency instead. If I understand 
your criticism, you're saying that notions of logical consistency can only be 
applied to defined concepts, so they cannot be applied to undefined Quality. 
The quote from the end of Lila's chapter 29, which I supplied a while back, 
helps to explain why this isn't really a problem. Yes it's true that logic and 
“the distinctions of reflective thought, such as those between consciousness 
and content, subject and object, mind and matter, have not yet emerged in the 
forms which we make them" we can still logically and consistently say that this 
"Pure experience" or Quality "logically precedes this distinction” for one 
simple reason: We are not having an immediate experience but rather reflecting 
on the meaning of it and talking about the implications of it. We're talking 
about its place in the overall cognitive process. The experience itself 
contains no logic and no distinctions but it "furnishes the material for our 
later reflections"

“The second of James’ two main systems of philosophy, which he said was 
independent of pragmatism, was his radical empiricism. By this he meant that 
subjects and objects were not the starting point of experience. Subjects and 
objects are secondary. They are concepts derived from something more 
fundamental which he described as ‘the immediate flux of life which furnishes 
the material to our later reflection with its conceptual categories’. In this 
basic flux of experience, the distinctions of reflective thought, such as those 
between consciousness and content, subject and object, mind and matter, have 
not yet emerged in the forms which we make them. Pure experience cannot be 
either physical or psychical: It logically precedes this distinction” (Pirsig 
1991, 364-5).


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>>
>>
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Re: [MD] Annotations to LC

[david]

Tukka said:  Dan and I were just arguing whether truth is equivalent with good. 
Seems
like I was right. The word "mainly" implies there's also something else
to good than truth.

dmb says: Pirsig identifies the MOQ with Pragmatism (a theory of truth) and 
approvingly quotes William James saying, "Truth is a species of the Good". More 
specifically, the MOQ divides the Good into four levels of static values so 
that health is a biological species of the Good, wealth and fame are a social 
species of the Good, and truth is an intellectual level kind of Good. So truth 
isn't equivalent to the Good simply because it's not the only kind of Good.

"[44] RMP: It is only Dynamic Quality I think is impossible to define. I
think definition is both possible and desirable for the static levels. I
just didn't do it because these levels seemed so obvious. But in view of
all the trouble people are having, I'm doing it now in these notes."

Tukka said:

Pirsig fails to mention an important point. Static quality is also
impossible to define. I have demonstrated this with formal logic in an
article I offered to a peer-reviewed journal perhaps 2008. The journal
rejected the article on grounds of the conclusion being "obvious".
However, make no mistake! We didn't demonstrate that the theory of
static value patterns is impossible to define. It can be defined. It's
just the general notion of static value that's undefinable.

dmb says:

This is very confusing. (A) You say Pirsig fails to mention a point that he 
just mentioned, (B) you contradict that point for no apparent reason, and (C) 
you say the theory can be defined but the general notion can't be defined for 
no apparent reason. I'd be surprised if anyone can make sense of that.


Tukka said:  ...we here are obviously incapable of innovation if it
involves criticism of Pirsig. Even if the need for innovation could be
deductively proven we just wouldn't do it because, instead of
understanding that the MOQ requires us to replace worse ideas with
better ones, we'd be socially loyal to Pirsig and that's it.


dmb says:

While I agree that social level values shouldn't get in the way of seeking 
truth, I also think any fair and neutral observing would say that you're 
letting pride stand in the way of getting questions to your answers. You're 
letting ego stand in the way of even entertaining the possibility that somebody 
might teach you something, aren't you? Please consider the obvious hostility 
with which you responded to my answers: "You've pretended you're my mentor and 
then posted me a pep talk," you said. "Because, if someone reads that really 
carelessly, he or she might  actually believe you're my mentor. That I'm a 
novice, struggling to understand the MOQ, but you already do and you're so 
generous you give me a pep talk," you added. I think that sort of reaction is 
intellectually immature and irresponsible and that no fruitful conversation can 
occur under such conditions.


Tukka said:  I'd like a more precise definition of "objective scientific 
instrument". Are questionnaires and social sciences objective? If not, why not? 
[...] Generally speaking, social sciences are considered empirical sciences as 
opposed to normative sciences. And don't we subscribe to empiricism? Well, a 
social scientist could distinguish a king from a commoner.


dmb says:

There's a long discussion in Lila concerning the problem with "objectivity" in 
the social sciences. That section would supply some answers. But it's also an 
issue with which social science still grapples constantly. Since the subject 
matter is not purely physical, the standard scientific methods used in the 
physical sciences have to be adapted. The methods and procedures used by social 
scientists are usually explained in great detail so that each paper or Journal 
article will include a fairly substantial section devoted to those methods. 
Ideally, anyone working at the graduate level of any field will be able to 
explain what counts as valid evidence and truth within that field so that they 
are, in effect, philosophers of that discipline. Basically, the methods and 
standards need to be appropriate to the nature of the subject matter and, 
obviously, physics and anthropology have very different objects of study.

"[50] RMP: This seems too restrictive. [To say SOM is identical to the 
intellectual level of the MOQ] It seems to exclude non-subject-object 
constructions such as symbolic logic, higher mathematics, and computer 
languages from the intellectual level and gives them no home. Also the term 
'quality' as used in the MOQ would be excluded from the intellectual level. In 
fact, the MOQ, which gives intellectual meaning to the term quality, would also 
have to be excluded from the intellectual level."

Tukka said:  Important point for my case. I've been accused of trying to impose 
SOM
on the MOQ. But this annotation states that symbolic logic isn't SOM.
Very 

Re: [MD] "RMP: Ignoramous or fraud?

[david]

Putting the slanderous nonsense aside, there's a Masters Thesis (written more 
than 20 years ago) that compares Pirsig to Whitehead and even though the author 
(Andrew Sneddon) has some regrets about this comparison and about his fondness 
for Whitehead, there are lots of interesting similarities. They both reject the 
metaphysics of substance and they both fit into "process philosophy". But 
fitting Whitehead's theism into the MOQ is problematic, to say the least. I 
guess most participant already know this.

http://robertpirsig.org/SneddonThesis.html

[http://robertpirsig.org/MOQ20Shop20April202011.jpg]

robertpirsig.org : A Process Analysis of 
Quality
robertpirsig.org
a process analysis of quality: a.n. whitehead and r. pirsig on existence and 
value . by. andrew sneddon





From: Moq_Discuss  on behalf of Andre 
Broersen 
Sent: Saturday, October 29, 2016 8:47 AM
To: moq_disc...@moqtalk.org
Subject: [MD] "RMP: Ignoramous or fraud?

John:
So "ignoramous" non-perjorativel then, but the fact is, he DID at least read 
some AN Whitehead.  Quotes him
from reading his book on history of philosophy, in the bowels of the troopship.

dmb:
And speaking of fraudulent ignoramuses, nobody around here will be surprised if 
John has tried to slander Pirsig or if has dishonestly tried to smuggle in a 
theistic view. Again. It's like a hobby, I guess. Trolls will be trolls.

Andre:
And not only that but John bases the slander on false claims he invents 
himself. Phaedrus did not read A.N. Whitehead at all in the bowels of the 
troopship! He was reading F.S.C. Northrop ' The Meeting of East and West". A 
simple reference to page 117 of ZMM will suffice (Corgi edition).
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Re: [MD] Why does Pirsig write everybody's right about mind and matter although his theses imply the opposite?

[david]

Tuukka said to dmb:
Previous experience indicates that your input is useful because you
present arguments that require a dialectical response I haven't thought
of before. The downside is that you don't seem to do dialectic, only
rhetoric, and you don't seem to understand their difference. In any case
I'm confused by the way how, instead of presenting your criticism, you
ask me whether I'm interested in your criticism. I need some time to
think about this.


dmb says:

You're confused because instead of presenting my criticism, I've asked you if 
you're interested in my criticism?

As I see it, I've offered some criticism but you haven't really responded to 
it. Last time you defended your logic, even though I said nothing about logic, 
and this time your response pivots around the distinction between rhetoric and 
dialectic. Neither of those things are relevant to the critical points raised. 
So I'm just saying that I don't want to repeat the criticism that has already 
been offered, especially if you don't care. But since I'm offering an answer to 
the question you've posed (about the status of mind and matter in the MOQ), you 
seem to be deliberately avoiding the content of my comments. If you aren't 
really interested, then I won't bother. It's a lot of work, you know?


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Re: [MD] Why does Pirsig write everybody's right about mind and matter although his theses imply the opposite?

[david]

dmb said: 

As odd or paradoxical as it may sound, pure experience not only logically 
precedes subjects and objects, it also logically precedes logic. The 
strangeness of this claim evaporates when you see that having an experience is 
one thing but talking about it or reflecting on it is a different thing. 

But this is not really related to the criticism I was offering either. Let me 
know if you're interested in that

djh responds:

That’s right dmb.  Quality precedes logic.  This is the insight which Pirsig 
provides.  

Tuukka is pointing to what he sees as a logical contradiction between two 
things but cannot see that it’s exactly this type of low quality contradiction 
the MOQ avoids. It avoids it by placing Quality/experience at the center - not 
truth.

"There is an evil tendency underlying all our technology - the tendency to do 
what is reasonable even when it isn't any good.” - RMP.

Tuukka asked:

If logic is psychical how can pure experience logically precede subject and 
object? After all, logic doesn't exist at the stage where

this precession should take place.

dmb says:

As odd or paradoxical as it may sound, pure experience not only logically 
precedes subjects and objects, it also logically precedes logic. The 
strangeness of this claim evaporates when you see that having an experience is 
one thing but talking about it or reflecting on it is a different thing.

But this is not really related to the criticism I was offering either. Let me 
know if you're interested in that

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Re: [MD] "RMP: Ignoramous or fraud?

[david]

Adrie said:

This is clearly the correct context [of the Whitehead quote] and it is a 
theistic one, and that does not show on wikiquote or is derivable from the way 
John likes it to appear.  Now given the above one should also read the whole 
lecture to observe that Whitehead is pointing towards a sort of religious 
quality, with a quality beyond the quality. A holistic quality probably.


dmb says:

Process philosophy goes all the way back to Heraclitus and then some. James and 
Dewey got there before Whitehead or Pirsig but I don't think any of them would 
dare to claim to be its originator, not even Heraclitus. And the Sophists were 
teaching Quality a couple dozen centuries before any of them were born.

And speaking of fraudulent ignoramuses, nobody around here will be surprised if 
John has tried to slander Pirsig or if has dishonestly tried to smuggle in a 
theistic view. Again. It's like a hobby, I guess. Trolls will be trolls.




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Re: [MD] Why does Pirsig write everybody's right about mind and matter although his theses imply the opposite?

[david]

Tuukka said to dmb:

Classical logic wasn't invented by me, therefore it's not "mine". Either 
classical logic is a misconception in the first place or I
haven't applied it correctly. But you don't examine my argument to check 
whether it's correct. [...] Quality doesn't reject logic. What in the MOQ does?


dmb says:

Logic? I haven't yet offered any criticism of your logic. But since you 
mentioned it, I'll point out that discerning the logical relation between terms 
depends upon a proper understanding those terms. I'm offering a criticism about 
your understanding of the terms, of the words and concepts you're using.


Tuukka asked:
If logic is psychical how can pure experience logically precede subject and 
object? After all, logic doesn't exist at the stage where
this precession should take place.



dmb says:

As odd or paradoxical as it may sound, pure experience not only logically 
precedes subjects and objects, it also logically precedes logic. The 
strangeness of this claim evaporates when you see that having an experience is 
one thing but talking about it or reflecting on it is a different thing.

But this is not really related to the criticism I was offering either. Let me 
know if you're interested in that.


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Re: [MD] Why does Pirsig write everybody's right about mind and matter although his theses imply the opposite?

[david]

All,

dmb wrote:

The question you're asking is seriously complicated by the nature of the 
statements you've used as a launching pad. In those quotes Pirsig is trying to 
explain how SOM would fit into the MOQ even though the MOQ is supposed to 
reject and replace SOM. That makes it super easy to get all tangled up. But 
just remember that empirical reality is what generated both sets of ideas. SOM 
can't be abandoned entirely because it's based on empirical reaIity so that the 
basic distinctions are not crazy. Even in the MOQ, imaginary guns can't shoot 
you and physical guns can't be stopped by wishes. But the MOQ insists that our 
inferences and idea about the ontological structure of reality can never be 
more real than the experiences from which they were inferred.

That’s right dmb. And the interpretations of our experience we use depend on 
the Quality of the descriptions.  If it makes more sense to assume objects are 
fundamental, do that.  If it makes more sense to assume ideas are, then do 
that.  It all depends on the context and not losing sight that Quality drives 
everything -  including which assumptions we make at the time.

It’s a different way than our culture teaches us - but once understood - it’s 
better… Of course - I could go on :)

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Re: [MD] Why does Pirsig write everybody's right about mind and matter although his theses imply the opposite?

[david]

Tuk said to dmb:


I do see the point in making helpful simplifications about subjects being 
social and intellectual and objects being inorganic and biological. But what is 
the real deal about subjects and objects?



dmb says:


The real deal with subjects and objects is that they are not real. Like you 
said, social and intellectual values aren't "strictly" subjective. But that's 
NOT because the subjective emerges from the objective or the other way around. 
To say everything emerges from the subjective is to assert idealism and to say 
everything is objective and subjectivity emerges from that is to assert 
materialism. The MOQ is neither but it can explain both of them and, to a 
certain extent and with qualifications, both can fit into the MOQ.

The MOQ says that Quality comes first and subjects and objects both emerge from 
that. Instead of saying that mind is primary or that matter is primary, the MOQ 
says immediate experience is primary. That's why it makes sense for Pirsig to 
call Quality "the primary empirical reality" or "the cutting edge of 
experience". In the MOQ subjects and objects are concepts rather than actually 
existing substances or ontological structures.

Remember that section in ZAMM where the entirety of our reality is made of 
analogies? Every last bit of that reality was generated by Quality and among 
these analogies - which include earth and sky, religion and science, moons and 
stars - are subjects and objects. And if we try to explain all of reality in 
terms of those two opposed analogies we will certainly get into all kinds of 
philosophical trouble.

The question you're asking is seriously complicated by the nature of the 
statements you've used as a launching pad. In those quotes Pirsig is trying to 
explain how SOM would fit into the MOQ even though the MOQ is supposed to 
reject and replace SOM. That makes it super easy to get all tangled up. But 
just remember that empirical reality is what generated both sets of ideas. SOM 
can't be abandoned entirely because it's based on empirical reaIity so that the 
basic distinctions are not crazy. Even in the MOQ, imaginary guns can't shoot 
you and physical guns can't be stopped by wishes. But the MOQ insists that our 
inferences and idea about the ontological structure of reality can never be 
more real than the experiences from which they were inferred.

Later,


dmb



From: Moq_Discuss  on behalf of 
m...@tuukkavirtaperko.net 
Sent: Wednesday, October 19, 2016 7:40 AM
To: moq_disc...@moqtalk.org
Subject: [MD] Why does Pirsig write everybody's right about mind and matter 
although his theses imply the opposite?

All,

Thanks to Dan it became apparent that the former topic of this thread,
which included the question "Why are sociality and intellectuality
strictly subjective?", was badly chosen. Sociality and intellectuality
aren't "strictly" subjective because the subjective emerges from the
objective and thus everything subjective is also objective. I will
begin by explicating the exact reason for this.

In the Turner letter Pirsig states that:

- The levels of static quality are, in ascending order, the inorganic,
the biological, the social and the intellectual level.
- What belongs to a higher level belongs also to the level below.
- What belongs to a lower level doesn't necessarily belong to the level above.

If A is a subset of B and B is a subset of C, then A is a subset of C.
I have actually seen what looked like a Venn diagram of the static
levels, probably by Anthony McWatt, and I've never heard anyone
complain about that. So it seems reasonable to assume that what
belongs to a higher level belongs to all the levels below, not just
the one level immediately below.

In chapter 24 of LILA Pirsig states:

"The Metaphysics of Quality resolves the relationship between intellect and
society, subject and object, mind and matter, by embedding all of them in a
larger system of understanding.  Objects are inorganic and biological
values; subjects are social and intellectual values."

According to the Turner letter this means that everything subjective
is necessarily objective, but everything objective is not necessarily
subjective. Furthermore, the subjective emerges from the objective.

However, in chapter 12 of LILA Pirsig writes:

"So what the Metaphysics of Quality concludes is that all schools are right
on the mind-matter question.  Mind is contained in static inorganic
patterns.  Matter is contained in static intellectual patterns.  Both mind
and matter are completely separate evolutionary levels of static patterns
of value, and as such are capable of each containing the other without
contradiction."

Why does Pirsig write this? According to idealism everything exists in
the mind. But if the subjective emerges from the objective, there are
things that are objective but that aren't subjective. This contradicts

Re: [MD] To Pirsig and all: Why are sociality and intellectuality strictly subjective?

[David Harding]

Dear Dmb, Tuk,  

I don't think this contradicts anything in the MoQ as I understand it. I 
remember in Lila the anaology of a computer system is given. The software on 
the screen isn't the 101 in the hardware. But software is limited by the 
capabilities of the hardware.  

Similarly the capabilities of the human subject is limited by the capabilities 
of the human brain. At the end of the scale would be those with extreme mental 
disorders and I'm sure varying shades of grey between..  



On 19 October 2016 at 12:28:36 pm, David Harding 
(da...@goodmetaphysics.com(mailto:da...@goodmetaphysics.com)) wrote:

>  
> Dear Dmb, Tuk,  
>  
> I don't think this contradicts anything in the MoQ as I understand it. I 
> remember in Lila the anaology of a computer system is given. The software on 
> the screen isn't the 101 in the hardware. But software is limited by the 
> capabilities of the hardware.  
>  
> Similarly the capabilities of the human subject is limited by the 
> capabilities of the human brain. At the end of the scale would be those with 
> extreme mental disorders and I'm sure varying shades of grey between..  
>  
>  
>  
>  
>  
>  
> On 19 October 2016 at 10:34:09 am, david 
> (dmbucha...@hotmail.com(mailto:dmbucha...@hotmail.com)) wrote:
>  
> >  
> > Hello Tuk:
> >  
> >  
> > To say that social and intellectual quality are subjective, as Pirsig does, 
> > is to offer a simple explanation of the MOQ using terms that will be 
> > understood by most people. It's a way of showing how the new map (MOQ) can 
> > be laid over the old map (SOM), so to speak. But of course Pirsig's MOQ 
> > displaces or replaces SOM so that subjects and objects are no longer taken 
> > as ontological categories, no longer taken as the starting points of 
> > reality. They're just concepts into which people in our culture sort their 
> > experiences, just thought categories into which we place actual phenomenal 
> > realities. In this way, subjects and objects can still have a place within 
> > the overall structure but they've been drastically reduced in rank, so to 
> > speak.
> >  
> > One of the central flaws of SOM is the low status it confers on feelings, 
> > values, emotions, preferences and such because they're "just" subjective, 
> > they're "just" what you like. But the MOQ insists that values are as real 
> > as rocks and trees and what's most real is the primary empirical reality, 
> > a.k.a. actual human experience of "inner" and "outer" realities equally.
> >  
> > But it is useful as a teaching device. To say that social and intellectual 
> > quality is subjective helps to explain why the church of reason is not a 
> > collection of buildings and books but rather a set of ideals. The 
> > distinction is a good one, even if it's not a distinction between two kinds 
> > of fundamental substances.
> >  
> >  
> > There's my two cents. Hope it helps.
> >  
> >  
> >  
> > 
> > From: Moq_Discuss <moq_discuss-boun...@lists.moqtalk.org> on behalf of 
> > m...@tuukkavirtaperko.net <m...@tuukkavirtaperko.net>
> > Sent: Saturday, October 15, 2016 7:23 AM
> > To: moq_disc...@moqtalk.org
> > Subject: [MD] To Pirsig and all: Why are sociality and intellectuality 
> > strictly subjective?
> >  
> > All,
> > As I've not been endowed with Pirsig's e-mail address I thought to
> > write this open letter I hope to pertain to all those who are present.
> > I remember how Pirsig complained during the Baggini interview about
> > Baggini not asking him about the Metaphysics of Quality, so I thought
> > maybe somebody should ask something.
> >  
> > In order to approach the topic of my inquiry, let's consider the
> > following ZAMM quote. This quote defines subjectivity and objectivity
> > and the uses of these concepts. Emphasis by me.
> >  
> > "Time to get on with the Chautauqua and the second wave of
> > crystallization, the metaphysical one. This was brought about in
> > response to Phædrus' wild meanderings about Quality when the English
> > faculty at Bozeman, informed of their squareness, presented him with a
> > reasonable question: ``Does this undefined `quality' of yours exist in
> > the things we observe?'' they asked. ``Or is it subjective, existing
> > only in the observer?'' It was a simple, normal enough question, and
> > there was no hurry for an answer. Hah. There was no need for hurry. It
> > was a finisher-offer, a knockdown question, a haymaker, a
> > Saturday-night special...the kind

Re: [MD] To Pirsig and all: Why are sociality and intellectuality strictly subjective?

[David Harding]

Dear Dmb, Tuk,  

I don't think this contradicts anything in the MoQ as I understand it. I 
remember in Lila the anaology of a computer system is given. The software on 
the screen isn't the 101 in the hardware. But software is limited by the 
capabilities of the hardware.  

Similarly the capabilities of the human subject is limited by the capabilities 
of the human brain. At the end of the scale would be those with extreme mental 
disorders and I'm sure varying shades of grey between..  






On 19 October 2016 at 10:34:09 am, david 
(dmbucha...@hotmail.com(mailto:dmbucha...@hotmail.com)) wrote:

>  
> Hello Tuk:
>  
>  
> To say that social and intellectual quality are subjective, as Pirsig does, 
> is to offer a simple explanation of the MOQ using terms that will be 
> understood by most people. It's a way of showing how the new map (MOQ) can be 
> laid over the old map (SOM), so to speak. But of course Pirsig's MOQ 
> displaces or replaces SOM so that subjects and objects are no longer taken as 
> ontological categories, no longer taken as the starting points of reality. 
> They're just concepts into which people in our culture sort their 
> experiences, just thought categories into which we place actual phenomenal 
> realities. In this way, subjects and objects can still have a place within 
> the overall structure but they've been drastically reduced in rank, so to 
> speak.
>  
> One of the central flaws of SOM is the low status it confers on feelings, 
> values, emotions, preferences and such because they're "just" subjective, 
> they're "just" what you like. But the MOQ insists that values are as real as 
> rocks and trees and what's most real is the primary empirical reality, a.k.a. 
> actual human experience of "inner" and "outer" realities equally.
>  
> But it is useful as a teaching device. To say that social and intellectual 
> quality is subjective helps to explain why the church of reason is not a 
> collection of buildings and books but rather a set of ideals. The distinction 
> is a good one, even if it's not a distinction between two kinds of 
> fundamental substances.
>  
>  
> There's my two cents. Hope it helps.
>  
>  
>  
> 
> From: Moq_Discuss <moq_discuss-boun...@lists.moqtalk.org> on behalf of 
> m...@tuukkavirtaperko.net <m...@tuukkavirtaperko.net>
> Sent: Saturday, October 15, 2016 7:23 AM
> To: moq_disc...@moqtalk.org
> Subject: [MD] To Pirsig and all: Why are sociality and intellectuality 
> strictly subjective?
>  
> All,
> As I've not been endowed with Pirsig's e-mail address I thought to
> write this open letter I hope to pertain to all those who are present.
> I remember how Pirsig complained during the Baggini interview about
> Baggini not asking him about the Metaphysics of Quality, so I thought
> maybe somebody should ask something.
>  
> In order to approach the topic of my inquiry, let's consider the
> following ZAMM quote. This quote defines subjectivity and objectivity
> and the uses of these concepts. Emphasis by me.
>  
> "Time to get on with the Chautauqua and the second wave of
> crystallization, the metaphysical one. This was brought about in
> response to Phædrus' wild meanderings about Quality when the English
> faculty at Bozeman, informed of their squareness, presented him with a
> reasonable question: ``Does this undefined `quality' of yours exist in
> the things we observe?'' they asked. ``Or is it subjective, existing
> only in the observer?'' It was a simple, normal enough question, and
> there was no hurry for an answer. Hah. There was no need for hurry. It
> was a finisher-offer, a knockdown question, a haymaker, a
> Saturday-night special...the kind you don't recover from. Because if
> Quality exists in the object, then you must explain just why
> scientific *instruments* are unable to detect it. You must suggest
> *instruments* that will detect it, or live with the explanation that
> instruments don't detect it because your whole Quality concept, to put
> it politely, is a large pile of nonsense. On the other hand, if
> Quality is subjective, existing only in the observer, then this
> Quality that you make so much of is just a fancy name for whatever you
> like."
>  
> In LILA Pirsig presents the idea that social quality and intellectual
> quality are subjective. If so, how can they be detected by scientific
> *instruments*?
>  
> We all probably can agree that BDI (Beck Depression Inventory) is an
> instrument. Yet it is a mere questionnaire - a slip of paper, on which
> the test subject selects certain answers and, according to these
> answers, the psychiatrist determines how depressed the subject is. But
> even t

Re: [MD] To Pirsig and all: Why are sociality and intellectuality strictly subjective?

[david]

Hello Tuk:


To say that social and intellectual quality are subjective, as Pirsig does, is 
to offer a simple explanation of the MOQ using terms that will be understood by 
most people. It's a way of showing how the new map (MOQ) can be laid over the 
old map (SOM), so to speak. But of course Pirsig's MOQ displaces or replaces 
SOM so that subjects and objects are no longer taken as ontological categories, 
no longer taken as the starting points of reality. They're just concepts into 
which people in our culture sort their experiences, just thought categories 
into which we place actual phenomenal realities. In this way, subjects and 
objects can still have a place within the overall structure but they've been 
drastically reduced in rank, so to speak.

One of the central flaws of SOM is the low status it confers on feelings, 
values, emotions, preferences and such because they're "just" subjective, 
they're "just" what you like. But the MOQ insists that values are as real as 
rocks and trees and what's most real is the primary empirical reality, a.k.a. 
actual human experience of "inner" and "outer" realities equally.

But it is useful as a teaching device. To say that social and intellectual 
quality is subjective helps to explain why the church of reason is not a 
collection of buildings and books but rather a set of ideals. The distinction 
is a good one, even if it's not a distinction between two kinds of fundamental 
substances.


There's my two cents. Hope it helps.




From: Moq_Discuss  on behalf of 
m...@tuukkavirtaperko.net 
Sent: Saturday, October 15, 2016 7:23 AM
To: moq_disc...@moqtalk.org
Subject: [MD] To Pirsig and all: Why are sociality and intellectuality strictly 
subjective?

All,
As I've not been endowed with Pirsig's e-mail address I thought to
write this open letter I hope to pertain to all those who are present.
I remember how Pirsig complained during the Baggini interview about
Baggini not asking him about the Metaphysics of Quality, so I thought
maybe somebody should ask something.

In order to approach the topic of my inquiry, let's consider the
following ZAMM quote. This quote defines subjectivity and objectivity
and the uses of these concepts. Emphasis by me.

"Time to get on with the Chautauqua and the second wave of
crystallization, the metaphysical one. This was brought about in
response to Phædrus' wild meanderings about Quality when the English
faculty at Bozeman, informed of their squareness, presented him with a
reasonable question: ``Does this undefined `quality' of yours exist in
the things we observe?'' they asked. ``Or is it subjective, existing
only in the observer?'' It was a simple, normal enough question, and
there was no hurry for an answer. Hah. There was no need for hurry. It
was a finisher-offer, a knockdown question, a haymaker, a
Saturday-night special...the kind you don't recover from. Because if
Quality exists in the object, then you must explain just why
scientific *instruments* are unable to detect it. You must suggest
*instruments* that will detect it, or live with the explanation that
instruments don't detect it because your whole Quality concept, to put
it politely, is a large pile of nonsense. On the other hand, if
Quality is subjective, existing only in the observer, then this
Quality that you make so much of is just a fancy name for whatever you
like."

In LILA Pirsig presents the idea that social quality and intellectual
quality are subjective. If so, how can they be detected by scientific
*instruments*?

We all probably can agree that BDI (Beck Depression Inventory) is an
instrument. Yet it is a mere questionnaire - a slip of paper, on which
the test subject selects certain answers and, according to these
answers, the psychiatrist determines how depressed the subject is. But
even though BDI is clearly an instrument, perhaps depression is
biological. And if depression is biological it is objective - not
subjective - according to the SODV stance that Pirsig already presents
in LILA.

If social and intellectual quality are subjective, as Pirsig claims in
LILA and SODV, according to the above ZAMM quote instruments should be
unable to detect them. Well, are instruments unable to detect them?

Here's the abstract of a scientific paper at
http://cpa.sagepub.com/content/45/7/607.short:
The Mental Health of Aboriginal Peoples: Transformations of Identity and 
Community
cpa.sagepub.com
SAGE Publications



"This paper reviews some recent research on the mental health of the
First Nations, Inuit, and Métis of Canada. We summarize evidence for
the social origins of mental health problems and illustrate the
ongoing responses of individuals and communities to the legacy of
colonization. Cultural discontinuity and oppression have been linked
to high rates of depression, alcoholism, suicide, and violence in many

Re: [MD] On Pirsig's letter to Paul Turner

[david]

Just to be clear, "the argument that the Metaphysics of Quality is not an 
intellectual formulation" was not something that Paul Turner argued. Quite the 
opposite. Paul Turner is very intelligent and understands the MOQ as well as 
anyone. I admire the man.





From: Moq_Discuss <moq_discuss-boun...@lists.moqtalk.org> on behalf of Adrie 
Kintziger <parser...@gmail.com>
Sent: Monday, August 1, 2016 11:52 AM
To: moq_disc...@moqtalk.org
Subject: Re: [MD] On Pirsig's letter to Paul Turner

Hi David.
Long time no see
The assertation would only make sense in an occult environment;(imho);
The way i should suggest to read it,is as a derivative summary of two
different lines of reasoning only.
But  this does not mean the Turner brief is unimportant.It is
dated.Obsolete.
Strange that it keeps bugging people.

Adrie


2016-08-01 17:59 GMT+02:00 david <dmbucha...@hotmail.com>:

>
>
>
> 
> Tuukka Virtaperko said: "In his letter Pirsig also mentions that the
> argument that the Metaphysics of Quality is not an intellectual formulation
> is not clear to him.
>
> dmb says:
>
> As I read it, Pirsig was referring to the assertion that subject-object
> dualism is equal to the intellectual level and since the MOQ rejects
> subject-object dualism, the MOQ is beyond the intellectual level. When
> Pirsig says this assertion "is not clear to him," he is politely saying
> that the assertion makes no sense. I'm fairly certain that Pirsig is right
> about that.
>
> Thanks.
>
>
> --
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Re: [MD] On Pirsig's letter to Paul Turner

[david]

Tuukka Virtaperko said: "In his letter Pirsig also mentions that the argument 
that the Metaphysics of Quality is not an intellectual formulation is not clear 
to him.

dmb says:

As I read it, Pirsig was referring to the assertion that subject-object dualism 
is equal to the intellectual level and since the MOQ rejects subject-object 
dualism, the MOQ is beyond the intellectual level. When Pirsig says this 
assertion "is not clear to him," he is politely saying that the assertion makes 
no sense. I'm fairly certain that Pirsig is right about that.

Thanks.


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[MD] New Website : The story of Metaphysics

[David Harding]

Hi All, 

Hope everyone's doing well..

I've just completed the website trilogy with a prequel : www.metaphysics.is 

The site tells the story of metaphysics and describes how we ended up with our 
current metaphysics. This leads into www.som.is and then www.moq.is 
respectively. 

As always am keen to hear feedback both positive and negative. 












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Re: [MD] still going?

[david]

s blind spots in the mind, so to speak. 

John continues to insist that James and Royce were equally religious and that 
my protests to the contrary are symptoms of fear, prejudice, or even post 
traumatic stress induced by a bad experience with theism. This is mere slander, 
of course, but even worse is that it defies what the Stanford Encyclopedia and 
James himself have to say on the topic. It's like he just doesn't care what's 
true and what's not true. He wants to make it fit no matter what it takes. 
That's what happens when you are already committed to some faith before you 
even start to think. It warps everything so that real conversations are almost 
impossible. 


Take it easy.

Dave




--
> > 2016-02-05 16:41 GMT+01:00 david <dmbucha...@hotmail.com>:
> >
> >>
> >> Adrie quoted Wikipedia to dispute John's claims:
> >>
> >>
> >> "His publication in 1885 of The Religious Aspect of Philosophy
> >> ...contained a new proof for the existence of God based upon the reality
> >> of
> >> error. All errors are judged to be erroneous in comparison to some total
> >> truth, Royce argued, and we must either hold ourselves infallible or
> >> accept
> >> that even our errors are evidence of a world of truth. Having made it
> >> clear
> >> that idealism depends upon postulates and proceeds hypothetically, Royce
> >> defends the necessity of objective reference of our ideas to a universal
> >> whole within which they belong, for without these postulates, “both
> >> practical life and the commonest results of theory, from the simplest
> >> impressions to the most valuable beliefs, would be for most if not all
> of
> >> us utterly impossible”. (see The Religious Aspect of Philosophy, p.
> 324)"
> >>
> >>
> >>
> >> dmb says:
> >>
> >>
> >> Since Royce was offering fallibilism as "a new proof for the existence
> of
> >> God" and "the necessity of objective reference of our ideas", his
> >> fallibilism is very, very different from the fallibilism of Pragmatists
> >> like James and Pirsig. I think it's fair to say that Pirsig is NOT
> >> offering
> >> theism or objectivity. James, Dewey, and Pirsig are quite explicit in
> >> their
> >> rejection of SOM and even James, the most religion-friendly of the
> three,
> >> wrote his Varieties of Religious Experience in order to DISPUTE the
> >> religious claims made by Royce.
> >>
> >>
> >> From the Stanford Encyclopedia:
> >>
> >> "Royce and James had always disagreed deeply concerning the proper
> >> understanding of religious phenomena in human life. When James delivered
> >> the Gifford Lectures in 1901 and 1902, he directed many arguments
> against
> >> Royce's idealism, though he did not there target his friend by name.
> >> James's lectures, published as The Varieties of Religious Experience,
> were
> >> a popular and academic success . Royce believed that James, who had
> never
> >> been regularly affiliated with an established church or religious
> >> community, had in that work placed too much emphasis on the
> extraordinary
> >> religious experiences of extraordinary individuals. Royce's first
> >> education
> >> was into a strongly Protestant world view, he always retained a respect
> >> for
> >> the conventions of organized Christianity, and his writings exhibit a
> >> consistent and deep familiarity with Scripture. He sought a philosophy
> of
> >> religion that could help one understand and explain the phenomena of
> >> ordinary religious faith as experienced by communities of ordinary
> people.
> >> There was a deeper difference between them, as well, and it centered on
> a
> >> metaphysical point. Royce's 1883 insight concerning the Absolute was at
> >> bottom a religious insight. Contrary to the open-ended pluralism and
> >> pragmatism of James, Royce was convinced that the object and source of
> >> religious experience was an actual, infinite, and superhuman being."
> >>
> >>
> >>
> >> Since Pirsig was suspicious of James for trying to sneak religion in
> >> through the back door into philosophy, imagine what he'd think of
> Royce's
> >> "respect of the conventions of organized Christianity" and his stance
> >> "contrary to the open-ended pluralism and pragmati

Re: [MD] still going?

[david]

 Adrie Kintziger said to dmb:

Yes, one of my biggest concerns is exactly the blending in of fallibilism as a 
key argument to maintain god's presence in the house of philosophy. ...It did 
not take me much time to find that Royce, indeed is using fallibilism to 
maintain the theistic stance. It took me less then 10 minutes to keep Auxier 
against the light to find out he gives bible classes in his free time. But 
using this as an argument against John's apparent will to devote him would make 
this case moot.

My personal perspective on fallibilism in general is derived from logic, if 
fallibilism is true, then fallibilism itself is probably wrong. However this 
does not mean that fallibilism is not a genuine and solid analytical knife, if 
handled in skilled hands. 
...But regardless of these moot-events, David, in your opinion, should i take 
the effort to read and study some work of Royce, just for the sake of my 
knowledge of philosophy, or lack of it? Is there value to discover, new 
insights or things that were left behind too easy?



dmb says:


It looks like there are three questions here, one about the religious motives 
of Royce and his followers, one about the value and nature of fallibilism, and 
one about the value of studying Royce. The first and third questions are 
related to each other and can be treated as a single issue but the question of 
fallibilism can be treated by itself.


I don't think the idea of fallibilism can be defeated with simple logic, by 
simply pointing out that fallibilism is itself fallible. Behind the idea is an 
entire critique of philosophy's quest for certainty, for eternal truths, for 
ultimate truths, for objective truths, etc.. Fallibilism doesn't simply say "we 
could be wrong" but rather insists that our truths are always provisional, 
man-made tools that must remain open to revision. It says truth evolves along 
with our needs and practices, that it does not remain fixed by it's 
correspondence to an objective reality. This is very different from the 
fallibilism Royce as Auxier describes it:

"All errors are judged to be erroneous in comparison to some total truth, Royce 
argued, and we must either hold ourselves infallible or accept that even our 
errors are evidence of a world of truth. Having made it clear that idealism 
depends upon postulates and proceeds hypothetically, Royce defends the 
necessity of objective reference of our ideas to a universal whole within which 
they belong,.."


Royce's fallibilism entails another version of subject-object metaphysics. The 
reality to which our truths must correspond is not the physical universe of 
scientific materialism but rather the idealist's conception of "some total 
truth" or "world of truth" or "universal whole," as Auxier puts it. That's the 
absolute, the God of the idealists. But the pragmatic arguments against the 
scientific version SOM also apply to the idealist version and so both are 
rejected for the same reasons. Pragmatism is an alternative theory of truth, 
the kind of truth that doesn't correspond with any ultimate reality but rather 
functions successfully as a tool or instrument within particular practices for 
particular purposes. 


Should you make the effort to study Royce? 



It's partly a matter of taste, I suppose, and depends on your aims in studying 
philosophy in general. As my friend Dorothy Parker might have said, Royce's 
books should not be tossed aside lightly. They should be thrown with great 
force.


As I understand it, Hegelian philosophies were quite popular and widely taught 
in England and the United States in the 19th century when James, Dewey and 
Royce were working and writing. Roughly speaking, Pragmatism in America and 
Analytic philosophy in England were both invented, so speak, as a reaction 
against the Hegelians, particularly British Idealism. These days Hegel is most 
likely to be named and used by neo-Marxist philosophers, who work largely in 
the Continental tradition but in the English speaking world, where Analytic 
philosophy dominates, Hegel is mostly ignored and his name is considered to be 
obsolete. Again, like Pragmatism, it was founded as a reaction against Hegel's 
quasi-theological Idealism.


It's no accident that those interested in re-animating that kind of idealism 
are motivated by some kind of theism because a revival of this idealism sort of 
entails a revival of the possibility of faith. It's easy to imagine the desire 
to rescue one's faith, the desire to make it intellectually respectable once 
again and even to sympathize with that desire. But I really don't think it can 
be done, which is probably why it always seems a little desperate or 
disingenuous. I think it's a dead end, at least for the foreseeable future. And 
Pragmatism, which I subscribe to of course, entails a rejection of any 
foundational claims and any metaphysical claims, which include the claims of 
phys

Re: [MD] still going?

[david]

Adrie quoted Wikipedia to dispute John's claims: 


"His publication in 1885 of The Religious Aspect of Philosophy ...contained a 
new proof for the existence of God based upon the reality of error. All errors 
are judged to be erroneous in comparison to some total truth, Royce argued, and 
we must either hold ourselves infallible or accept that even our errors are 
evidence of a world of truth. Having made it clear that idealism depends upon 
postulates and proceeds hypothetically, Royce defends the necessity of 
objective reference of our ideas to a universal whole within which they belong, 
for without these postulates, “both practical life and the commonest results of 
theory, from the simplest impressions to the most valuable beliefs, would be 
for most if not all of us utterly impossible”. (see The Religious Aspect of 
Philosophy, p. 324)"



dmb says:


Since Royce was offering fallibilism as "a new proof for the existence of God" 
and "the necessity of objective reference of our ideas", his fallibilism is 
very, very different from the fallibilism of Pragmatists like James and Pirsig. 
I think it's fair to say that Pirsig is NOT offering theism or objectivity. 
James, Dewey, and Pirsig are quite explicit in their rejection of SOM and even 
James, the most religion-friendly of the three, wrote his Varieties of 
Religious Experience in order to DISPUTE the religious claims made by Royce. 


>From the Stanford Encyclopedia:

"Royce and James had always disagreed deeply concerning the proper 
understanding of religious phenomena in human life. When James delivered the 
Gifford Lectures in 1901 and 1902, he directed many arguments against Royce's 
idealism, though he did not there target his friend by name. James's lectures, 
published as The Varieties of Religious Experience, were a popular and academic 
success . Royce believed that James, who had never been regularly affiliated 
with an established church or religious community, had in that work placed too 
much emphasis on the extraordinary religious experiences of extraordinary 
individuals. Royce's first education was into a strongly Protestant world view, 
he always retained a respect for the conventions of organized Christianity, and 
his writings exhibit a consistent and deep familiarity with Scripture. He 
sought a philosophy of religion that could help one understand and explain the 
phenomena of ordinary religious faith as experienced by communities of ordinary 
people. There was a deeper difference between them, as well, and it centered on 
a metaphysical point. Royce's 1883 insight concerning the Absolute was at 
bottom a religious insight. Contrary to the open-ended pluralism and pragmatism 
of James, Royce was convinced that the object and source of religious 
experience was an actual, infinite, and superhuman being."



Since Pirsig was suspicious of James for trying to sneak religion in through 
the back door into philosophy, imagine what he'd think of Royce's "respect of 
the conventions of organized Christianity" and his stance "contrary to the 
open-ended pluralism and pragmatism of James". 



Like I keep saying, trying to make this Idealistic religious fanatic into a 
Pirsigian is like trying to pound a square peg into a round hole. Why, why, why 
does John keep preaching this nonsense against all evidence and reason? This 
covert theism is bullshit and cannot be sustained without a huge dose of 
dishonesty, or ignorance, or both.



It's fine if a person insists on being an Idealist, an Absolutist, or a 
advocate of conventional Christianity but it makes no sense to paint Pirsig or 
Pragmatism in these colors. The keys concepts of these two opposed views will 
crash into each other like two trains heading in opposite directions. It's 
worse than a pointless waste of time because, frankly, it's so obviously 
stupid. It makes me sad and angry that John is allowed to continue raining his 
bullshit on Pirsig and James.









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Re: [MD] still going?

[david]

From: Moq_Discuss  on behalf of John 
Carl 
Sent: Sunday, January 31, 2016 1:11 PM
To: moq_disc...@moqtalk.org
Subject: Re: [MD] still going?
John said:

... My academic sources are not bankrupt.  Carbondale vs Stanford on american 
Pragmatism?  I'd take Carbondale, any day.  I
know Stanford and I know the Valley in which it resides.  And there's people 
who think wikipedia is the final answer also, but if one thing
James should have taught you, final answers are not so common in philosophy.  
We have to be tolerant towards other views, if we're
going to espouse Pluralism, wouldn't you agree?


dmb says:

I have no problem with the Pragmatists of Carbondale and it's not a contest 
between Universities anyway. That's one of the weakest false dilemmas I've seen 
in quite a while. And the people at Stanford "who think wikipedia is the final 
answer" are just a silly little army of straw men. I'm not offering any "final 
answers" either. Your lack of credibility is not related to the quality of the 
University of Illinois but to bogus and childish "arguments" like this one. 
It's not even worthy of a response, which is why I usually don't respond.



John said:

...Royce cites James as his philosophical influence but James didn't have the 
analytical abilities to keep up with Peirce or Royce in system-building or 
metaphysics.  ...It could only be a modern interpretation, with our socialized 
ego competitions ingrained
from K-12-PhD. - but the kind of crass individualism at play today should not 
be projected upon our more community-minded elders. What do I say here that 
would be contradicted by you or your sources?



dmb says:


Your "argument" includes insulting James's analytic abilities, painting 
education as some kind of brain-washing conspiracy theory, and then an explicit 
denial that James's own words on the matter do not count as a source that 
contradicts your claims. Again, this is a conspicuously hair-brained and 
childish way to make a case for anything. 

Pirsig and James avoid metaphysical system-building not out of weakness but 
because they think nobody should be doing any metaphysical system building. The 
true nature of reality is outside language, they say. This is the core concept 
of Pragmatism and of Radical Empiricism and trying to squeeze the idealist's 
absolutism into that is an intellectual train wreck. It would be very much like 
insisting that Dynamic Quality is intellectually knowable through logic and 
rationality. These Pragmatists think it's foolish to suppose that reality can 
be buttoned up so neatly. 



John said:

... Royce vowed he was never much a student of Hegel, although he did 
appreciate his system building expertise.  Royce claimed Schopenhauer and 
James, but never Hegel. ...



dmb says:


That's an ignorant thing to say, John. You're dismissing my evidence (quotes 
from James and his biographer on the topic) on the premise that Royce is not 
Hegelian. According to the FIRST sentence of the Stanford article, you are 
wrong about this basic fact. "Josiah Royce (1855–1916) was the leading American 
proponent of absolute idealism, the metaphysical view (also maintained by G. W. 
F. Hegel and F. H. Bradley) that all aspects of reality, including those we 
experience as disconnected or contradictory, are ultimately unified in the 
thought of a single all-encompassing consciousness." See, this is why it's so 
difficult to take you seriously. You keep blaming it on prejudice, 
narrow-mindedness and other vague insults but please consider the possibility 
that it's you, that your arguments are ill-informed, full of fallacious 
thinking, and that other people are able to see those problems. 



John the Royce-partisan admitted and confessed:

...James and Royce were very different men who somehow became good friends and 
appreciated each other's differences and argued passionately for their side 
without insulting or alienating the other.   Royce admits that his language was 
influenced by Hegel and he used the term 'Absolute" too much.  Perhaps because 
he was trying to build a bridge to the theologians.   ...I know this is an area 
of big difference between you and me, but don't project that same difference on 
James and Royce.  Royce certainly was not any kind of religionist or any more 
Theistic than James.



dmb says:


Sigh. It really seems like you just don't care what's true and what isn't true. 
Again, your claims are contradicted by the basic facts of the matter.


"Though his writings contain a great deal of insight that is relevant for a 
strictly naturalistic philosophy, religious concerns figure prominently from 
Royce's first major publication, The Religious Aspect of Philosophy, to his 
last two, The Sources of Religious Insight and The Problem of Christianity. As 
has been indicated, the main focus of Royce's early work was metaphysical. In 
The 

Re: [MD] still going?

[david]

Adrie Kintziger said to john carl:


...It is true that i defended the case that James and Royce were in fact 
enemy's but irl de facto friends. My point of view was partially derived from 
the stanford entry about Royce (http://plato.stanford.edu/entries/royce/) and 
after some investigation on this page, the Gifford lectures given by Royce as 
"the world and the individual", and subsequently thereafter William James "the 
variaties of religious experience" - as the lead on the stanford page suggested 
i took the effort to compare the two views, and i had to agree with the remarks 
on the stanford page under the header "life", if you want/like to find them. I 
did not invent my point. I honestly found that the narrator was very correct in 
his analysis.



dmb says:

The Stanford Encyclopedia is considered to be among the most credible academic 
sources, right up there with philosophy Journals and University books. And 
there are many good reasons to draw the conclusion that James and Royce had 
very different views. It's utterly contemptible to dismiss SEP as if it were 
just some guy's opinion or to dismiss the basic facts for being the result of 
"a wrong-headed academic bias".  This is just the commonly heard 
anti-intellectual attitude that says "my ignorance is just as good as your 
knowledge". "For some reason," John says, "I didn't fit in
with the Stanford Encyclopedia of Dogmatic Authority, and so not worthy of 
further discussion or interest" and, he says, "I was ignored and vilified as a 
troll". 


William James said that he and Royce loved each other like "Siamese twins," but 
it's also true that they were opposed philosophically and that James said he 
wanted to destroy the absolute, wanted its "scalp". Royce was an advocate of 
Idealism and Monism while James was a Pluralist and a Radical Empiricist. James 
spells out the difference is one of his essays on Radical Empiricism, a piece 
called "Absolutism and Empiricism," and the life-long debate between the two 
men is somewhat famously known as "the battle of the Absolute". 


"James abused Hegel merrily," his biography says. 'Of all mental turpitude and 
rottennesses,' he thought, Hegelianism takes the cake. 'The worst of it is,' 
James told Hall, it makes an absolute sterility where it comes.' James wrote 
Royce in February 1880, groaning that 'my ignorant prejudice against all 
Hegelians except Hegel himself grows wusser and wusser. Their Sacerdotal airs! 
And their sterility!' ...He told Xenos Clark in December 1880, 'The Hegelian 
wave which seems to me only another desperate attempt to make a short cut to 
paradise, is deluging the College this year and will, if I am not mistake, 
completely sterilize its votaries'. ...He added his by now reflexist reaction 
to Hegel ('fundamentally rotten and charlatanish'), but went on to concede that 
'as a reaction against materialistic evolutionism it has a use, only this 
evolution is is fertile while Hegelism is absolutely sterile'." -- Robert 
Richardson, William James in the Maelstrom of American Modernism, page
  214. 


There are some points in common, of course, but these are very different 
visions, from different schools of philosophy, held by people with very 
different temperaments. I see no good reason to pretend they are similar or 
compatible and l see lots of good reasons for being clear about the 
distinctions between them. Otherwise it's just the philosophical version of 
pounding a square peg into a round hole. You're only going to damage one or 
both of them in the effort. It's wreckless vandalism and if John feels 
persecuted by this obvious criticism, then he has a problem that cannot be 
solved by anyone but him.


Thanks,

dmb



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Re: [MD] still going?

[david]

Dan said:

As per the final paragraph... how can knowledge be objective? What I
see the author doing here is taking the subject and object as literal
entities existing independently forever apart. The trip-up occurs when
subject and object touch (in a metaphoricalish philosophical sense of
course since if subject and object are simply terms denoting a
worldview they [as independent entities] can never touch) and the
known becomes the knower, or the object becomes the subject.

This seems to nullify the argument. But if you (or anyone) have a few
minutes to spare and fancy a chat, please let me know what you think.


dmb says:

Hmmm. I don't think the author of The Guidebook to ZMM is taking subjects and 
objects literally. He's explaining how ancient and modern philosophers treated 
them - and that could be described as "literally". But what's more interesting, 
I think, is the difference between the ancients and the moderns. This 
difference helps us understand what Pirsig was doing, which was neither ancient 
(Aristotle) nor modern (Kant) but more like Nietzsche's view. 

Just as "the Tao, the unnameable One, gives rise to the myriad nameable things 
by way of the Two, yin and yang," so it is with "Quality, the unnameable One, 
[which] gives rise to the myriad nameable things by way of the Two, subject and 
object. Quality is neither subject nor object but is the ground of both and 
permeates both". I think yin and yang, like subject and object, are secondary 
creations and are among the nameable things, so this differs from the claim 
that subject and object are primary, differs from the claim that they are 
literally the starting points of reality.  

DiSanto thinks there "is a genuine parallel" between the yin-yang polarity and 
the subject-object polarity but I'm not so sure. I'd only go so far as to say 
it's an interesting idea that's worth thinking about. And it does help us make 
sense of the difference between the ancients and the moderns. The ancient 
tendency to think of knowing primarily as a kind of receptivity meant that the 
active, shaping role of the knower was largely unnoticed. But after Kant it 
changed so that the subjective mind imposes its thought categories and thereby 
takes an active role in shaping the world as we know it. 

But the MOQish answer comes just one page after the parts you quoted; on page 
117 of the Guidebook to ZMM: 

"...the question arose, Why do human beings impose categories upon things in 
the process of knowing them? Nietzsche's answer, which has resonated throughout 
the 20th century, was that human beings are not really interested in knowing 
things but in making them amenable to their own desires and needs. Underlying 
and permeating the human desire to know is a 'will to power,' a drive toward 
self-expansion and self-assertion. With knowing thus reduced to willing, it 
became easier and easier to talk about human beings, in their knowing activity, 
as not just shaping but even creating their world. Phaedrus, for example, said 
that we 'create the world in which we live. All of it. Every last bit of it'."


Like Phaedrus and Nietzsche, the Pragmatists also insist that we create reality 
according to human needs and practices. The mistake of idealist and materialist 
alike, John Dewey said, is that they confer existential status to the products 
of our reflection. In other words, the subjectivists and the objectivists both 
make the mistake of treating our creations as if they were literally real. But 
Pirsig and the Pragmatists are saying that subjects and objects are among those 
products of reflection, are among the things we've created. In the MOQ we'd 
call them intellectual static patterns, which are derived from Quality.


Thanks for raising the issue.


Dave 
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[MD] still going?

[David Blake]

is the pirsig discussion site still in operation?

dave blake
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Re: [MD] Two Minds

[david]

Arlo said to Austin:

...Wherever you end up, understand though that a KEY point to the MOQ is that 
intellect does NOT derive from biology. It can be a difficult point to grasp, 
but it's critical to understanding Pirsig. ...


dmb says:

Right. Maybe it would help to point out that each level includes all the levels 
below it or prior to it. In other words, the intellect obviously requires a 
healthy brain and body but that's not enough because it also requires social 
level cognition too and so does not derive from biology directly. In the same 
way, social structures can't be directly derived from inorganic matter but you 
can't have life without those basic physical elements so that the social level 
requires both but emerges only after life has evolved enough to sustain it.
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Re: [MD] Two Minds

[david]

Personally, I spent a lot less time at moq_discuss just because there are other 
options out there on the internet for people interested in philosophy. Pirsig 
is still my main pivot point but I find it more satisfying to discuss his ideas 
in a wider context with people of various backgrounds and interests. Not to be 
a snob about it - but it's much more fun when the discussion group is populated 
by folks with some kind of philosophical education. Otherwise, even very 
intelligent people will have no idea what you're talking about. Lately, I've 
been talking about theories of mind, the hard problem of consciousness and 
things like that.


There is a school of thought that fits with Pirsig's philosophy called 
"embodied mind" or "embodied cognition" and it addresses some of the questions 
being posed here in the last few days. Neutral monism, for example, is a good 
way to think about the MOQ. The embodied mind theories are such that the 
mind-body problem just sort of evaporates or rather is exposed as a fake 
problem. The authors of "Philosophy in the Flesh: The Embodied Mind and Its 
Challenge to Western Thought" are particularly helpful because they (especially 
Mark Johnson) make use of John Dewey and William James as their philosophical 
framework. Pirsig explicitly identifies the MOQ with James's work and with 
mainstream American Pragmatism - and I've been convinced that there are no 
important differences between Dewey, James, and Pirsig. It's really quite 
thrilling. Here is a short paper by Mark Johnson and it's full of ideas that 
could be lifted right from Pirsig's books. 


http://www.american-philosophy.org/archives/past_conference_programs/pc2001/Discussion%20papers/Feeling_William_James_But.htm




From: Moq_Discuss  on behalf of Adrie 
Kintziger 
Sent: Wednesday, November 4, 2015 11:02 AM
To: moq_disc...@moqtalk.org
Cc: moq_discuss@lists.moqtalk.org
Subject: Re: [MD] Two Minds

in the moq, idea's come first;... wich provides a good workaround for the
mind body problem

https://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/Mind%E2%80%93body_problem



2015-11-04 18:46 GMT+01:00 Austin Fatheree :

> If things have been too quiet, let me throw some things out there for
> discussion.  I know I'm late to the party so if any of this has been
> discussed before, feel free to point me in the right direction.
>
> A thing occurred to me while reading Lila that is really a technical point,
> albeit I think an important one, that doesn't really change any conclusions
> that Pirsig makes, but that may be worth discussion.
>
> Pirsig indicates that the Intellectual level emerges from the social
> level(and by definition emerged in time after the social level) and thus
> has moral authority over it.
>
> I think this is technically wrong, although the technical reasons don't end
> up changing many of the conclusions.
>
> I think that both the social and intellectual levels emerged out of the
> biological level.  The intellectual did emerge after the social and still
> holds moral authority over it and still has access to it, but it is more
> correct to say that it emerged from biology.
>
> I think this because it more adequately fits what we see in reality.  Our
> brains have many parts and recent Psychological analysis shows that it also
> has multiple modes.  Kahneman puts this forward in Thinking Fast and Slow (
> http://amzn.to/1MzA82R ).  Here we see System 1 (Quick Judgments) and
> System 2 (Methodical Thought) being driven by various parts of the brain
> and assimilated in the neocortex.  The theory is that the more reptilian
> brain evolved first, and the neocortex evolved with access to these other
> parts of the brain to add prediction and better fitness.  System 1 is the
> social level brain and System 2 is the intellectual part.  System 1 just is
> and just does.  System 2 can override and use simulated expectations as a
> basis.
>
> Ultimately though, both evolutions were biological responses to fitness.
> Both emerged out of biology and out of what the biological level values
> (fitness).
>
> I think this is important because at one point Pirsig says that a level
> only has access to the level below it.  I think the Intellectual level does
> have access to the biological(although it has many built in biases because
> System 1 was around with it developed).  System 2 may even be completely
> reliant on System 1 existing, but it can still reach down through it and
> act at the biological level.
>
> Unfortunately the fallout from this is that distinguishing that the
> intellectual level should have moral authority over the social level
> becomes even murkier.  Unfortunately this also seems be an accurate map of
> the territory.  I’m from Houston and yesterday we voted down our Houston
> Equal Rights Ordinance(HERO) because we have a significant portion of our
> population that has no 

[MD] Neutral monism

[David Morey]

Hi MOQers

Very sadly quiet round here these days, has something gone wrong? Is revival 
possible, but how?

The below is well worth a read, should Pirsig count amongst the neutral 
monists? William James is there. Neutral monism rejects SOM, but it is 
empiricist and realist too in its most common forms, bur not necessarily so. So 
is Pirsig a non-realist neutral monist?


http://plato.stanford.edu/entries/neutral-monism/

All the best
David M
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Re: [MD] IJMS Articles

[david]

Great find. Thanks, Arlo.





From: Moq_Discuss  on behalf of ARLO 
JAMES BENSINGER JR 
Sent: Wednesday, October 14, 2015 8:59 AM
To: moq discuss
Subject: [MD] IJMS Articles

Hi All,

I can't recall if this has been shared before. I searched my archives and don't 
see mention of it, but my apologies if this duplicates another share.

The April 2014 issue of the International Journal of Motorcycle Studies was 
devoted to articles reflecting on Pirsig's ZMM. There are a total of seven 
articles, some are not massive in length, but I found them all to be enjoyable, 
if not somewhat nostalgic. I feel compelled to say upfront, this is not a 
philosophical publication, it's self-described goal is to examine "motorcycle 
culture", so consider it more cultural anthropology than strict philosophy.

The IJMS website is here: http://motorcyclestudies.org/

The April 2014 issue is available online here: https://doaj.org/toc/1931-275X

Or you can use these links (from that page) to navigate to individual articles.

Absolutely Nothing, Next 22 Miles . . . A Fugue for Motorcycle: An 
Interpretation
Miguel Grunstein
http://ijms.nova.edu/Spring2014/IJMS_Artcl.Grunstein.html

Zen and the Art of Motorcycle Maintenance and the Art of Philosophical Fiction
Craig Bourne, Emily Caddick Bourne
http://ijms.nova.edu/Fall2014/IJMS_Rndtble.BourneCaddickBourne.html

Drinking (just a little) on the Fault Line
Barry Coleman
http://ijms.nova.edu/Fall2014/IJMS_Rndtble.Coleman.html

Zen and the Art of Motorcycle Maintenance and the Art of Shelf-Life Maintenance
Andreas Schroder
http://ijms.nova.edu/Fall2014/IJMS_Rndtble.Schroder.html

Reflections on Philosophy and Zen and the Art of Motorcycle Maintenance
Graham Priest
http://ijms.nova.edu/Fall2014/IJMS_Rndtble.Priest.html

Introduction: Zen and the Art of Motorcycle Maintenance: An Inquiry into Values 
by Robert Pirsig: A Retrospective Roundtable, Forty Years Down the Road
Thomas Goodmann
http://ijms.nova.edu/Fall2014/IJMS_Rndtble.Goodmann.html

Less Zen and More Art of Motorcycle Maintenance
Christian Pierce
http://ijms.nova.edu/Fall2014/IJMS_Rndtble.Pierce. html
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Re: [MD] Julian Baggini: This is what the clash of civilisations is really about

[david]

Dan said to Ridgecoyote:

... Donald Trump for President? I'd say Trump appeals to a certain demographic 
in the United States, namely old, white, angry males. Luckily, those fanatics 
are in the minority.



Ridgecoyote said to Dan:

He reminds me of two other politicians, both hugely successful - Reagan and 
Putin.  Reagan was laughed at by the intellectuals and  his own party elite  
but had the last laugh and Putin with his bigger-than-life self-promotion all 
the time.   In a way, I hope it happens.  I think the leader should reflect the 
character of the people and think Trump captures where America is at today.  
Yuck, I know, but there it is.



dmb says:

Be careful what you wish for. Trump appeals to the creepiest, most hateful and 
ignorant demographic in the United States.

"At the time, I happened to be reporting on extremist white-rights 
groups, and observed at first hand their reactions to his candidacy. 
Trump was advancing a dire portrait of immigration that partly 
overlapped with their own. On June 28th, twelve days after Trump’s 
announcement, the Daily Stormer, America’s most popular neo-Nazi news 
site, endorsed him for President: 'Trump is willing to say what most 
Americans think: it’s time to deport these people.' The Daily Stormer 
urged white men to 'vote for the first time in our lives for the one man
 who actually represents our interests.'  

Ever since the Tea Party’s peak, in 
2010, and its fade, citizens on the American far right—Patriot militias,
 border vigilantes, white supremacists—have searched for a 
standard-bearer, and now they’d found him. In the past, “white 
nationalists,” as they call themselves, had described Trump as a 
“Jew-lover,” but the new tone of his campaign was a revelation. Richard 
Spencer is a self-described “identitarian” who lives in Whitefish, 
Montana, and promotes “white racial consciousness.” At thirty-six, 
Spencer is trim and preppy, with degrees from the University of Virginia
 and the University of Chicago. He is the president and director of the 
National Policy Institute, a think tank, co-founded by William Regnery, a
 member of the conservative publishing family, that is “dedicated to the
 heritage, identity, and future of European people in the United States 
and around the world.” The Southern Poverty Law Center calls Spencer “a 
suit-and-tie version of the white supremacists of old.” Spencer told me 
that he had expected the Presidential campaign to be an “amusing freak 
show,” but that Trump was “refreshing.” He went on, “Trump, on a gut 
level, kind of senses that this is about demographics, ultimately. We’re
 moving into a new America.” He said, “I don’t think Trump is a white 
nationalist,” but he did believe that Trump reflected “an unconscious 
vision that white people have—that their grandchildren might be a hated 
minority in their own country. I think that scares us. They probably 
aren’t able to articulate it. I think it’s there. I think that, to a 
great degree, explains the Trump phenomenon. I think he is the one 
person who can tap into it.” 
Jared Taylor, the editor of American Renaissance,
 a white-nationalist magazine and Web site based in Oakton, Virginia, 
told me, in regard to Trump, “I’m sure he would repudiate any 
association with people like me, but his support comes from people who 
are more like me than he might like to admit.” 
From
 the beginning of the current race, the conservative establishment has 
been desperate for Trump to be finished. After he disparaged the war 
record of Senator John McCain, the New York Post gave him a front-page 
farewell—“DON VOYAGE”—and a Wall Street Journal
 editorial declared him a “catastrophe.” But Trump carried on—in part 
because he had activated segments of the electorate that other 
candidates could not, or would not. On July 20th, three days before his 
trip to Texas, Ann Coulter, whose most recent book is “¡Adios, America! 
The Left’s Plan to Turn Our Country Into a Third World Hellhole,” 
appeared on Sean Hannity’s show and urged fellow-Republicans to see 
Trump’s summer as a harbinger. “The new litmus test for real 
conservatives is immigration,” she said. “They used to say the same 
thing about the pro-life Republicans and the pro-gun Republicans, and, 
‘Oh, they’re fringe and they’re tacky, and we’re so embarrassed to be 
associated with them.’ Now every one of them comes along and pretends 
they’d be Reagan.”
>From the New Yorker article, "The Fearful and the Frustrated" by Evan Osnos.

http://www.newyorker.com/magazine/2015/08/31/the-fearful-and-the-frustrated

 

Dan said to Ridge:

County clerks withholding marriage licenses because of their religious 
convictions? Really? The christian fundamentalists are no different than 
radical Islam.



Ridge said:

Exactly.  Unfortunately, intellectuals don't have any effective means of 
dealing with either.  Intellectuals are too smart to get their hands dirty by 
talking about religious things, so religious things 

Re: [MD] What's Personalism?

[david]

Leaving aside the many insults, your over-reactionary response was actually 
pretty useful. Thanks, John.



> Date: Mon, 7 Sep 2015 11:54:26 -0700
> From: ridgecoy...@gmail.com
> To: moq_disc...@moqtalk.org
> Subject: Re: [MD] What's Personalism?
> 
> Thanks for asking, Dave  It helps to segue into a fascinating topic of
> discussion.
> 
> William James, Characterizing his philosophy as a whole, in the
> 1903-04 course "A Pluralistic Description of the World," in the --The
> Works of William James: manuscript Lectures--, ed. Ignas Skrupskelis
> (Cambridge: Harvard University Press, 1988) 311.
> 
> >  "It means individualism, personalism: that the prototype of reality is the
> > here and now; that there is genuine novelty; that order is being won
> > --incidentally reaped.  That the more universal is the more abstract;  that
> > the smaller & more intimate is the truer.  The man more than the home, the
> > home more than the state or the church. Anti-slavery.  It means tolerance
> > and respect."
> >
> >
> >
> > dmb says:
> >
> > That's a statement from James?
> 
> Jc:  yes.  Note the quote marks.  Sorry I didn't provide the source
> earlier, but the nice thing about this casual style is that any
> questions can be clarified easily upon request.
> 
> dmb:
> 
> It didn't sound like James to me
> 
> Jc:   That's because  your mental picture of James is skewered toward
> your personal prejudices and you think Pirsig's MoQ frees you from the
> obligation to be "objective" about intellectual matters.  It's a
> shame, really.
> 
> dmb:
> 
> >and I didn't
> > recall his using of the term "Personalism," so I looked it up in the
> > Stanford Encyclopedia.
> 
> Jc:  And yet you consider yourself a James scholar.
> 
> dmb:
> 
> Not sure what game John is playing here
> 
> Jc:  It's a game called "philosophy", Dave.  Or dabbling in the world
> of the intellectual - where we follow the rules of logical
> argumentation and adhere to ideals like consistency and
> non-contradiction and eschew fallacies.  It's would be delightful if
> you would play too, but you seem rather attached to the game of
> supercilious authoritarianism.  A much simpler game,  I'm sure but in
> the end, much less satisfying.
> 
> dmb:
> 
> >but
> > Personalism is a form of idealism, the kind that goes with theism and
> > theology. James' work may have displayed some elements of "Personalism" but
> > it's basically a modification of Hegel's idealism, whereas James was a
> > pragmatists and more than a little bit opposed to idealism. To the extent
> > that Hegel's Absolute was dropped in favor of more concrete particulars,
> > James would applaud. But he still thought idealists were a bunch of smug,
> > stuffed shirts.
> >
> 
> Jc:
> 
> Instead of SEP, try something a bit more serious - Jan Olaf
> Bengtsson's The Worldview of Personalism Origins and Early Development
> and/or  Rufus Burrow Jr., Personalism: A Critical Introduction.
> 
>  "There was a long-standing claim in the literature that Bowne had
> actually gotten the term "personalism" from James, who had gotten it
> from Charles Renouvier, but later scholarship has put this in doubt.
> On the basis of Bengtsson's research, it seems more plausible that
> Bowne knew the term from his years studying with Lotze and Ulrici."
> and "the worldview of personalism was well defined in the early
> decades of the nineteenth century".
> 
> Auxier, Time Will and Purpose.  Page 378
> 
> dmb:
> 
> > Speculative theism may be of interest to some people but the MOQ isn't
> > theistic nor idealistic. Doesn't even think the "self" is a real thing.
> 
> 
> Jc:  Here is the interesting thing, Dave - Personalism is not about the self.
> 
> 
> "... from Principles of Psychology forward, the idea of "person" in
> James's writings and thinking is sharply distinguished from the
> substantialist idea of "self," ... James treats 'person' as a mode of
> ontological relation from the very start; he never saw 'person' as a
> substance in the Cartesian sense."
> 
> ibid.
> 
> James, In a letter to Bowne in 1908, after reading Bowne's Personalism.
> 
> "It seemed to me a very weighty pronouncement, and form a matter taken
> together a splendid addition to American Philosophy it seems to me
> that you and I are now aiming at exactly the same end, although, owing
> to our different past, from which each retains special verbal habits,
> we often express ourselves so differently.  It seemed to me over and
> over again that you were placing your feet identically in footprints
> which my feet were accustomed to--quite independently, of course, of
> my example, which has made the coincidence so gratifying.  The common
> enemy for of us both is the dogmatist-rationalist-abstractionist.  Our
> common desire is to redeem the concrete personal life which wells up
> in us from moment to moment, from fastidious (and really preposterous)
> dialectical contradictions, impossibilities and vetoes, but whereas
> your "transcendental 

[MD] What's Personalism?

[david]

In the thread titled "Poetry as Practice, Practice as Poetry", John said to 
Arlo:


"...I'll go ahead and quote you the James statement I had read in my 
Personalism researches, wherein he gives a broad overview of his philosophy:  
"It means individualism, personalism: that the prototype of reality is the here 
and now; that there is genuine novelty; that order is being won --incidentally 
reaped.  That the more universal is the more abstract;  that the smaller & more 
intimate is the truer.  The man more than the home, the home more than the 
state or the church. Anti-slavery.  It means tolerance and respect."



dmb says:

That's a statement from James? It didn't sound like James to me and I didn't 
recall his using of the term "Personalism," so I looked it up in the Stanford 
Encyclopedia. Not sure what game John is playing here but Personalism is a form 
of idealism, the kind that goes with theism and theology. James' work may have 
displayed some elements of "Personalism" but it's basically a modification of 
Hegel's idealism, whereas James was a pragmatists and more than a little bit 
opposed to idealism. To the extent that Hegel's Absolute was dropped in favor 
of more concrete particulars, James would applaud. But he still thought 
idealists were a bunch of smug, stuffed shirts.
 

STANFORD SAYS: "American personalism, best known as represented by such figures 
as
Borden Parker Bowne (1847–1910), George H. Howison
(1834–1916), and Edgar Sheffield Brightman (1884–1953),
took a different tack from continental European personalism in that
instead of a reaction to idealism, it is often actually a form of
idealism, wherein being is defined as personal consciousness. Howison
preferred the term “personal idealism.” Contrary to
twentieth-century continental European personalism, American
personalism, in particular in its early representatives, is a direct
continuation of the development of more or less personalistic
philosophy and theology in nineteenthy-century Europe and its analysis
and refutation of various impersonalistic forms of thought. The
American and the stricter personalist twentieth-century school in
Europe agreed in taking the person as their point of departure for
understanding the world and in drawing all moral truth from the
absolute value of the person, but while the latter derived these
insights primarily from existentialism, phenomenology, and Thomism,
the American school, while in some respects adding to them and
developing them further, basically took them over from the European
“speculative theists”."


Speculative theism may be of interest to some people but the MOQ isn't theistic 
nor idealistic. Doesn't even think the "self" is a real thing. 


My point? One ought not take John's views seriously. He's just covertly 
thumping his bible again. Sigh.



  
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Re: [MD] Pre-conceptual coping

[David Morey]

Hi MOQers

This could be of interest to some of you:

http://philosophyofbrains.com/2015/08/18/nonconceptual-self-consciousness.aspx

All the best
David M
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Re: [MD] Zen

[david]

Pure drivel, chicken zen clap trap. Boo. 

Sent from my iPhone

 On Jul 28, 2015, at 5:00 AM, David Morey david...@blueyonder.co.uk wrote:
 
 Hi John
 
 Well an interesting experience, care is important, we need a lot more of it, 
 for a better quality planet.
 
 All the best
 David M
 
 On 28 Jul 2015 03:15, John Carl ridgecoy...@gmail.com wrote:
 
 from your link:
 
 What is great faith? Great faith means that at all times you keep the
 mind which decided to practice, no matter what. It is like a hen
 sitting on her eggs. She sits on them constantly, caring for them and
 giving them warmth, so that they will hatch. If she becomes careless
 or negligent, the eggs will not hatch and become chicks. So Zen mind
 means always and everywhere believing in myself…
 
 We had a hen like that.  She sat faithfully, last march, on her eggs.
 It's called going broody and it's not greatly encouraged in layers.
 They get cantankerous and peck you when you try and pluck the eggs
 from under them.  We did the best we could and just bought store eggs
 for a while, hoping she'd give up.  She didn't give up.  A couple of
 weeks ago, its the middle of July, and this god-forsaken hen is
 brooding over eggs that will never hatch.  Why won't they hatch?
 Because roosters are a pain in the ass, and we've gotten rid of ours,
 long ago.
 
 But that damn hen, keeps sitting.  Or setting, I think it's termed.
 
 Finally, we decided to put an end to it.  We got her some chicks.
 Only a day old, unsexed (more roosters!) and stuck them under her and
 waited to see if the mothering instinct would kick in.  It did.  And
 now she's the best mom, hovering over her little brood.  She hasn't
 lost a single one and they are growing fast, learning the ways of the
 farm and the family.
 
 So the question is, what is the moral of the story?  Which came first?
 The urge of the chicken or the urge for the egg?   Was the hen
 foolish?  She was setting on unfertilized eggs, that certainly seems
 foolish.  But on the other hand, we had to acquiesce in the end to her
 stubborness and provide her with the family that she so obviously
 demanded.  She's happy, we're happy and everything works out great,
 especially with the rise in egg prices these days
 (http://www.pbs.org/newshour/bb/worst-bird-flu-outbreak-u-s-history-spreads-egg-prices-begin-skyrocket/)-
 
 a whole new brood of layers is a good thing for self-sufficiency.
 
 The really interesting thing tho, is that one of my hens died.  I
 don't know why, she just got really sick and wouldn't get up and
 started to smell bad, so I dispatched her and after that, Blackie the
 mom, went all broody.  Something about the witnessing of death,
 triggered the mind of the chicken to bring more life into the world.
 I can't explain it, but
 
 it's a beautiful thing.
 
 On 7/27/15, David Morey david...@blueyonder.co.uk wrote:
 A little Zen for little ones…
 
 
 http://www.brainpickings.org/2015/07/27/dropping-ashes-on-the-buddha-death/
 Moq_Discuss mailing list
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 -- 
 finite players
 play within boundaries.
 Infinite players
 play *with* boundaries.
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Re: [MD] Zen

[David Morey]

Hi John

Well an interesting experience, care is important, we need a lot more of it, 
for a better quality planet.

All the best
David M

On 28 Jul 2015 03:15, John Carl ridgecoy...@gmail.com wrote:

 from your link:

 What is great faith? Great faith means that at all times you keep the
 mind which decided to practice, no matter what. It is like a hen
 sitting on her eggs. She sits on them constantly, caring for them and
 giving them warmth, so that they will hatch. If she becomes careless
 or negligent, the eggs will not hatch and become chicks. So Zen mind
 means always and everywhere believing in myself…

 We had a hen like that.  She sat faithfully, last march, on her eggs.
 It's called going broody and it's not greatly encouraged in layers.
 They get cantankerous and peck you when you try and pluck the eggs
 from under them.  We did the best we could and just bought store eggs
 for a while, hoping she'd give up.  She didn't give up.  A couple of
 weeks ago, its the middle of July, and this god-forsaken hen is
 brooding over eggs that will never hatch.  Why won't they hatch?
 Because roosters are a pain in the ass, and we've gotten rid of ours,
 long ago.

 But that damn hen, keeps sitting.  Or setting, I think it's termed.

 Finally, we decided to put an end to it.  We got her some chicks.
 Only a day old, unsexed (more roosters!) and stuck them under her and
 waited to see if the mothering instinct would kick in.  It did.  And
 now she's the best mom, hovering over her little brood.  She hasn't
 lost a single one and they are growing fast, learning the ways of the
 farm and the family.

 So the question is, what is the moral of the story?  Which came first?
 The urge of the chicken or the urge for the egg?   Was the hen
 foolish?  She was setting on unfertilized eggs, that certainly seems
 foolish.  But on the other hand, we had to acquiesce in the end to her
 stubborness and provide her with the family that she so obviously
 demanded.  She's happy, we're happy and everything works out great,
 especially with the rise in egg prices these days
 (http://www.pbs.org/newshour/bb/worst-bird-flu-outbreak-u-s-history-spreads-egg-prices-begin-skyrocket/)-

 a whole new brood of layers is a good thing for self-sufficiency.

 The really interesting thing tho, is that one of my hens died.  I
 don't know why, she just got really sick and wouldn't get up and
 started to smell bad, so I dispatched her and after that, Blackie the
 mom, went all broody.  Something about the witnessing of death,
 triggered the mind of the chicken to bring more life into the world.
 I can't explain it, but

 it's a beautiful thing.

 On 7/27/15, David Morey david...@blueyonder.co.uk wrote:
  A little Zen for little ones…
 
 
  http://www.brainpickings.org/2015/07/27/dropping-ashes-on-the-buddha-death/
  Moq_Discuss mailing list
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  Archives:
  http://lists.moqtalk.org/pipermail/moq_discuss-moqtalk.org/
  http://moq.org/md/archives.html
 

 -- 
 finite players
 play within boundaries.
 Infinite players
 play *with* boundaries.
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Re: [MD] Zen

[David Morey]

A little Zen for little ones… 


http://www.brainpickings.org/2015/07/27/dropping-ashes-on-the-buddha-death/
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[MD] Fritz Bob

[david]

I've been thinking about the work Arlo did a few years back.

Good stuff. Here are most the central quotes he'd used...

We shall do a great deal for the science of esthetics, once we perceive 
not merely by logical inference, but with the immediate certainty of 
intuition, that the continuous development of art is bound up with the 
Apollonian and Dionysian duality... (Nietzsche)

... there existed a sharp opposition, in origin and aims, between the 
Apollonian art of sculpture, and the non-plastic, Dionysian, art of 
music they continually incite each other to new and more powerful 
births, which perpetuate an antagonism, only superficially reconciled by 
the common term 'Art'... (Nietzsche)

Pointing towards the undifferentiated continuum, Nietzsche writes, The 
higher truth [Apollonian forms], the perfection of these states in 
contrast to the incompletely intelligible everyday world.. is at the 
same time the symbolical analogue of the soothsaying faculty and of the 
arts generally, which makes life possible and worth living. (Nietzsche)

Interesting here, Nietzsche is not describing the Apollonian impulse 
towards form as bad while setting up the Dionysian impulse towards 
dissolution as good, but instead that without form, without the 
apprehension of pattern from the unpatterned landscape, life would not 
only be not worth living but impossible in the first place. Although 
form is an abstraction, it is an abstraction we cannot do without.

Nietzsche refers to the Apollonian as the man wrapped in Maya 
(Schopenhauer), ... so in the midst of a world of sorrows the 
individual sits quietly, supported by and trusting in his principium 
individuationis (Schopenhauer quoted).

This principium is summed by Wikipedia as ...the name given to 
processes whereby the undifferentiated tends to become individual, or to 
those processes through which differentiated components become 
integrated into stable wholes.

In short, it is the perception of form within chaos, the apprehension of 
stability within flux, the sensing of coherence within the 
incomprehensible. We might consider Apollo himself as the glorious 
divine image of the principium individuationis, whose gestures and 
expression tell us of all the joy and wisdom of 'appearance', together 
with its beauty. (Nietzsche)

But alongside the impulse towards differentiation, one has to also 
consider as equally important Dionysian impulse towards dissolution.

Schopenhauer has depicted for us the terrible awe which seizes upon 
man, when he is suddenly unable to account for the cognitive forms of a 
phenomenon, when the principle of reason, in some one of its 
manifestations, seems to admit an exception... at this very collapse of 
the principium individuationis, we shall gain an insight into the nature 
of the Dionysian. (Nietzsche)

Thus for Nietzsche the structures of Apollonian form are at once and 
always incomplete. Through the immediate certainty of intuition we 
sense exceptions, and when we stop and gaze into that incompleteness, we 
find the song of Dionysus.

Nietzsche describes the Dionysian impulse as that which cause[s] the 
subjective to vanish into complete self-forgetfulness.

In the following quote, I hear Pirsig's talk in ZMM about our 
estrangement from nature and being one with the world brought on by not 
only dominance of rationality, but the abandonment of the romantic 
groove. Nietzsche talks about the same phenomena, a world where 
Apollonian dominates and Dionysian impulses are denigrated.

Under the charm of the Dionysian not only is the union between man and 
man reaffirmed, but Nature which has become estranged, hostile or 
subjugated, celebrates once more her reconciliation with her prodigical 
son, man. ... Now the slave is free; now all the stubborn, hostile 
barriers, which necessity, caprice or 'shameless fashion' have erected 
between man and man, are broken down... he feels as if the veil of Maya 
had been torn aside and were now merely fluttering in tatters before the 
mysterious Primordial Unity. (Nietzsche)

Nietzsche continues, He is no longer an artist, he has become a work of 
art: in these paroxysms of intoxication the artistic power of all nature 
reveals itself to the highest gratification of the Primordial Unity.

We have considered  the Apollonian and its antithesis, the Dionsysian, 
as artistic energies which burst forth from nature herself, without the 
mediation of the human artist... (Nietzsche)

I note here that both the tendency towards form and the tendency 
towards dissolution are both artistic energies in Nietzsche's 
telling, and that, like the MOQ's levels emerge directly from Quality.

... energies in which nature's art-impulses are satisfied in the most 
immediate and direct way: first, on the one hand, in the pictorial world 
of dreams, whose completeness is not dependent upon the intellectual 
attitude or the artistic culture of any single being; and... as a 
drunken reality, which likewise 

Re: [MD] Quality and Information

[David Harding]

Hi Horse,

How can you even have the one without the other?  And DQ? Isn’t that the source 
of all things including Information?

Cheers,

David.

 On 18 Jul 2015, at 11:20 pm, Horse ho...@darkstar.uk.net wrote:
 
 Hi All
 
 Just as a matter of interest has anyone considered how close the relationship 
 is between Quality and Information - not just at the (obvious) level of 
 Intellect but throughout the static hierarchy and even from the point of view 
 of Dynamic Quality?
 
 Cheers
 
 Horse
 
 -- 
 
 
 Life is not measured by the number of breaths we take, but by the moments 
 that take our breath away.
 — Bob Moorehead
 
 
 ---
 This email has been checked for viruses by Avast antivirus software.
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Re: [MD] Julian Baggini: This is what the clash of civilisations is really about

[david]

John said:

There is a logic to the fact that the only way to intellectually resist social 
pressure is individually.


Arlo replied:

...Your conflation of intellectual and individual does not recognize that 
'individuals' and 'collectives' exist on all of the MOQ's levels. It's simply a 
matter of the focus of your lens. Also, keep in mind that 'activity' is through 
a collectively mediated symbolic structure that ONLY emerges through this 
social level of value. ...And, rather than 'thinking for yourself' I'd say 
'participating in intellectual discourses'. Intellectuality, and sociality are 
active processes that occur within an 'individual/collective' milieu. 
Intellectuality, specifically, as Bakhtin argued, is a 'ventriologuated' 
activity; done though the appropriation of the voices of others, projecting 
towards an anticipated audience of future voices, and delivered within a 
culturally-salient semiotic-social media.   As Siouxsie Sioux sang, even when 
we're on our own, we are never all alone, when we're singing.


dmb says:

Well said, Arlo. 

The individual who stands alone in defiance of society is a cool American 
myth. We see it in Western movies, Ayn Rand novels and Pirsig's Phaedrus taps 
into it too. But it's a very bad way to read the distinction between the social 
and intellectual levels of morality and I think that very few philosophers 
would take it seriously as a description of intellectual activity. Like Pirsig 
says, an alternative way to describe an insane person is a person with their 
own culture, a culture of one. Like morality and language, it's only ever 
needed and only makes sense when there is more than one person.



  
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Re: [MD] Zen and The Art of Motorcycle Maintenance...In 15 Minutes

[david]

Horse said:

I had a read of the book Dan mentions below and, while there are a few good 
points to it, I think overall it's not something I'd recommend. I think the 
biggest disappointment is the last section which is a summary of Chapters 20 to 
33 where the author (whoever he is!!) says Chapters 20 to 33 begin to act a a 
drag on the entire storyline. Throughout this lecture, the issue of Quality 
and it's importance is expounded. This digression (!!) arguably adds no 
tangible value to the book. ...



dmb says:

The issue of Quality and it's importance is a digression that adds no tangible 
value to the book?

That's hilarious.

The author certainly lacks reading comprehension skills - and common sense. An 
irrelevant 13-chapter digression is practically impossible in the world of 
professional publishing. That's a super stupid thing to say. Pay no attention, 
not even for fifteen minutes. 
  
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Re: [MD] An ontology with qualities

[David Morey]

Hi MOQers

An ontology with qualities, could be interesting:

http://guidetoreality.blogspot.co.uk/2009/03/john-heil-gets-very-close.html

All the best
David Morey
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Re: [MD] Dissertation re/Pirisig and Postmodernity

[david]

Andre said to David and Arlo:

I thank Arlo as well for finding this piece on ZMM and Lila but wonder if both 
Arlo’s and dmb's enthusiasm last as they actually read the way von Dahlem 
treats both ZMM and Lila?

I haven’t read the hundred odd pages von Dahlem has devoted to ZMM and the MoQ 
in their entirety (am at page 229) but, reading what she has to say from the 
perspective of this communicative foundationalist ethics” which she thinks is 
perhaps the latest saviour but  I sincerely wonder if she understands the MoQ 
or its implications as I sense that it is beyond this narrow, advocated 
perspective. All I read is an attack on the intellectual level (which Phaedrus 
represents) as developed in Pirsig’s MoQ. There appears to be a great 
psychological/interpersonal thing going on from the S/O perspective and there 
appears to be little by way of interpersonal relationship understanding from 
the MoQ perspective.

Am interested to hear your comments/thoughts. Perhaps I completely 
misunderstand.



dmb says:

You're probably right, Andre. I starting reading on page 140 and it only took 
about two pages to see that the author misconstrues some very basic points. For 
example, about the classic-romantic split she says, What Pirsig’s narrator 
suggests in Zen is the categorical disjunction of these modes of understanding 
reality in the everyday world. That is the opposite of Pirsig's point, the 
misconception he's trying to overcome, the very disjunction that we do NOT find 
in the artful mechanic.

In that respect, apparently, she is way off the mark right from the start.


But it's still pretty cool that Pirsig's work increasingly appears in academic 
literature. Nothing will advance the MOQ like a good debate in that arena.



  
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Re: [MD] Dissertation re/Pirisig and Postmodernity

[david]

Arlo said to dmb:
 Hmm... I went back and re-read this, because I had initially read it in the 
 context of setting up the argument, not a statement of conclusions. Two pages 
 later she writes, for example, Yet, the ardent opposition of the two 
 dimensions in the beginning of the narration makes the achievement generated 
 through their combination appear all the more valuable.
 
 So I'd read her comment as being proclaiming that the classic-romantic had 
 become two categorically disjunct ways of thinking, which was the impetus to 
 write ZMM and offer a resolution, not that Pirsig himself was arguing that 
 the classic and romantic should be, or are ipso facto, categorially disjunct. 


dmb says:

I hope you're right about that. Thanks for taking the time.



  
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Re: [MD] Dissertation re/Pirisig and Postmodernity

[david]

What a fantastic find, Arlo. Thanks. 





 Date: Tue, 16 Jun 2015 11:28:04 -0400
 From: ajb...@psu.edu
 To: moq_disc...@moqtalk.org
 Subject: [MD] Dissertation re/Pirisig and Postmodernity
 
 Hi All (Ant in particular),
 
 First off, apologies if this has been shared before. It didn't come up when I 
 did a keyword search of my email archives, so...
 
 Below is a link to a dissertation, Nina Michaela von Dahlern (2012) at the 
 University of Hamburg, The Ethical Foundations of Postmodernity – 
 Communicative Reality and Relative Individuals in Theory and North American 
 Literature. 
 
 Beginning (primarily) on page 140 (Deconstructing Traditional Values: Zen 
 and the Art of Motorcycle Maintenance – An Inquiry into Values) and 
 continuing through at least page 240 (including The Creation of a New 
 Ethics: Lila – An Inquiry into Morals) is some interesting discussion on 
 Pirsig.
 
 Ant, please note (if you had not already known) that your dissertation (and 
 'Intro' web article) is cited. :-).
 
 http://ediss.sub.uni-hamburg.de/volltexte/2012/5740/pdf/Dissertation.pdf
 
 I've only had a chance to glance this so far, but wanted to share for anyone 
 interested in Pirsig's ideas within the academy.
 
 Arlo
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Re: [MD] Julian Baggini: This is what the clash of civilisations is really about

[david]

Ron said to dmb:


...It is like the art of discussion, or to be more precise, the art of 
persuasion has become lost. To all involved it's an either/or proposition. 
Science has been bundled with atheism. Religion uses relativism with 
devastating effectiveness in this aim. What's worse is science/atheism isn't 
helping it's case with letting the facts speak for themselves. All in all 
religion is winning the game of persuasion and science, critical thinking and 
reason have been hijacked to promote the myth of certainty and the absolute. ...



dmb says:

It looks like Lee McIntyre pretty much agrees with you, Ron. He has a book on 
the topic but also wrote a recent essay for The Chronicle of Higher Education 
titled The Attack on Truth: We're living in an age of Willful Ignorance. I 
especially like the part where he says, some left-wing postmodernist 
criticisms of truth began 
to be picked up by right-wing ideologues who were looking for 
respectable cover.

 
http://chronicle.com/article/The-Attack-on-Truth/230631/


To see how we treat the concept 
of truth these days, one might think we just don’t care anymore. 
Politicians pronounce that global warming is a hoax. An alarming number 
of middle-class parents have stopped giving their children routine 
vaccinations, on the basis of discredited research. Meanwhile many 
commentators in the media — and even some in our universities — have all
 but abandoned their responsibility to set the record straight.


While many natural scientists declared the battle won and headed back
 to their labs, some left-wing postmodernist criticisms of truth began 
to be picked up by right-wing ideologues who were looking for 
respectable cover for their denial of climate change, evolution, and 
other scientifically accepted conclusions. Alan Sokal said he had hoped 
to shake up academic progressives, but suddenly one found hard-right 
conservatives sounding like Continental intellectuals. And that caused 
discombobulation on the left.
'Was I wrong to participate in the invention of this field known as 
science studies?,' Bruno Latour, one of the founders of the field that 
contextualizes science, famously asked. 'Is it enough to say that we did not 
really mean what we said? Why does
 it burn my tongue to say that global warming is a fact whether you like
 it or not? Why can’t I simply say that the argument is closed for 
good?'

'But now the climate-change deniers and the young-Earth creationists 
are coming after the natural scientists, the literary critic Michael 
Bérubé noted,
 … and they’re using some of the very arguments developed by an 
academic left that thought it was speaking only to people of like mind'.


But Pirsig's classical Pragmatism doesn't have this problem and neither do 
James or Dewey. The next quote comes from a review of Larry Hickman's book, 
Pragmatism as Post-postmodernism: Lessons from John Dewey.


On Hickman’s reading, Dewey is entirely 'post-postmodern,' since Dewey 
did reach some postmodernist conclusions (e.g. rejecting 
foundationalisms, metaphysical realisms, cultural hegemonies, grand 
narratives) only to travel even further to a positively coherent system 
of thought. Rorty and his postmodernist friends reveled in the romantic 
wild fields opened by radicalized relativisms of all kinds; Dewey, alas,
 was no radical. Dewey’s naturalistic metaphysics, his biological theory
 of inquiry, his cultural historicism, his democratic 
progressivism—intertwined strands of stability explain why we really 
were never in an 'anything goes' or 'all is permitted' situation.


Hickman
 presents John Dewey as a thinker who both anticipated some of the 
central insights of French-inspired postmodernism and, if he were alive 
today, would certainly be one of its most committed critics. As
 Hickman paints it, Richard Rorty was right to say that when 
certain postmodernists reach the end of the road they're traveling they 
will find Dewey there waiting for them. On my view, Rorty wrote (in 
The Consequences of Pragmatism), James and Dewey were not only waiting 
at the end of the dialectical road which analytic philosophy traveled, 
but are waiting at the end of the road which, for example, Foucault and 
Deleuze are currently traveling.


http://muse.jhu.edu/journals/csp/summary/v045/45.1.shook.html






  
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Re: [MD] Julian Baggini: This is what the clash of civilisations is really about

[david]

Ron said to John:

... All I was trying to playfully point out is that by virtue of considering 
ALL ideas equally and sifting through them with a critical eye, you are going 
to have to deal with the assholes pranksters fools and the simple minded. You 
know, morons.


dmb says:

Right, considering ALL ideas to be equally valid is the worst kind of 
sophomoric relativism. That view is actually a straw man version of relativism 
because that's something that only a teenager could believe, an actual 
sophomore or freshman. Even Richard Rorty, who's kinda infamous for being a 
relativist himself, used to complain about simplistic relativism of his 
undergrad students. Even worse, John is using this extreme view, this vacuous 
relativism, to defend the legitimacy of the opposite exterme: Absolutism. 


It seems this relativism is one of the consequences of misconstruing the 
social-intellectual conflict as the conflict between society and the 
individual. But that's not what Pragmatism or the MOQ says. That's what lots of 
18th century thinkers said, what Ayn Rand and lots of free-market conservatives 
say but not Pirsig. We are social creatures all the way down. Just like our 
primate cousins live today, we have lived in groups together since before we 
were human. The MOQ's intellectual level is just like the social and biological 
levels in this respect.


We can see that even highly intellectual practices like science or professional 
philosophy are inherently collective, public activities. It's not just that 
everyone is engaged in an ongoing dialogue in the peer-reviewed Journals, but 
everyone is suspend in the same language, shares a set of common meanings, 
definitions, and often work together for common goals. Of course this involves 
particular persons, just as social level roles like Kings, Bishops, and Knights 
are played by particular persons. But there is no escape into individuality at 
the intellectual level. The kind of individualism that allows the sophomoric 
relativist to believe he stands alone and has his own definitions, his own 
concepts, his own mythos, is not a lone wolf hero. He's just ungeared from the 
common lot of humanity. As Pirsig points out, a person with a culture of their 
own is an insane person. The intellectual level could not function without the 
common practices and a common set of terms in which me
 anings can be shared.


As Dan pointed out, the contrarians who act as agents of cultural evolution are 
responding to and acting within their society. They are acting as critics and 
stand out from the keepers of the status quo but they are crucial to that 
groups needs and their rebellion only makes sense in relation to that society. 


The truth is exactly the opposite of what Ayn Rand, Maggie Thatcher, and Rand 
Paul think. They think there is no such thing as society, that society is only 
a collection of individuals. Individuality is actually a social construct, an 
achievement of development that can only ever happen because we're social 
creatures first. 


And that's also why we don't get to decide for ourselves what words mean or 
what defines concepts. Communication simply isn't possible without a shared, 
public language, a common set of understandings. And when guys like John use 
simplistic relativism to defend Absolute Idealism, it's hard to believe that 
they're operating within that shared public space. To complain that someone is 
misusing the key terms of a discussion is not some petty, pedantic complaint 
about grammar or spelling or what ever. It's a complete show-stopper because 
then you can't exchange ideas. It makes communication impossible. 






  
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Re: [MD] Julian Baggini: This is what the clash of civilisations is really about

[david]

The linked article takes up the same basic problem that Baggini's article 
discusses, but from a different angle. It just came out (June  8, 2015) and is 
titled The Attack on Truth: We have entered an age of willful ignorance. 
Check it out. I think it describes John's thinking pretty well. 


http://chronicle.com/article/The-Attack-on-Truth/230631/  


...some left-wing postmodernist criticisms of truth began to be picked up
 by right-wing ideologues who were looking for respectable cover for 
their denial of climate change, evolution, and other scientifically 
accepted conclusions. 


There is simple ignorance and there is willful ignorance, which is 
simple ignorance coupled with the decision to remain ignorant. Normally 
that occurs when someone has a firm commitment to an ideology that 
proclaims it has all the answers — even if it counters empirical matters
 that have been well covered by scientific investigation. More than mere
 scientific illiteracy, this sort of obstinacy reflects a dangerous 
contempt for the methods that customarily lead to recognition of the 
truth. And once we are on that road, it is a short hop to disrespecting 
truth.


Ron said to John:

...All I was trying to playfully point out is that by virtue of considering ALL 
ideas equally and sifting through them with a critical eye, you are going to 
have to deal with the assholes pranksters fools And the simple minded. You 
know, Morons.

  
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Re: [MD] Julian Baggini: This is what the clash of civilisations is really about

[david]

Arlo said:
 I read this article the other day, and was left a little disappointed. The 
 author sets up the (almost classic) 'subjective-objective' clash, here coming 
 from the cultural studies folks versus natural scientists. And from here he 
 laments how the rhetoric of the cultural studies folks (no truth) was 
 appropriated by the anti-intellectualists as a way of undermining research 
 that violated their ideology. But I think what the author is trying to 
 present is impossible without an understanding of the simultaneous clash 
 between social and intellectual values. Without this, it comes across as an 
 argument for the 'objective' truth of the natural scientists, when instead 
 the 'victory' should be to the empirical truth of intellect over the dogmatic 
 truth of social value. 



dmb says:

I think you're quite right and said it well too. 



Arlo continued:

This would allow the author to better illuminate the 'intelligent design 
theory' strategy of the Discovery Institute, not as way to use relativism to 
discredit evolution theory, but as a way of masquerading social dogma as 
intellectual theory. Or, to restate, its wrong argue the objective truth of 
evolution theory when we should not take it is objective truth. But the 
challenges, when they come, should originate in empirically-based research, not 
in the scripture-based rituals of organized religions.



dmb says:

Right, except I think the use of relativism is part of that same masquerade. 
It's even used to feign open-mindedness and by the same token to condemn 
evolution's defenders as closed-minded and dogmatic. (John has accused me of 
being narrow-minded many times for refusing his to accept his absolutist dogma 
and for insisting that words and concepts have definitions.)



Arlo concluded:

So the solution to the dilemma proposed by the author is not to hunker down 
with the objective truth of the natural scientists as the author is forced to 
imply (in my reading) without a way of introducing the social-intellectual 
clash that is driving the willfully ignorant. 


dmb says:

In a public debate or an essay for a general audience, I think the difference 
difference between social and intellectual values can find expression if the 
two sides are presented as rival moral values. One of the biggest obstacles for 
people dominated by social values is that they see that intellectual values are 
moral values and in fact usually construe that whole area as the source of 
nihilism and moral rot. And if Pirsig is right, that's the problem with 
objectivity, not intellectual values as such. But rather than try to explain 
the MOQ evolutionary hierarchy or even deploy the MOQ's terms, we can still 
frame the issues as moral issues. 

That's why I constantly complain in those terms and it's easy to back up the 
notion that is it simply unethical and dishonest to hold beliefs that are 
contrary to the evidence or unsupported by evidence. That's not just rhetoric 
for me either. I'm genuinely disgusted and literally sickened by that kind of 
behavior. Makes my blood boil when I encounter specific instances and it makes 
me sad that there's so much of it. We are swimming in an ocean of bullshit. 




  
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Re: [MD] Julian Baggini: This is what the clash of civilisations is really about

[david]

Dan said:

Somehow this doesn't seem quite right... how he [Baggini] lumps moral 
relativism and pragmatism into one group. But being as I am not a philosophy 
major and that I spend most all my time making up stories in my head, I thought 
I should look into this a bit before commenting. pragmatism: a reasonable and 
logical way of doing things or of thinking about problems that is based on 
dealing with specific situations instead of on ideas and theories. That seems 
pretty straightforward. Why would anyone object to using pragmatism in 
political situations? I don't know. Wait. There's more. What's this about 
facile pragmatism? Is there really such an animal? Isn't pragmatic thinking the 
result of specificity? Of dealing with empirical data rather than imaginary 
scenarios that might or might not play out as anticipated? ...Any thoughts on 
this ambiguity? Am I simply reading things wrongly here?




dmb says:


The definition of pragmatism that you've quoted is the ordinary colloquial 
version of the the term and only vaguely resembles the philosophical school 
known as Pragmatism. In common usage, to say you're taking a pragmatic approach 
just means that you're not going to be ideological, dogmatic, doctrinaire, 
fanatical, or otherwise inflexible.


As a school of philosophy, Pragmatism resembles this basic flexible attitude 
but it's also a full-blown theory of truth, one that fits with William James' 
Radical Empiricism. You might recall that at the end of chapter 29 in Lila, 
Pirsig tells us that James had used the exact same terms that Pirsig uses for 
the MOQ: static and dynamic. I mention this because that is how Pragmatism fits 
into the MOQ; it is the theory of truth that fits within the MOQ. James and 
Pirsig both reject the kinds of truth theories that fit with subject-object 
metaphysics because they both reject SOM in favor of Radical Empiricism. 
Usually, the rejected theory of truth is what's known as the correspondence 
theory wherein true ideas are the ones that correspond to or represent an 
objective reality. In ordinary empiricism, that objective reality is usually 
taken to be a physical reality and under Idealist or Rationalist schools of 
philosophy the objective reality is going to be something like Plato's Fo
 rms or the Absolute of a Hegel, Bradley or Royce. 


But James and Pirsig are philosophical mystics and so they insist that Reality 
is beyond words, is outside of thought and language, cannot be captured by any 
verbal formula. That's why Pirsig insist that Quality cannot be defined, why 
Quality cannot be a metaphysical chess like the Absolute or Objective Reality. 
Instead, Pragmatism is very empirical. It says that real questions and real 
problems emerge in experience, that our ideas and solutions can only be tested 
in actual experience, when they are put into practice, put to use. This allows 
us to keep scientific truths insofar as they have been empirically tested but 
it's also broader than that because every kind of experience can be included as 
valid empirical data, not just what's encountered in the so-called 'external' 
world. It's an expanded empiricism that can include the affective, the 
passions, feelings and the qualitative dimensions of experience in general. By 
the same token, things that cannot be experienced are ex
 cluded from the picture. The supposed Realities that is beyond appearances, 
beyond the empirical world of experience, cannot be included in the picture. 
And that's not possible anyway. In that respect, the rejected theories of truth 
are all based on an incoherent idea wherein your true idea is supposed to 
correspond to something you can never see or otherwise experience.


But then there is also a more recent philosophical school known as 
neo-Pragmatism. That's usually what Rorty is called. He's not much of fan of 
William James, does not subscribe to Radical Empiricism, and many critics have 
pegged him as a relativist. I agree with those critics and used to say so all 
the time. If memory serves, Rorty is one of Baggini's examples of an actual 
relativist and so he's saying what many have said about THAT kind of 
pragmatism. Rorty's critic of objectivity is pretty damn solid. It explains why 
the correspondence theories are incoherent nonsense. 



  
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Re: [MD] What is Art? (Philosophynow)

[david]

Thanks, Arlo. I'll check it out. 




 Date: Mon, 8 Jun 2015 10:18:14 -0400
 From: ajb...@psu.edu
 To: moq_disc...@moqtalk.org
 Subject: [MD] What is Art? (Philosophynow)
 
 Hey All,
 
 For those interested, I see the new (June/July) issue of Philosophy Now is 
 all about art. While most of the articles are behind a subscription wall (I 
 do not have a subscription), a couple are free, including the editorial that 
 sets up the issue.
 
 https://philosophynow.org/issues/108/Angles_on_Art
 
 Obviously, I'm a little disappointed that neither Pirsig nor Dewey (nor 
 Nietzsche) are even mentioned (one would think that Dewey's Art as 
 Experience would warrant at least passing mention). Although, maybe, these 
 ideas are addressed in the walled articles. 
 
 Still, since art is of primary importance within a MoQ, thought I'd share.
 
 Arlo

  
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Re: [MD] Julian Baggini: This is what the clash of civilisations is really about

[david]

 empiricism is built to keep out all such
  metaphysical fictions.
 
 
 
  Jc:  It's a convenient epithet for person uncomfortable with mountain
  climbing.
 
 Dan:
 There is an old metaphysical question floating around that asks: If a
 tree falls in the forest and no one is around, does it make a sound?
 Most philosophical answers argue either yes or no. The MOQ asks: what
 tree? How can imaginary trees fall in imaginary forests or in fact do
 anything at all? I think that's where pragmatism comes into play. And
 I am pretty sure that's what David is talking about when he states
 that pragmatism is meant to distinguish real questions from imaginary
 ones.
 
 
  dmb:
 
 
  In fact, pragmatism is an alternative theory of truth, one that is meant
  to replace the notions of Truth as objective, singular, eternal, absolute,
  etc.. In terms of practical effects, the belief in such things is
  inconsequential or even negative.
 
 
 
  Jc:  YOU, mr. buchanan, are exactly who Baggini is aiming at.  You're so
  proud of being absolutely free, that you've trapped yourself in a very
  tight box indeed.  Destined to be battered by other boxes in boxing matches
  that never can be won or lost.  What you're trying to evade, is what has
  got you boxed.
 
  The practical effect of a community that believes in absolute truth, is a
  community that succeeds as a modern economy.   You absolutize your own
  beliefs, in the very act of de-absolutizing all others!  You can't evade
  the paradox, any more than James could.  If the student who does not
  surpass the master, the master is a failure.
 
 Dan:
 In my opinion, most of the anti-scientific vs scientific debates
 centering around evolution, global warming, religion, and so forth,
 arise not because people are stupid, but because they've been
 indoctrinated into believing in the myth of the absolute. It's
 especially pervasive in Western culture. Much of what Robert Pirsig
 says about subject/object metaphysics falls into that category.
 Subjects and objects are all there is. Absolute. Period.
 
 It works well. The English language is grounded in that myth, as is
 our court of laws, our educational system, just about everything we
 think, see, hear, and feel relates to the absolute-ness of objective
 agreement.  And you are right, John. To try and argue one's way out of
 that box is virtually impossible. There is always someone who can come
 along and use our words against us... just like you are doing here.
 But that doesn't mean we should throw up our hands and surrender.
 
 
  dmb:
 
  For James, we can decide what to believe based on our passions, our
  feelings, but only in very special circumstances, when a decision must be
  made but cannot be decided on the basis of evidence. This ethical dimension
  of belief is almost universally recognized; math and logic guys like
  Bertrand Russell agree with Buddha and the Dali Lama that it is unethical
  or even taboo to believe without evidence.
 
 
  And that's why it totally matters whether there is any absolute truth or
  not, why we can not just believe it because we have a thirst and wish it
  were true.
 
 
 
  Jc:  But the thirst and wish themselves, are what we experience - are the
  absolute that we hold in common that creates our conceptual schemes.  Sure,
  intuition and passion and feeling all go into that.
 
 Dan:
 The thirst and the wish for the absolute are force fed to us from the
 time we're born. Experience goes beyond that.
 
 
  dmb:
 
 
  And if the argument is right, that absolute or objective truth is an
  incoherent idea that is impossible to ever verify or cash out, and you just
  decide to believe it anyway,.. well then I guess you don't really care
  about truth after all.
 
 
 
  Jc:  What I don't see, is how you can make any claims about caring about
  truth, when truth is just a feeling, according to you.
 
 Dan:
 Truth is a high quality intellectual pattern that can change when new
 evidence arises. By dogmatically holding onto an absolute truth we
 effectively cut ourselves off from ever growing and evolving into
 something better.
 
 JC:
  Truth is an  ideal and when it's more than merely relative, laws work,
  courts work and society works.  That is absolutizing truth, as I see it.
  But maybe I should use a different word.  Maybe Royce should have used a
  different word.  Philosophology has it's influence.  We tend to talk in the
  terms we read.
 
 Dan:
 The reason why our courts of law in Western culture works so well is
 not because it relies on absolute truth, but quite the contrary. The
 law can change. We see it all the time. On the other hand, the most
 dire dangers we face are constituted of the fanatical and dogmatic
 belief in religion and its ability to control the minds and actions of
 believers. That is its power: the absolute.
 
 JC:
  Pirsig's main critique of the term absolute was its connotation, which is
  not a logical problem but a rhetorical one and yet completely valid

Re: [MD] Julian Baggini: This is what the clash of civilisations is really about

[david]

Is it pragmatic to mythologize an absolute? 

No, certainly not. The purpose of pragmatism is to distinguish real questions 
and real problems from meaningless metaphysical disputes. Similarly, James' 
radical empiricism is built to keep out all such metaphysical fictions. In 
fact, pragmatism is an alternative theory of truth, one that is meant to 
replace the notions of Truth as objective, singular, eternal, absolute, etc.. 
In terms of practical effects, the belief in such things is inconsequential or 
even negative. For James, we can decide what to believe based on our passions, 
our feelings, but only in very special circumstances, when a decision must be 
made but cannot be decided on the basis of evidence. This ethical dimension of 
belief is almost universally recognized; math and logic guys like Bertrand 
Russell agree with Buddha and the Dali Lama that it is unethical or even taboo 
to believe without evidence. 


And that's why it totally matters whether there is any absolute truth or not, 
why we can not just believe it because we have a thirst and wish it were true. 
And if the argument is right, that absolute or objective truth is an incoherent 
idea that is impossible to ever verify or cash out, and you just decide to 
believe it anyway,.. well then I guess you don't really care about truth after 
all. Like Pirsig says, empirical reality keeps us from fooling ourselves, keeps 
us honest. That's where beliefs are tested, where they're made into truth or 
falsity. And that's what we can never do with metaphysical posits like the Will 
or the Absolute. Like I said, the whole idea is epistemologically impossible. 
It's like basing all the currency on the gold standard even though no actually 
gold has ever been seen by anyone by only logically inferred from the need for 
such standards. It's simply too incoherent to be taken seriously. 



Quality isn't like that. The term refers to direct experience. You don't have 
to believe in it or prop it up into a metaphysical chess piece. 


---

John Carl said:

The question isn't whether there is any absolute truth, the question is whether 
its pragmatic to mythologize such an absolute.



Ron commented:
 Interesting honest question John,
 I wrestle with this one constantly.
 After 2000 years it has it's consequences, but having been raised in it, it 
 fulfills a sacred desire.
 Therefore I am constantly drawn to it and the goal of resolving reason and 
 religious belief with the maturity of embracing the raw horror of the unknown.
 I have my days where I prefer one over the other to be Honest.
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Re: [MD] Julian Baggini: This is what the clash of civilisations is really about

[david]

Charlene Seigfried, paraphrasing William James, 
says intellectualism “became 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.”


Ron Kulp said to John:

Aristotle says something similar in book alpha of metaphysics, that we seek to 
render the unintelligible intelligible. We impose limit on experience in order 
to better understand it.  I think that is different than a will for Absolutes. 
I think that's where some disagree with Royce. (Ron later added:) This 
rendering of wholes out of the many bits of experience is an artistic act so 
that it is a will toward greater meaning not so much a truth in terms of 
absolutes.



dmb says: Royce is defending himself against James' criticism of what the 
latter called vicious abstractionism or vicious intellectualism. Royce is 
trying to deny the contrast between intellectualism and pragmatism by 
reframeing it as a contrast between the will that is loyal to truth as an 
universal ideal, and the will that is concerned with its own passing caprices. 
The only question is whether the will really means to aim at doing something 
that has a final and eternal meaning, Royce says.   Please notice two things 
here. Royce has construed pragmatism as concerned with passing caprices, which 
is incorrect if not slanderous. The second thing to notice is that Royce wants 
to distance himself from intellectualism but the claims he makes are exactly 
what James meant by vicious abstractionism. Truth that is loyal to a 
universal ideal and truth that has a final and eternal meaning is also a 
pretty good way to describe the views that Pirsig rejects in Plato and Hegel.


It's also interesting to see that Royce's view is centrally motivated by his 
personal wishes and yet his personal wish is that reality was far more than 
just personal wishes. He says, individualism is wrong in supposing that I can 
ever be content with my own will in as far as it is merely an individual will. 
Royce is contrasting that with a different will, one that defines the truth 
that it endlessly seeks as a truth that possesses completeness, totality, 
self-possession, and therefore absoluteness. (Sounds like Schopenhauer.)   
It's very seductive language and just about anyone can understand, at least to 
some extent, Royce's desire for complete, total, and absolute truth. But there 
are two major problems here. 1) Epistemologically speaking, we just cannot have 
that kind of truth and so Royce is literally asking for the impossible. 2) 
Holding beliefs contrary to the relevant evidence or unsupported by the 
relevant evidence is unethical. It's dishonest. It's intellectually sleazy, so 
to speak. (And endorsing that basic ethical standard is one more reason to 
reject the notion that pragmatic truth is just about individual caprice.)


Royce's notion is truth is so highly idealized and elevated that it might as 
well be god. That's the essence of vicious intellectualism, the denigration of 
actual experience and the deification of abstract concepts. Reification is the 
error of granting existential status to the products of human reflection, of 
mistaking thoughts for ontological realities. Idealists and theists aren't the 
only ones who commit this error, of course, but they're far more obvious about 
it.


Thanks,

dmb



 
  On May 25, 2015, at 5:00 PM, John Carl quoted Royce:
  The contrast is not one between intellectualism and pragmatism. It is the
  contrast between two well-known attitudes of will, — the will that is loyal
  to truth as an universal ideal, and the will that is concerned with its own
  passing caprices.
  
  And yet, despite all this, the modern assault upon mere intellectualism is
  well founded. The truth of our assertions is indeed definable only by
  taking account of the meaning of our own individual attitudes of will, and
  the truth, whatever else it is, is at least instrumental in helping us
  towards the goal of all human volition. The only question is whether the
  will I really means to aim at doing something that has a final and eternal
  meaning.
  
  All logic is the logic of the will. There is no pure intellect. Thought is
  a mode of action, a mode of action distinguished from other modes mainly by
  its internal clearness of self-consciousness, by its relatively free
  control of its own procedure, and by the universality, the impersonal
  fairness and obviousness of its aims and of its motives. An idea in the
  consciousness of a thinker is simply a present consciousness of some
  expression of purpose, — a plan of action. A judgment is an act of a
  reflective and self-conscious character, an act whereby one accepts or
  rejects an idea as a sufficient expression of the very purpose that is each
  time in question. Our whole objective world is meanwhile defined for each
  of 

Re: [MD] Julian Baggini: This is what the clash of civilisations is really about

[david]

Baggini wrote:

The clash of civilisations is happening not between Islam and the West, 
as we are often led to believe, but between pragmatic relativism and 
dogmatic certainty.



Ron said:

I know Baggini is not too well favored here but he does make an interesting 
observation much akin to RMP in regard to cultural crisis and the return to 
conservative dogma.


dmb says:

Yes, Pirsig says something similar about the clash between relativism and 
dogmatic certainty. Like Baggini, he says that things like fascism and 
fundamentalism are reactionary movements and are, in a sense, the backlash 
against relativism. But Pirsig is quite okay with classical pragmatism and 
blames value-free objectivity for giving us relativism - not to mention a sense 
of meaninglessness and artlessness.

Pragmatic truth sits between the extremes of relativism and dogmatic certainty. 
It's far too empirical to count as relativism, unlike Rorty's neo-pragmatism, 
and the plural and provisional nature of pragmatic truths is far too flexible 
to count as dogmatic. 

We don't need Truth to be Objective, Fixed, Absolute, or Eternal and we can't 
have that kind of truth anyway. But we do need truth to be vigorous enough and 
strong enough to kill lies, bullshit, fanaticism, propaganda, honest mistakes 
and good old fashioned stupidity. We need excellence in thought and speech and 
ideas that actually work when they're put into practice.   


  
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[MD] MOQ on the CBC.

[david]

http://www.cbc.ca/radio/ideas/the-motorcycle-is-yourself-1.2914205

The linked article has an hour-long radio program that includes a Pirsig 
interview from the '70s and a more current discussion. 


Pirsig, an intensely private, humble man (he is still alive, in his 80s
 and living in New England), has granted few interviews since.  For years, 
however, he has continued to monitor and contribute to a website devoted to the 
Metaphysics of Quality:  moq.org. 
 And there's even a comprehensive Guidebook, co-authored, as it happens,
 by a Jesuit, those master melders of intellect and spirituality. 



To mark the 40th anniversary of the book, we're revisiting that radio 
program.  And, in keeping with the motorcycle metaphor, we've given it a
 substantial overhaul, a new introduction and commentary. Because, you 
see, I have to confess that at the time, totally smitten by the 
overarching beauty of Pirsig's creation, I missed almost completely an 
understanding of its inner workings, its dauntingly detailed structure.
  
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Re: [MD] A Platonist and a Sophist discuss Quality

[David Harding]

  Hi Ron,


Thanks for the comment and taking the time to read the article and can’t say I 
disagree.  


Truth has played an important part in our last couple of Millenia without which 
it’s doubtful we’d be much beyond where we were.  It was the importance and 
primacy that Socrates and Plato placed on truth irrespective of Quality that 
was dishonest and about time we corrected this mistake.


Thanks again,


David.








 On Apr 5, 2015, at 4:19 AM, Ron Kulp xa...@rocketmail.com wrote:
 
 
 David,
 Thanks for Catherine's paper. I thought it was well done. I used to agree 
 that Socrates seems to Be misrepresented by RMP but Dave
 Buchanan makes an interesting point
 In that what Pirsig is responding to
 Cultural assumptions regarding Plato.
 
 
 In regard to your rebuttal I have to
 Comment on what you said about
 Dialectic and truth in regard to Socrates. 
 In the second half of the 5th century BC, sophists were teachers who 
 specialized in using the tools ofphilosophy and rhetoric to entertain or 
 impress or persuade an audience to accept the speaker's point of view. 
 Socrates promoted an alternative method of teaching which came to be called 
 the Socratic method.
 
 
 The Socratic method is a method of hypothesis elimination, in that better 
 hypotheses are found by steadily identifying and eliminating those that lead 
 to contradictions. The Socratic method searches for general, commonly held 
 truths that shape opinion, and scrutinizes them to determine their 
 consistency with other beliefs
 
 
 -wiki Socratic method
 
 
 To be sure, Socrates was concerned With the clarity and consistency of ideas. 
 Therefore Socrates truthis a Love for clarity and consistency.
 
 
 It is also interesting to note that Protagoras ( a sophist ) is credited For 
 originating the method.
 
 
 If we really want to understand the Difference between the sophists Arête and 
 Socrates truth then we Are going to have to look at what is Meant by them.
 
 
 In the Homeric poems, Arete is frequently associated with bravery, but more 
 often with effectiveness. The man or woman of Arete is a person of the 
 highest effectiveness; they use all their faculties--strength, bravery and 
 wit--to achieve real results.
 What Socrates argues is that excellence is an anything you like
 Kind of endeavor without clarity and
 Consistency.
 I believe this was the conclusion RMP
 Arrived at in his work. Part of the journey of Pirsigs novels includes the
 Attack and deconstruction of modern
 Academia and beliefs in our culture.
 If the project is to expand reason then
 It's not as simple as sophists are right
 And Socrates is wrong.
 It's important to note that sophist does not represent an ideology, but 
 rather sophists were simply 1) distinguished public speakers and 2) taught at 
 a tertiary level for money. That does not imply any common beliefs beyond a 
 commitment to education.
 In conclusion I think RMP was not misguided in the assessment of the popular 
 interpretation of Plato and
 Socrates. I argue that RMP used
 Socratic method in his novels. He
 Employed Elenchus and the reader
 Was supposed to arrive at aporia.
 It incited the reader (or was supposed
 To) to take a closer re-evaluative look
 At Socrates and Plato and Aristotle,
 To eliminate common cultural assumptions about their work.
 
 
 Thanks for the topic of discussion !
 -Ron 
 
 
 
 
 
 On Apr 2, 2015, at 9:27 AM, David Harding da...@goodmetaphysics.com wrote:
 
 
 Hi All,
 
 
 
 
 
 I’ve recently written a response to Ancient Greek Philosophy Academic 
 Catherine Rowett’s paper on ZMM. 
 
 
 
 
 
 Thanks go to Catherine for not ignoring ZMM and Ant for comments on final 
 draft.
 
 
 
 
 
 Links:
 
 
 
 
 
 Catherine’s original paper:
 
 
 
 
 
 https://www.academia.edu/172951/Absolute_goodness_rhetoric_and_rationality_a_discussion_of_Robert_Pirsigs_novel_Zen_and_the_art_of_motorcycle_maintenance_and_Platos_Phaedrus
 
 
 
 
 
 
 
 
 The response paper: 
 
 
 
 
 
 https://www.academia.edu/11703364/A_review_of_Absolute_goodness_rhetoric_and_rationality_a_discussion_of_Robert_Pirsig_s_novel_Zen_and_the_Art_of_Motorcycle_Maintenance_and_Plato_s_Phaedrus._
 
 
 
 
 
 
 
 
 Love to hear any feedback.
 
 
 
 
 
 Best,
 
 
 
 
 
 David.
 
 
 
 
 
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 Listinfo, Unsubscribing etc.
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 Archives:
 http://lists.moqtalk.org/pipermail/moq_discuss-moqtalk.org/
 http://moq.org/md/archives.html
 
 
 Moq_Discuss mailing list
 Listinfo, Unsubscribing etc.
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 Archives:
 http://lists.moqtalk.org/pipermail/moq_discuss-moqtalk.org/
 http://moq.org/md/archives.html
 
 
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Re: [MD] Paths To Dynamic Quality?

[david]

Ron wrote:

...The passions are rejected. Pirsig, on the other hand, seems to place more 
importance on emotion and feeling as a guiding principle toward intellect.



ngriffis said:

To shift Ron's meaning a bit, I wonder if the forum members would agree that 
Pirsig places importance on emotion and feeling as a guiding principle toward 
Dynamic Quality? Further, I would like to broach the subject of how one goes 
about seeking Dynamic Quality (DQ) in one's life. ...I know I want more DQ in 
my life, but how do I go about getting it?



nblodgett said:

...I had always assumed that this blockage of direct quality perception was 
social, but in Mexico a few years ago I talked to a neurologist who argued that 
it was physiological. She said that recent experiments are showing that the 
right side of the brain, the artistic side, filters all experience before it 
reaches the left rational side of the brain. This would concur with the MOQ 
assertion that value precedes concepts in human understanding.



dmb says:

The part about cultivating Quality in life is probably best seen in the 
motorcycle maintenance lessons. And those lessons can be transferred to 
whatever art a person wants to practice. But that's only part of the story. 
The bigger picture is fairly epic in scope. Pirsig is tackling a problem (and 
offering a solution) with the way we think in general, and this problem can be 
traced back through the history of philosophy all the way to the beginning. 


In 
  Zen and the Art, Robert Pirsig says: 
In the past 
  our common universe of reason has been in the process of 
  escaping, rejecting the romantic, irrational world of 
prehistoric 
  man. It's been necessary since before the time of 
Socrates 
  to reject the passions, the emotions, in order to free 
the 
  rational mind for an understanding of nature's order 
which 
  was as yet unknown. Now it's time to further an 
understanding 
  of nature's order by re-assimilating those passions which 
  were originally fled from. The passions, the emotions, 
the 
  affective domain of man's consciousness, are a part of 
nature's 
  order too. The central part.


  
Similarly, William James complained that philosophers, 
particularly the Hegelians' insistence that feeling has nothing to do 
  with the question, that it is a pure matter of absolute 
  reason.  The one fundamental 
  quarrel he has with them, James says, is over this 
repudiation 
  by Absolutism of the personal and aesthetic factor in the 
  construction of philosophy. He wants them to admit that 
we all of us have feelings and to admit that all philosophies are hypotheses, 
to 
  which all our faculties, emotional as well as logical, 
help 
  us.


But we want to be careful NOT to take this as simply becoming a romantic type 
or an artist or as an attack on intellectual pursuits. The idea here is to 
re-assimilate the passions and rationality. The idea is to fuse them, not to 
trade off one side for the other. Pirsig wants to effect a root expansion of 
rationality, wants to show how Quality is already in operation at the front of 
train, already deep in the roots of our thinking. 

“...the 
crisis is being caused by the inadequacy of existing forms of thought to
 cope with the situation. It can’t be solved by rational means because 
the rationality itself is the source of the problem. The only ones 
who’re solving it are solving it at a personal level by abandoning 
‘square’ rationality altogether and going by feelings alone. ..And that seems 
like a
 wrong direction too. So I guess what I’m trying to say is that 
the solution to the problem isn’t that you abandon rationality but that 
you expand the nature of rationality so that it’s capable of coming up 
with a solution.” 


[Phaedrus] did nothing for Quality or the Tao.  What benefited was reason. He 
showed a way by which reason may be expanded to include elements that have 
previously been unassimilable and thus have been considered irrational. [ZMM]


I want to show that that classic pattern of rationality can be tremendously 
improved, expanded and made far more effective through the formal recognition 
of Quality in its operation. [ZMM]


I think that it will be found that a formal acknowledgment of the role of 
Quality in the scientific process doesn't destroy the empirical vision at all.  
It expands it, strengthens it and brings it far closer to actual scientific 
practice. [ZMM]  


In a sense, the MOQ is an acceptance of this fact, that quality is here, and 
that if we can't explain it, you're not going to get rid of the 

[MD] A Platonist and a Sophist discuss Quality

[David Harding]

  Hi All,


I’ve recently written a response to Ancient Greek Philosophy Academic Catherine 
Rowett’s paper on ZMM. 


Thanks go to Catherine for not ignoring ZMM and Ant for comments on final draft.


Links:


Catherine’s original paper:


https://www.academia.edu/172951/Absolute_goodness_rhetoric_and_rationality_a_discussion_of_Robert_Pirsigs_novel_Zen_and_the_art_of_motorcycle_maintenance_and_Platos_Phaedrus



The response paper: 


https://www.academia.edu/11703364/A_review_of_Absolute_goodness_rhetoric_and_rationality_a_discussion_of_Robert_Pirsig_s_novel_Zen_and_the_Art_of_Motorcycle_Maintenance_and_Plato_s_Phaedrus._



Love to hear any feedback.


Best,


David.


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Re: [MD] Lila's doll

[david]

John asked:

[Lila's abandoned doll] raises the question of acquired quality.  Can objects 
sometimes have, or acquire, quality?  ...Do things have feelings?  That has 
always been an important question for me, and I have always answered, Yes.

Pirsig wrote: Something about this doll was giving it all kinds of Quality the 
manufacturer had never built into it. Lila had overlaid a whole set of value 
patterns on top of it and those values were still clinging to it. It was almost 
like some religious idol.

John continued:

You can explain it away by saying that this was just a convenient way of saying 
that Quality was in the immediate flux of experience that created Phaedrus' 
reality in which this doll was experienced as an inorganic pattern of value.  
I don't think so.  I think Pirsig wrote what he meant and meant what he wrote.  
There's something about writing about an experience that makes it real.  
There's something about a person sharing a personal history with an inanimate 
thing that makes it more than a thing.  It takes on character and value and 
feelings.  It evolves.  It takes on Quality.  ...The other way an SOM 
object can become an MOQ object is through relationship with someone who 
values it.  The doll was not the product of a craftsman, so it was only an SOM 
object when some child received it.  Then it may have begun to acquire 
Quality in relationship to that child.  But that relationship must have been 
transient, because the doll ended up in the river.  It was Lila who gave it 
value and significance. In Lila's brief but intense care it became imbued with 
Quality.  ...Pirsig points out another way something becomes an MOQ carrier of 
Quality:  Sanctification.  When an object is ritualized, it is made 
transcendent.  It partakes of Dynamic Quality.  Pirsig does not embrace 
theistic religion, but he shows great understanding of it and great reverence 
for all that is Dynamic in it.  Oliver Cromwell, the Christian, destroyed 
countless religious icons in England.  Pirsig the atheist would not have done 
so.  Pirsig understood their meaning as symbols that pointed beyond themselves. 
 Cromwell saw them as idols that were substituted for God.  Perhaps both were 
right and moral.


dmb says: 

As we can see in the scene that Dan provided, at first Lila knows her child is 
dead. She's dead, she tells the Captain, I killed her. I didn't cover her 
right and she smothered, Lila said. That was long ago.

But this line of questioning was more than her fragile mind could handle. And 
she so snaps, and she enters into a psychotic delusion.

We're ready to go now, Lila said. She got up strangely, as if she was 
carrying something heavy all wrapped in her arms. ...Lila smiled at him. We're 
all going together, she said. He looked at her face carefully. It was serene. 
She came back to me, Lila said, from the river.


And one of the things Pirsig wants to do is look at the nature of insanity 
through his MOQ lens. The following quotes should be enough to sketch out what 
Pirsig is saying ritual, idols, religion, insanity and which parts are sticky 
static stuff and which part is Dynamic. Maybe I'll add some thought later, but 
this selection of quotes should do most of the explaining all by themselves...



When one person suffers from a delusion it is called insanity. When many 
people suffer from a delusion it is called Religion.

That includes the consideration of people like Lila.
This whole business of insanity is an enormously important
philosophical subject that has been ignored—mainly, he supposed,
because of metaphysical limitations. In addition to the conventional
branches of philosophy ethics, ontology and so on—the Metaphysics
of Quality provides a foundation for a new one: the philosophy
of insanity.

There are three ways she can go, he thought. First, she
can go into permanent delusions, cling to this doll and whatever
else she's inventing, and eventually he'd have to get rid of her.
It would be tricky, but it could be done. Just call a doctor at
some town they came to and have him look at her and figure out
what to do from there. Phædrus didn't like it, but he could
do it if he had to. ..Not
very moral. If it went that way she'd probably spend the rest
of her life in an insane asylum, like some caged animal.




Her second alternative, he thought, would be to cave
in to whatever it was she was fighting, and learn to adjust.
She'd probably go into some kind of cultural dependency, with
recurring trips to a psychiatrist or some kind of social
counselor for therapy, accept the cultural reality
that her rebellion was no good, and live with it. In this way
she'd continue to lead a normal life, continuing her
problem, whatever it was, within conventional cultural limits.


The trouble was, he didn't really like that solution
much better than the first.




What he thought was, that in addition to the usual solutions
to insanity—stay locked up or learn to conform—there
was a third one, 

Re: [MD] Marcus Aurelius and MOQ

[david]

Ron said to dmb:

Speaking of this Dave [the MOQ's levels], I was kicking around the notion that 
the Sophists were promoting social good. Wondering what you may make of that in 
terms of conflict with Socrates intellectual good.


dmb says:

As I read it, Plato would like us to see the Sophists that way, as something 
appealing to common opinions, feelings, emotions and otherwise less than 
intellectual. And this is an argument that Plato won a long time ago. But this 
is exactly what Pirsig is resisting. He wants to tell a different story wherein 
the Sophists were teaching Quality, just like himself.

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.

I think he means that the Sophists put Quality above not only physical and 
social goods but also intellectual good. Quality is absolute in a ubiquitous 
way, permeating everything including excellence in thought and speech. 


Ron continued:

Ant and I were recently discussing the encapsulation of the Good off list and 
coincidentally I found it in Philebus where the discussion revolves around 
pleasure and reason. I found it in Philebus specifically 65a-e. You have to 
read the entire thing to get the gist of how it involves the forms. [...] 
Scholars agree that this was one of Plato's last works. Timeaus is where I can 
put my finger on using that encapsulation as a vehicle for the demiurge. As far 
as I know, this was one of the few texts available to early Christian thinkers.


dmb says:

It's certainly possible to make a scholarly case that the most common and 
persistent interpretations of Plato are mistaken in some way but I think that's 
almost beside the point because those common and persistent interpretations 
constitute the history of philosophy and that's what Pirsig is taking on. I 
mean, even if it's not exactly true that Plato intended to turn the Good into a 
fixed and eternal Form, that's what it became in countless different ways, most 
of which are Idealistic or Theological or both. And, yes, one of the many 
permutations of this fixed and eternal absolute is the God of monotheism, the 
paper God of the philosophers, Hegel's Absolute, and lots of similar notions. 
It's no accident that all such notions leave a very bad taste in my mouth. I'm 
increasingly convince that all such metaphysical fictions are a very misleading 
waste of time. I suppose entire lives have been wasted thinking about things 
that never existed in the first place. It's all so tragically otherworldly and 
even life-denying. 

The Absolute, also represented through other concepts as the Source, Fountain 
or Well, the Centre, the Monad or One, the All or Whole, the Origin (Arche) or 
Principle or Primordial Cause, the Sacred or Holy or Utterly Other (Otto), the 
Form of the Good (Plato), the Mystery, the Ultimate, the Ground or Urground 
(Original Ground), is the concept of an unconditional reality which 
transcends limited, conditional, everyday existence. The manifestation of the 
Absolute has been described as the Logos, Word, the Ṛta or Ratio (Latin for 
reason).

http://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/Absolute_%28philosophy%29

I hope that gives you something worth pondering. 


dmb








  
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Re: [MD] Marcus Aurelius and MOQ

[david]

Ron said:

Marcus was considered a stoic philosopher and stoicism has Platonic roots, I 
believe. The passions are rejected. Pirsig, on the other hand, seems to place 
more importance on emotion and feeling as a guiding principle toward intellect. 
There are ideas that are similar but they come from different places in 
context. It will be interesting to see what others think. Thanks for the topic!


dmb says:

Yes, that is one important difference. 

But it also shows that the MOQ's moral hierarchy is based in part on some very 
old and very basic ideas. Pleasures of the flesh (biological good) and the love 
of wealth and honor (social good) have both been treated as lower than the 
pleasure of the mind (intellectual good) since the birth of philosophy. What 
Pirsig does is show how they are all derived from the same source, which makes 
the whole picture a lot more coherent. 





 
  On Mar 5, 2015, at 11:30 AM, ngriffis ngrif...@bellsouth.net wrote:
  
  
  
  I came across this thought #55 in Book 7 in Meditations by Marcus Aurelius
  (Roman Emperor and Philosopher, 121 to 180 AD):
  
  
  
 Do not look around at the directing minds of other people, but keep
  straight ahead to where nature is leading you - both universal nature, in
  what happens to you, and your own nature, in what you must do yourself.
  Every creature must do what follows from its' own constitution. The rest of
  creation is constituted to serve rational beings (just as in everything else
  the lower exists for the higher), but rational beings are here to serve each
  other. So the main principle in man's constitution is the social. The second
  is resistance to the promptings of the flesh. It is the specific property of
  rational and intelligent activity to isolate itself and never be influenced
  by the activity of the senses or impulses: both these are of the animal
  order, and it is the aim of the intelligent activity to be sovereign over
  them and never yield them the mastery - and rightly so, as it is the very
  nature of intelligence to put all these things to its' own use. The third
  element in a rational constitution is a judgment unhurried and undeceived.
  So let your directing mind hold fast to these principles and follow the
  straight road ahead: then it has what belongs to it. 
  
  
  
 I think this quote touches on some of what Mr. Pirsig built his
  philosophy upon, perhaps similar ideas from different sources. It gives us
  an idea of the foundations that brought us to MOQ. I am always delighted
  when historic knowledge dovetails into present-day leading-edge knowledge. I
  hope the subscribers to MOQ find this of interest.
  
  
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Re: [MD] A Metaphysics of Quality Primer Website moq.is

[David Harding]

Hi Jacob,

Thanks for the kudos. My goal was to get one person to read (or reread) Lila. 
So mission accomplished!  

I'm not much older than you but I'd say that what the MOQ does is provide a 
framework where it's okay to be biological or social or intellectual depending 
on the circumstance so all else being equal - a balance is morally acceptable 
and it's not necessary to reject all biological values for instance - a la WJS. 
 There's some interesting things happening in psychological circles called 
positive psychology which is applying science to determine what makes people 
most 'happy'.  With the MOQ as its framework - science could be very powerful 
in this regard. 

Regardless - in terms of the Code of Art and a conflict between freedom and 
constraint.  The MOQ provides us a beautiful language where we can easily 
explain what the East has known for thousands of years yet seemed impenetrable 
to SOM.  That is - the East has found a way out of the traditional conflict 
between DQ and sq through mastery or perfection of the constraint.  

'There in the most monotonous boredom the Dynamic quality can be found’.

Hope this helps.

-David



Sent from my iPhone
 On 9 Feb 2015, at 8:44 pm, Jacob Postma jacobpos...@gmail.com wrote:
 
 Hi David, Hi all,
 
 Brilliant presentation! I felt it outlined the main ideas of the MOQ in
 Lila quite lucidly. I've been meaning to re-read both Pirsig's books and
 this refresher about how profound the MOQ is, was the last bit of a push I
 needed to get back to them, so thanks.
 
 This may or may not be the best thread to open up a discussion on this,
 and/or some of you reading this may have suggestions for other places to
 begin an exploration of this more in-depth, but anyway..
 I'm curious to come to understand more about how this bit from your
 presentation can be applied to the way we live our lives and how we make
 choices about what really matters:
 
 However, rather than the conflict between the two we are used to, Eastern
 Philosophy has found a way to combine both the Dynamic and static into one
 harmonious whole through the perfection of static patterns. By perfecting
 patterns they can be put to sleep and no longer bother. The simplest of all
 patterns one can do for extended periods is sitting.
 
 So, for example, when contemplating my own life as a young man of 27, I
 consider myself a freedom loving intellectual above all else, and as such
 have prioritized my pursuits of such matters above my desire to develop
 romantic social quality patterns with women (in other words, choosing to be
 single and free rather than stay in relationships that I felt were
 intellectually and dynamically limiting), I find myself at a bit of a loss
 as to how to live the best life possible when it comes to continuing to
 pursue my intellectual and dynamic sensibilities, while also managing my
 biological patterns of desiring sex, affection and a sense of
 intimacy/closeness with women (I guess biological AND social patterns?).
 
 How do we perfect those patterns in the context of pursuing higher-evolved
 patterns?
 
 I'm still not seeing very clearly where the dynamic balance is, as I
 don't feel it makes sense and/or makes most people happy to sacrifice any
 one quality pattern completely in order to pursue others.
 I could see myself staying a bachelor for most of my life, never socially
 involved to any great extent, due to the compulsion to be free and morph
 along with dynamic quality whenever the urge arises, and right now I might
 even say that sits well with me.
 But I'm 27, so that seems pretty normal to be a wanderer right now.
 I just wonder if there's a piece of the picture I'm missing that some of
 you older folks may care to share about, as far as how your pursuit of
 intellectual and dynamic values has affected your social/romantic lives and
 whether you see any low quality-ness about one choosing the life of a
 freedom loving intellectual bachelor.
 
 Thanks,
 Jacob Postma
 
 On Sun, Feb 8, 2015 at 9:00 AM, Jan Anders Andersson janander...@telia.com
 wrote:
 
 Wow!
 
 This is somewhat in line with my intention with the unfinished step one,
 two, three but much more delightful.
 
 I think, that an instruction how to read this site would be useful for
 newcomers. It took me some time to find out that I should scroll down to
 get the message.
 
 Jan-Anders
 
 
 8 feb 2015 x kl. 00:53 skrev David Harding da...@goodmetaphysics.com:
 
 Hi All,
 
 I’ve just finished the second site http://moq.is http://moq.is/  I’ve
 created it as a way to give a rundown of some of the benefits of the MOQ.
 
 As always, feedback positive or negative is more than welcome.
 
 Thanks,
 
 
 
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Re: [MD] A Metaphysics of Quality Primer Website moq.is

[David Harding]

Hi Dan,

Thanks for your thoughtful response.  As you can imagine this website did take 
some time so I appreciate that you’ve taken the time to give it.

Please see responses below:

 I'd say you could drop the first in 'starts with experience first.'
 Redundant. I might also go with 'Rather than subjects and objects
 being primary,' etc. Reads better. If Dynamic Quality is undefined,
 how do you know it is always new and unexpected?

Lila:
 “Dynamic Quality is the pre-intellectual cutting edge of reality, the source 
of all things, completely simple and always new.” 

But you might say - how do you know it’s unexpected? I think you can define 
Dynamic Quality by what it is not.  Dynamic quality is not an expected pattern. 
It is always unexpected.

This is supported by RMP in Lila:

'If you think about this question long enough you will come to see that the 
same kind of division between Dynamic Quality and static quality that exists in 
the field of morals also exists in the field of art. The first good, that made 
you want to buy the record, was Dynamic Quality. Dynamic Quality comes as a 
sort of surprise.'

 Social quality
 patterns are cooperation exhibited by higher primates? What about the
 birds and the bees? How about ant colonies? How do you know higher
 primates exhibit social patterns? Are you a monkey? A great ape? Or
 are you human?

From LC:

In Lila, societies are quite separate patterns that emerge from and are 
superimposed upon of organic bodies of people, but they are not combinations of 
these organic bodies of people.
DG:
The combination of biological bodies of people might be called a mob. A mob is 
not a social pattern any more than an ant colony.
RMP:
Although the word “mob” to me has a connotation of social destructiveness. Just 
“group” seems better.

I’m a human who knows what social quality is.  So does RMP from LC:

A social pattern which would be unaware of the next higher level would be 
found among prehistoric people and the higher primates when they exhibit social 
learning that is not genetically hard-wired but yet is not symbolic.”

 I would say the law is a set of intellectual patterns, not an example
 of social patterns. The law has been codified and modified
 intellectually.

The law is not an example of social patterns.  But it governs how social 
patterns behave.

 You say: What’s fundamental isn’t objects or the assumptions we have
 about their existence but the quality which creates all these things
 to begin with. But I thought the MOQ starts with experience. Are you
 saying experience and quality are synonymous?

Yes - evidently.

From LC:

In a subject-object metaphysics, this experience is between a preexisting 
object and subject, but in the MOQ, there is no pre-existing subject or object. 
Experience and Dynamic Quality become synonymous. 

 Ah! Here you say: Quality isn't something one thinks about
 intellectually. It's something everyone experiences. It is experience
 itself. But what about intellectual quality patterns? Ideas? Don't we
 think about them? You seem to be bundling all patterns together here.

Yes -as does RMP when he uses the capitalised Q for Quality:

Since in the MOQ all divisions of Quality are static, it follows that high and 
low are subdivisions of static quality. “Static” and “Dynamic” are also 
subdivisions of static quality, since the MOQ is itself a static intellectual 
pattern of Quality.”

 You say: The purpose of life is to live the best life possible. If a
 person is living the best possible life, haven't they cut themselves
 off from Dynamic Quality? Since their life is the best it can be,
 there's no possibility of anything better.

Yes, but whose imposing that restriction on Quality? Of course, this is the 
Code of Art where Dynamic Quality is always better than that which is defined 
old and static.

 You say: But if we're alive we're able to respond to Dynamic Quality
 and in terms of it - we are completely free. Here you seem to be
 making Dynamic Quality into some kind of object, something to be
 desired. Prior, you say Dynamic Quality is undefined but here you
 speak of terms of it. Aren't you defining it?

Yes in a way.  But there’s a Metaphysics with which it is based.  So rather 
than not say anything we given it a partial definition to talk about it to 
other people.  This is explained at the start of Lila where RMP describes the 
experience of Dynamic Quality, how it fits in with the Brujo and what it is and 
is not.  Once he does this he then states:

Slowly at first, and then with increasing awareness that he was going in a 
right direction, Phaedrus’ central attention turned away from any further 
explanation of Dynamic Quality and turned toward the static patterns 
themselves.

 Anyway, cool graphics. Thank you,

Thanks again,

David.
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[MD] A Metaphysics of Quality Primer Website moq.is

[David Harding]

Hi All,

I’ve just finished the second site http://moq.is http://moq.is/  I’ve created 
it as a way to give a rundown of some of the benefits of the MOQ.

As always, feedback positive or negative is more than welcome. 

Thanks,



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Re: [MD] The myth ...

[david]

Ridgecoyote said to Ron:

...it seems to me that this kind of peace of mind, what is worth while, 
includes a 4th level satisfaction as well as 2nd and 3rd.  By that I mean, 
meaning is wrapped up in a priori conceptualization and some certain schema...  
Looking at that, talking about that, involves universal conceptualization... it 
just does.  Owning that truth, is just being honest. ...as an idealist I 
believe that concepts ARE empirical.  When we try and think, they are just 
there, like any other datum.  In fact, they are the boundaries of the datum!  
You can take Empiricism all the way down there, but you can't deny that by 
doing so, you've turned it into the very abstract and universal concept by 
which you measure life!


dmb says:

Where the MOQ is the solution, this worship of universal concepts and 
abstractions is the problem. It's almost uncanny that you could be so 
diametrically opposed to Pirsig and American Pragmatism. Without even trying 
and without comprehension, you've managed to be as wrong as possible. Nothing 
Zen or even empirical about that truth you own.



Uncanny.



  
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Re: [MD] loop da loop

[David Morey]

You might enjoy… 

https://absoluteirony.wordpress.com/2014/09/17/nagarjuna-nietzsche-rorty-and-their-strange-looping-trick/

Happy Xmas MOQers past, present and future.

David M
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Re: [MD] MOQ and science

[david]

John said to Ant McWatt:

[Royce is] mainstream in one way, but highly out-of-fashion and relatively 
unknown. The reasons are various but the gist of it is that for a long time, 
not that many people have wanted to discuss Royce, except for a close-knit 
academical community, going through those channels.  I've already started a 
Royce discussion group but haven't  used it much.  It needs more publicity and 
marketing, two traits at which I'm relatively poor.



dmb says:

Royce is mainstream but highly out-of-fashion and 
relatively unknown? And the reason Royce is highly unfashionable and unknown 
is not that many people have wanted to discuss Royce? 


Tap dance much?


Royce and Idealism are unfashionable because there are very few theists among 
intellectuals, especially philosophers and scientists (14% and 7%, 
respectively). You like to downplay that part of Royce's thinking, not to 
mention Auxier's and your own, but these views are not going to make much sense 
to the overwhelming majority of non-theists (86% and 93%, respectively). This 
state of affairs probably explains why the God-crammers are so full of bluster 
and anger. There on the losing side of a war. We see the same sort of vitriol 
among regular folks too, as we see in the persecution complex on display in 
places like Fox News, the Tea Party, and the fundamentalist churches. On that 
level, the theists vastly outnumber the non-theists. There's certainly no 
shortage of God-crammers in the United States but the percentage drops quickly 
among the highly education and intellectually gifted. 


Here are a couple of quotes from a review of Auxier's book. They make it pretty 
clear that theism is the driving motive for this attempt at rehabilitating 
Idealism, i.e. God-cramming.

https://ndpr.nd.edu/news/48743-time-will-and-purpose-living-ideas-from-the-philosophy-of-josiah-royce/


There are hints about Auxier's own position: a process oriented 
pragmatic personalism with overtones of theistic idealism, but that is 
not the subject in view. Further, Auxier confronts philosophers with 
this interpretation of Royce as a call to take up their responsibility 
to the world to engage in offering conceptualizations of even such 
difficult ideals as community, individuals, and God.


According to Auxier, giving up upon the all-embracing thought implies 
giving up all philosophical meaning, for it implies the unreality of 
every act of intending. (66) The All-Knower, the actual judge must be 
there, where this must is not a logical must but a moral must. Auxier 
concludes by summarizing that for Royce, We must choose what we shall believe, 
but the choice is a moral one, for the merely possible God
 is also an option, one among many. (66) Royce holds this Actual God as
 necessary to affirm intentionality, error, and meaning. But the risk is
 that a God in which everything is known as actual eliminates any 
possibility for effective will or choice. Without possibility ingredient
 in the Divine it becomes a cold and bloodless abstraction. Royce 
resolves this with his argument that God considers counter-factuals as 
possibles from the perspective of each individual. As Auxier articulates
 it, God considers what I might have been and might be, but am not. 


And here are a couple excerpts from a recent article in Salon about the present 
state of theism...


It is easy to believe something without good reasons if you are 
determined to do so—like the queen in “Alice and Wonderland” who 
“sometimes … believed as many as six impossible things before 
breakfast.” But there are problems with this approach. First, if you 
defend such beliefs by claiming that you have a right to your opinion, 
however unsupported by evidence it might be, you are referring to a 
political or legal right, not an epistemic one. You may have a legal 
right to say whatever you want, but you have epistemic justification 
only if there are good reasons and evidence to support your claim. If 
someone makes a claim without concern for reasons and evidence, we 
should conclude that they simply don’t care about what’s true. We 
shouldn’t conclude that their beliefs are true because they are 
fervently held.


Should you believe in a God? Not according to most academic philosophers. A 
comprehensive survey revealed that only about 14 percent of English speaking 
professional philosophers are theists.  As
 for what little religious belief remains among their colleagues, most 
professional philosophers regard it as a strange aberration among 
otherwise intelligent people. Among scientists the situation is much the
 same. Surveys of the members of the National Academy of Sciences, 
composed of the most prestigious scientists in the world, show that 
religious belief among them is practically nonexistent, about 7 percent.


http://www.salon.com/2014/12/21/religions_smart_people_problem_the_shaky_intellectual_foundations_of_absolute_faith/?utm_source=facebookutm_medium=socialflow




   

Re: [MD] MOQ and Social Status

[david]

Anthony said to Carl:


...Finally, and this in reference to your your recent 'discussions' here, I 
don't think anyone who has read ZMM carefully, is going to be much surprized 
with how Dave Buchanan treats your MD posts.  There is a character - not unlike 
Dave - in ZMM called Phaedrus and I certainly couldn't see him - the honest 
intellectual of the book - dealing with you much differently.


dmb says:

Thanks, Doc. That's very flattering and I wish it were true. 



  
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Re: [MD] MOQ and science

[david]

dmb said to John:

While it's true that pragmatism is opposed to metaphysical claims, I don't see 
why that would preclude the discussion of ideals.



John replied with explanations from Auxier:


The Dewey-James approach decapitates philosophy, forbidding it fully to use 
its powers of abstraction, for fear that it will put the head before the 
embodied heart and neglect or try to tyrannize the problems of men, in 
Dewey's phrase, with the abstractions of philosophers.  Given the excesses of 
rationalistic philosophy in its history in the West, this is certainly a 
legitimate fear.

This inability to deal with abstract thinking is most keenly problematic when 
Dewey and James [...] are obliged to confront ideals. ...While ideals are 
treated as concrete concepts by Royce and Perice, available for the work of 
philosophical reflection, they are bloodless abstractions in James's 
estimation, and at most promissory notes in Dewey's view.  One will not be able 
to keep a philosophy in play for very long without learning to work with 
ideals, and that requires a mastery of logic and metaphysics.



dmb says:

I removed everything from your reply except the part that most directly speaks 
to the point. It's pure Auxier as a result.


It does clear up the meaning of ideals as Auxier uses the term. I thought you 
were talking about ideals as a conception of the best or a model of the 
perfect but Auxier uses the term to refer to metaphysical entities. It's 
certainly true that James (Dewey and Pirsig too) rejects the metaphysical 
version, rejects ideals as a concrete reality. But an inability to deal with 
abstract thinking simply doesn't follow from that rejection. That's Auxier's 
claim, apparently, and that makes no sense at all. 


The only value of universal characters is that they help us, by reasoning, to 
know new truths about individual things.
— William James, The Principles of Psychology.


To take ideals, abstractions, universals and the like as actual things is the 
most persistent feature of Idealist (or Rationalist) philosophers. Plato turned 
the Good into an actual thing, a fixed and eternal thing. And of course this is 
exactly what James and Pirsig are rejecting. Idealism will illuminate their 
empiricism and pragmatism by showing you what empiricism and pragmatism are 
reacting to and rejecting. It will illuminate the MOQ in the same way that 
theism will clarify the meaning of atheism. 

To take ideals and universal as conceptual tools rather than ontological 
realities certainly does NOT mean you can no longer use them as conceptual 
tools. So I still see no reason why nominalism would preclude the use of ideals 
in our reasoning or thinking. It just means the pragmatist takes abstractions 
as abstractions. In fact, as I've talked about many, many times in this forum, 
this sort of Idealism or Platonism is rejected for being the result of a 
conceptual error called reification. And in this context, i hope, you can see 
exactly that means because that's what Auxier is demanding of pragmatism! I 
must say, this argument really exposes the man's ignorance of James's 
pragmatism. 


Wikipedia on Reification (fallacy)

Reification (also known as concretism, hypostatization, or the fallacy of 
misplaced concreteness) is a fallacy of ambiguity, when an abstraction 
(abstract belief or hypothetical construct) is treated as if it were a 
concrete, real event, or physical entity. In other words, it is the error of 
treating as a concrete thing something which is not concrete, but merely an 
idea.


He's very weak, this professional of yours.











  
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Re: [MD] MOQ and science

[david]

Ron said to dmb:

You continue to impress me with Sound explanation. If I was referee, you scored 
a hit.



dmb says:

Thanks, Ron, but I can only take credit for finding and sharing that 
explanation. The quotes come from B. Alan Wallace. It's a sample of what you'll 
find in the linked interview (in Tricycle Magazine). Wallace is a huge fan of 
William James, a Tibetan Buddhist and he served as a translator for the Dalai 
Lama.








  On Dec 19, 2014, at 11:25 AM, david dmbucha...@hotmail.com wrote:
  
  http://www.tricycle.com/blog/six-questions-b-alan-wallace
  
  
  Fundamentally, I find Buddhist and scientific methods of 
  investigating reality to be complementary, as are many of their 
  discoveries. Both traditions focus on the empirical and rational 
  exploration of reality, not on accepting beliefs out of blind faith. The
  Dalai Lama comments: “A general basic stance of Buddhism is that it is 
  inappropriate to hold a view that is logically inconsistent. This is 
  taboo. But even more taboo than holding a view that is logically 
  inconsistent, is holding a view that goes against direct experience.”
  This is consonant with an assertion attributed to the Buddha and 
  widely quoted in Tibetan Buddhism: “Monks, just as the wise accept gold 
  after testing it by heating, cutting, and rubbing it, so are my words to
  be accepted after examining them, but not out of respect for me.” A 
  3rd-century Indian Buddhist contemplative named Aryadeva claimed in a 
  classic treatise that there are just three qualities one must have to 
  venture onto the Buddhist path of inquiry: one must be perceptive and 
  unbiased, and simultaneously enthusiastic about putting the teachings to
  the test of experience.
  
  
  To my mind, the principal obstacle to a deep integration of Buddhist 
  insight and scientific discovery is the uncritical acceptance among many
  scientists—and increasingly the general public—of the metaphysical 
  principles of scientific materialism. The fundamental belief of this 
  scientific materialism is that the whole of reality consists only of 
  space-time and matter-energy, and their emergent properties. This 
  implies that the only true causation is physical causation, that there 
  are no nonphysical influences in the universe. When applied to human 
  existence, this worldview implies that subjective experience is either 
  physical—despite all evidence to the contrary—or doesn’t exist at all, 
  which is simply insulting to our intelligence. As the philosopher John 
  R. Searle states in his book The Rediscovery of the Mind, 'Earlier 
  materialists argued that there aren’t any such things as separate mental 
  phenomena, because mental phenomena are identical with brain states. More 
  recent materialists argue that there aren’t any such things as separate 
  mental phenomena because they are not identical
  with brain states. I find this pattern very revealing, and what it 
  reveals is an urge to get rid of mental phenomena at any cost'.
  
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Re: [MD] MOQ and science

[david]

http://www.tricycle.com/blog/six-questions-b-alan-wallace


Fundamentally, I find Buddhist and scientific methods of 
investigating reality to be complementary, as are many of their 
discoveries. Both traditions focus on the empirical and rational 
exploration of reality, not on accepting beliefs out of blind faith. The
 Dalai Lama comments: “A general basic stance of Buddhism is that it is 
inappropriate to hold a view that is logically inconsistent. This is 
taboo. But even more taboo than holding a view that is logically 
inconsistent, is holding a view that goes against direct experience.”
This is consonant with an assertion attributed to the Buddha and 
widely quoted in Tibetan Buddhism: “Monks, just as the wise accept gold 
after testing it by heating, cutting, and rubbing it, so are my words to
 be accepted after examining them, but not out of respect for me.” A 
3rd-century Indian Buddhist contemplative named Aryadeva claimed in a 
classic treatise that there are just three qualities one must have to 
venture onto the Buddhist path of inquiry: one must be perceptive and 
unbiased, and simultaneously enthusiastic about putting the teachings to
 the test of experience.


To my mind, the principal obstacle to a deep integration of Buddhist 
insight and scientific discovery is the uncritical acceptance among many
 scientists—and increasingly the general public—of the metaphysical 
principles of scientific materialism. The fundamental belief of this 
scientific materialism is that the whole of reality consists only of 
space-time and matter-energy, and their emergent properties. This 
implies that the only true causation is physical causation, that there 
are no nonphysical influences in the universe. When applied to human 
existence, this worldview implies that subjective experience is either 
physical—despite all evidence to the contrary—or doesn’t exist at all, 
which is simply insulting to our intelligence. As the philosopher John 
R. Searle states in his book The Rediscovery of the Mind, 'Earlier materialists 
argued that there aren’t any such things as separate mental phenomena, because 
mental phenomena are identical with brain states. More recent materialists 
argue that there aren’t any such things as separate mental phenomena because 
they are not identical
 with brain states. I find this pattern very revealing, and what it 
reveals is an urge to get rid of mental phenomena at any cost'.
  
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Re: [MD] MOQ and science

[david]

Jc said:

I realize spirit is a hard concept to swallow for some.  Try and think of it 
in terms of ghost as Pirsig used that word in ZAMM.  The ghost of reason is 
in every sense, the spirit of reason.  Something that has no material essence, 
but exists anyway.  ...and its in actual practice that the MoQ is a form of 
Idealism.


dmb says:

Yea, this is pretty typical of the way you operate. First, suggest that 
stupidity is the reason some people have for rejecting the idealist's concept 
of spirit and then say something really ignorant about that very concept. The 
spirit in question is an all-encompassing mind. It's a metaphysical monism 
and does not even remotely resemble Pirsig's ghosts. If that were the case, 
then concepts like the law of gravity is equivalent to God or the Absolute. 
Your comparison is complete nonsense. And, as usual, you've completely ignored 
the evidence. That response is wildly dishonest and it makes no sense. As I 
already showed, Pirsig explicitly denies that Quality is physical or mental. 
Pure Experience cannot be called either physical or psychical: it logically 
precedes this distinction. In ZAMM Pirsig tells us that his Quality is NOT 
like Hegel's Absolute and he tells us why. But, like I said, you simply don't 
give a damn about what's true and what's not. That is the philosop
 hical definition of bullshit. 

Yea, maybe I should re-examine my prejudices against nonsense and bullshit. And 
my arbitrary demands for evidence and reasons could turn out to be a big 
problem for me, both professionally and personally. What was I thinking? So 
sorry.


Jc said:

God is a concept that some find useful, and some do not.  Whether or not you 
find the conceptualization of God pragmatically useful, personally, should not 
preclude the intellectual considerations of metaphysical stances by thinkers 
who DO find such conceptualization useful.  I should think this would be 
obvious to any real student of W. James.


dmb says:

That is just an evasion. The issue is not whether or not the concept of God is 
pragmatically useful. It's about your willingness to ignore what Pirsig has 
actually said about Hegel, Idealism, theism, and God. You ignore the evidence 
and just proceed with your God-cramming idealism anyway. That is morally 
outrageous, John, and just plain wrong. Your conversational behavior is fully 
worthy of contempt and I'm certainly not going to be bullied into silence about 
that. You're really being quite an asshole about it.


Jc said:

And your prejudice against Royce as religious is just ridiculous.  He didn't 
belong to any religion and he never attended church - this in an age when such 
behavior could get you socially ostracized!


dmb says:

This is just another bullshit evasion. What difference does it make if the man 
went to church or not? That historical fact is that Royce and the other 
Idealist of his day were talking about God as the center of their idealism. All 
of them were like that. It's crypto-theology we get from Berkeley, Hegel and 
Royce. Is it funny that you're willing to be so bullshitty on the topic of God, 
or just sad? I'm really not sure. 


I sure hope Horse isn't persuaded by your empty promises next time you 
apologize and vow to stop being a troll.




  
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Re: [MD] MOQ and science

[david]

Jc quoted Royce: 


...But in its metaphysical sense, idealism is a theory as to the nature of 
the real world - however we may come to know that nature... it is the 
metaphysical and not the epistemological meaning of the term idealism that 
has been customary in the literature since Hegel.   ..A doctrine remains, in 
the metaphysical sense, idealistic, if it maintains that the world is, in its 
wholeness, and in all of its constituent parts, a world of mind or of spirit.


Jc commented:

Now the key phrase here is or of spirit and what THAT means is so broad as to 
be a widely-argued phrase of contention.  But a case could be made for DQ as 
spirit.  I realize that you're terrified of theism creeping in via this back 
door, but can't you see that if you slam the door  shut too tightly against 
anything like spirit you're in danger of the pitfalls of either Objectivism 
or Nominalism?   ...The point is, that idealism is about ideals.  Quality is an 
ideal.  If you can't make that leap of logic, then happy chattering.



dmb says:


So Pirsig's Quality is mind or spirit and it's an ideal? That's definitely NOT 
what Pirsig says. As I already showed, in fact, Pirsig explicitly denies that 
Quality (DQ) is physical or psychical. (The root word of psychical is 
psyche, which is a Greek word that means mind or spirit or soul.) 


Pure Experience cannot be called either physical or psychical: it logically 
precedes this distinction. LILA, 365


I'm not terrified of theism creeping in via this back door, but I do object 
and so does Pirsig. He tells us that is exactly why he had overlooked William 
James, because it looked like he was sneaking God into philosophy, but upon 
closer inspection that turns out NOT to be the case. I also object simply 
because it would be incorrect - at best. That fact that you persist in this 
God-cramming nonsense after seeing all the evidence against it is disingenuous, 
dishonest and even a bit sleazy. Even worse, you keep construing the refusal to 
go along with your God-cramming as some sort of character flaw or lapse in 
logic or whatever. 


I think you've demonstrated that you simply don't give a shit what the truth of 
the matter is. You'll say anything to turn the MOQ into some kind of theism 
regardless of whether it makes any sense or not. 


Hey, have you heard? The term gullible has been removed from the dictionary. 
And if you're too closed-minded to believe that, it's only because you're 
terrified of psychologists and strippers who use their real names.











  
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Re: [MD] MOQ and science

[david]

Dan quoted from Wikipedia on Anti-realism:


The term was coined by Michael Dummett, who introduced it in his paper Realism 
to re-examine a number of classical philosophical disputes involving such 
doctrines as nominalism, conceptual realism, idealism and phenomenalism. The 
novelty of Dummett's approach consisted in seeing these disputes as analogous 
to the dispute between intuitionism and Platonism in the philosophy of 
mathematics.  ...According to intuitionists (anti-realists with respect to 
mathematical objects), the truth of a mathematical statement consists in our 
ability to prove it. According to platonists (realists), the truth of a 
statement consists in its correspondence to objective reality.



Dan said to dmb:

I am the one who threw idealism into the mix. And yes of course I understand 
the MOQ is neither. When you mentioned anti-realism I read idealism, rightly or 
wrongly. I know that to professional philosophers who are much more learned 
that I am the terms have a difference but to me they fall under the same 
umbrella. ...Now it seems to me that anti-realism has more to do with 
mathematics than metaphysics so I was unsure why it is being brought into the 
discussion. 



dmb says:

There is a dispute between realists and anti-realists in mathematics, science, 
morality and all kinds of other areas. And, as it says in the quote you shared, 
in mathematics the Platonists are realists (with respect to numbers). Plato 
himself was a realist with respect to Ideas or Forms and he is the king of 
Idealism or Rationalism. This is a very good reason not to equate idealism with 
anti-realism. Idealists and materialists have different views about what's 
real but both can be considered realists and they both can subscribe to the 
appearance-reality distinction and the correspondence theory of truth, where 
true ideas are the ones that represent the way things really are.



That Stanford quote on Constructive empiricism tells us, for example, that 
scientific realism claims to give us, in its theories, a literally true story 
of what the world is like whereas the constructive empiricist holds that 
acceptance of a scientific theory involves only the belief that the theory is 
empirically adequate. So, yes, constructive empiricism makes no claims about 
what is literally 'true' story about what the world is like. It says our 
conceptual models can be empirically adequate or not, they can successfully 
organize the relevant data or not, but it stops short of making any 
metaphysical claims about these models corresponding to the real reality 
beyond those appearances. 


The stance called constructive empiricism is very similar to (ZAMM, page 262) 
Pirsig's lesson about Poincare and
 alternative geometries. He says it doesn't really make any sense to ask 
whether the metric system is true and the avoirdupois 
system is false; whether Cartesian coordinates are true and polar 
coordinates are false. One geometry can not be more true than 
another; it can only be more convenient. Geometry is not true, it is 
advantageous.


Or, as I'd like to put it, geometry shouldn't be taken as True in the sense 
that it corresponds to an objective, mind-independent reality but it's 
pragmatically true in the sense that it agrees with experience. Pragmatic 
truths are the ones that work in practice, the ones that work when you can 
actually use them for some purpose. What we get in the MOQ are just empirical 
claims, not metaphysical claims. In the MOQ, the primary empirical reality is 
prior to language, outside of language, and so it offers no definite claims 
about the real reality. It can be known in experience but as soon as we start 
talking, we're dealing with concepts and not the primary empirical reality. 
Idealists say ideas are reality and materialists say physical things are 
reality but the MOQ says reality cannot be defined. 


Ironically, the MOQ isn't metaphysical in the sense. Like the man said, it's a 
contradiction in terms, a logical absurdity.


Hope that addresses most of your concerns.



  
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Re: [MD] MOQ and science

[david]

dmb quoted from Stanford:

Anti-realists deny the world is mind-independent. Believing the 
epistemological and semantic problems to be insoluble, they conclude realism 
must be false.



Dan said to dmb:

Right, and so realism and idealism are seen as mutually exclusive, whereas the 
MOQ unites them both... they are both correct in their own limited ways. Good 
stuff, Dave... thanks! The engine sounds great.



JC said to Dan:

Idealism is realism's fierce opponent.  It's not simply a matter of mutually 
exclusive it's a matter of mutually hostile.  And how the MoQ unites them... I 
have no idea except that so far the interpreters of the MOQ have no real 
conception of what idealism actually is.   The glib answer that idealism 
equates to it's all in your head is facile and far, far short of the actual 
stance of actual idealists.   In order to engage real philosophers, you have to 
do some real philosophology people.



dmb says:

Hmmm. How did idealism get mixed in to the issue? It's true that idealism and 
materialism are opposed to each other (and materialists are usually realists), 
but the MOQ is neither of those things. 


The rivalry presented in the Stanford quote is between realism and 
anti-realism, not realism and idealism. The MOQ will appear to have some things 
in common with idealism because they are both rejecting materialism - but the 
MOQ also rejects idealism and so the MOQ will appear to have things in common 
with materialism as well. That's not as confusing as it sounds; it just means 
that the MOQ is neither idealism nor materialism (which is now known as 
physicalism).


To simplify the story a bit, the rivalry between idealism and materialism is an 
endless dispute about whether reality is fundamentally mental or fundamentally 
physical - and there are many flavors of each. It's fairly easy to see that 
this dispute takes place within SOM. The MOQ, by contrast, takes the Jamesian 
view that reality is the immediate flux of life, is Pure Experience. 


Pure experience cannot be called either physical or psychical: it logically 
precedes this distinction. (LILA, 365)

And even if idealism were relevant, there are lots of different kinds of 
idealism and so we'd have to be much more specific. The kind that says it's 
all in your head is probably best described as solipsism - or maybe subjective 
idealism if you're feeling generous. Bishop Berkeley was the kind of idealist 
that would say, to be is to be perceived. Things exists only so long as they 
are being perceived by a mind. Because he was a theologian, it wasn't very hard 
to climb out of the absurd implications. Since we cannot tolerate realities 
that blink in and out of existence depending on whether anyone is watching or 
not, he brought God in to perceive all things at all times and thereby maintain 
all being. (Possibly the least plausible theory I ever heard.) Kant is a 
special case because he was trying to mix his idealism with empiricism but he 
was also just sort of rationalizing his prior commitments to Christianity. 
Hegel and the British idealist had a very grandiose and clean sort of Absolute 
idealism. 


Stanford's article on Royce opens with this sentence: Josiah Royce was the 
leading American proponent of absolute
idealism, the metaphysical view (also maintained by G. W. F. Hegel and
F. H. Bradley) that all aspects of reality, including those we
experience as disconnected or contradictory, are ultimately unified in
the thought of a single all-encompassing consciousness. I guess it's easy to 
see that this single all-encompassing consciousness is the Absolute, is the 
God of idealism. And these guys are all pretty religious too. (James called 
them prigs.) Royce's major works show this inclination too. They include The 
Religious Aspect
of Philosophy (1885) and The
Problem of Christianity (1913). 


Stanford mentions his rivalry with James right at the top of the article. 
Because of James's influence, Royce traded in the single all-encompassing 
consciousness for an infinite community of minds. He trades one big mind for 
countless little ones - but it's still a kind of idealism. The MOQ, by 
contrast, is empirical all the way down. 


Royce's friendly but longstanding
dispute with William James, known as “The Battle of the Absolute,”
deeply influenced both philosophers' thought. In his later works, Royce
reconceived his metaphysics as an “absolute pragmatism” grounded in
semiotics. This view dispenses with the Absolute Mind of previous
idealism and instead characterizes reality as a universe of ideas or
signs which occur in a process of being interpreted by an infinite
community of minds.


The MOQ, by contrast, is empirical all the way down. The anti-realist criticism 
of metaphysical realism cuts against the metaphysical claims of idealism for 
the same reason - they both entail claims about what fundamental reality is 
beyond appearances. But the radical empiricism and the philosophical mysticism 
or 

Re: [MD] MOQ and science

[david]

David Morey said to Dan:


...If we adopt a fully antirealist MOQ, I think we lose the best aspects of 
science, instead of a study of SQ that opens the doors to the great 
intellectual spaces of cosmology and evolution, it tries to confine SQ to what 
seems like solipsism,..


dmb says:

I've encountered this kind of objection many times. This objection entails an 
assumption that scientific truths correspond to an objective reality and so it 
tells me that DM is still haunted by the ghost of objectivity. It's difficult 
to overcome realism because almost all non-philosophers and non-scientist 
accepted it as common sense. Most scientists are realists and the vast majority 
of analytic philosophers are realists too. 


But it's very important to realize that the MOQ is opposed to this view, not 
least of all because realism entails SOM. This is the view that Pirsig exposes 
as a genetic defect in rationality itself. To construe the MOQ as a kind of 
realism is to construe the MOQ as it's own enemy. That would not be merely 
incorrect or mistaken. It would be a disaster. 


Pragmatism is an alternative to SOM's correspondence theory of truth so I could 
point to the last few chapters of LILA to establish the MOQ's rejection of 
realism - but Pirsig begins his attack on realism very early in ZAMM. It was 
always there, even before he ever thought to mention William James. On page 41 
and 42 of ZAMM, for example, Pirsig says,...


The world has no existence whatsoever outside the human imagination. It's all 
a ghost, and in antiquity was so recognized.


...the laws of physics and logic ..the number system  ...These are ghosts. We 
just believe in them so thoroughly they seem real. The law of gravity and 
gravity itself did not exist before Isaac Newton.


Much later in ZAMM (page 262), when Pirsig is talking about Poincare and 
alternative geometries he says it doesn't really make any sense to...


...ask whether the metric system is true and the avoirdupois 
system is false; whether Cartesian coordinates are true and polar 
coordinates are false. One geometry can not be more true than 
another; it can only be more convenient. Geometry is not true, it is 
advantageous.


If we want the MOQ to be taken seriously, I think it's important to talk about 
it in terms that are going to be intelligible to people who think about 
philosophy. That's why I think we should be talking about it in basic 
philosophical terms. For those who might like to get a grasp of the MOQ it's 
important to reach out, meet them halfway, and otherwise explain it in terms 
that are commonly understood - as opposed to dishing it up in Pirsigese or any 
other exclusive jargon. That's why Ant's formulation would, I think, be 
unhelpful. A definition of SOM might be, he says,... 


any metaphysics that, implicitly or explicitly, DEFINES the Good.


I don't think that would be very helpful even to those who are already familiar 
with Pirsig's work - but more importantly the terms we need to talk about this 
with the wider philosophical community are already out there and ready to be 
deployed. There is already a variety of challenges to realism and critiques of 
objectivity that a MOQer could use. Using a resource like the Stanford 
Encyclopedia lets people know that the MOQ isn't just some crackpot theory from 
a bunch of incompetent cranks, you know? I think we owe it to Pirsig to talk 
about his ideas in a way that will NOT make serious people laugh at it, mock 
it, or dismiss it with a roll of the eyes. 


Let's say we want to address the concerns of an uncomprehending realist, for 
example. David Morey tells us that he's concerned that without realism, we 
lose the best aspects of science and end up promoting solipsism. To explain 
why this is not the case we could cite the Stanford Encyclopedia (or any one of 
a zillion Journal articles) on a anti-realist stance known as Constructive 
Empiricism (http://plato.stanford.edu/entries/constructive-empiricism/) or the 
article titled Challenges to Metaphysical Realism 
(http://plato.stanford.edu/entries/realism-sem-challenge/).


The following introductory lines are enough to explain why we don't lose any 
aspect of science with Constructive Empiricism. 

Constructive empiricism is a view which stands in contrast to
the type of scientific realism that claims the following: Science aims to give 
us, in its theories, a literally true story of
what the world is like; and acceptance of a scientific theory involves
the belief that it is true. 



In contrast, the constructive empiricist holds that science aims at truth about
observable aspects of the world, but that science does not aim at truth
about unobservable aspects. Acceptance of a theory, according to
constructive empiricism, correspondingly differs from acceptance of a
theory on the scientific realist view: the constructive empiricist
holds that as far as belief is concerned, acceptance of a scientific
theory involves only the belief

Re: [MD] MOQ and science

[David Morey]

 that have nothing to do with humans, to suggest we avoid doing any 
such reasoning and imagining would makes us some kind of luddite 
fundamentalists.


DMB: If we want the MOQ to be taken seriously, I think it's important to talk 
about it in terms that are going to be intelligible to people who think about 
philosophy. That's why I think we should be talking about it in basic 
philosophical terms. For those who might like to get a grasp of the MOQ it's 
important to reach out, meet them halfway, and otherwise explain it in terms 
that are commonly understood - as opposed to dishing it up in Pirsigese or any 
other exclusive jargon.

DM: exactly why I think my suggestion is a bloody good one.





DMB:Let's say we want to address the concerns of an uncomprehending realist, 
for example. David Morey tells us that he's concerned that without realism, we 
lose the best aspects of science and end up promoting solipsism. To explain 
why this is not the case we could cite the Stanford Encyclopedia (or any one of 
a zillion Journal articles) on a anti-realist stance known as Constructive 
Empiricism (http://plato.stanford.edu/entries/constructive-empiricism/) or the 
article titled Challenges to Metaphysical Realism 
(http://plato.stanford.edu/entries/realism-sem-challenge/). 


The following introductory lines are enough to explain why we don't lose any 
aspect of science with Constructive Empiricism. 

Constructive empiricism is a view which stands in contrast to 
the type of scientific realism that claims the following: Science aims to give 
us, in its theories, a literally true story of 
what the world is like; and acceptance of a scientific theory involves 
the belief that it is true. 



In contrast, the constructive empiricist holds that science aims at truth about 
observable aspects of the world, but that science does not aim at truth 
about unobservable aspects. Acceptance of a theory, according to 
constructive empiricism, correspondingly differs from acceptance of a 
theory on the scientific realist view: the constructive empiricist 
holds that as far as belief is concerned, acceptance of a scientific 
theory involves only the belief that the theory is empirically 
adequate. 


DM: Fair enough, could try that approach, not very mainstream currently, but I 
think the MOQ could and should co-opt realism in an MOQ re-interpretation, turn 
it into realism-2, and get the majority of scientists and philosophers on its 
side. DQ is a hard sell, so I suggest making SQ understood in terms as 
conducive to progressive science as possible. And equally it accords with 
experience, we experience presence and absence, experience is always changing, 
stuff comes and goes, and communication with others leads us to realism about 
what they report to us of different times and diffdifferent places that we have 
never experienced. I've never met DMB or been to the US but quite sensibly I 
reason that they exist, I need some level of realism to do that, I do not need 
SOM or objectivism.







 


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Re: [MD] What's valuable?

[David Harding]

Hi dmb,

Good to hear from you.

 David Harding asked:
 
 What's valuable? Just wondering what folks on here think is valuable besides 
 the MOQ itself?  To keep the discussion MD friendly perhaps use the MOQ to 
 justify why it’s valuable..  
 
 
 
 dmb says:
 
 Pirsig is attacking attitudes of objectivity and value-free science (SOM), in 
 order to replace it with a view in which reality is nothing but values. In 
 addition to the distinction between static quality and Dynamic Quality, there 
 are also four distinct levels of static values. This hierarchy of goods (like 
 health, wealth, and truth) is supposed to cover everything. 
 

Yes, and taking this into consideration. What do you think (aside from the MOQ) 
is valuable? Or rather especially valuable if you prefer me to be specific. 


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Re: [MD] Fwd: What's valuable?

[David Harding]

Hi JA,

Thanks for your explanation below. Much appreciated. I must try the Kaggen 
stormaktsporter” some time although I see it’s retired? 

On 12 December 2014 at 6:16:39 pm, Jan-Anders Andersson (janander...@telia.com) 
wrote:

David  

Of course the phrase Titties  Beer, which is the title of the piece of music 
by Frank Zappa I happened to be listening to while answering, at a first glance 
would sound somewhat blasphemic to the MOQ.  

But, living in a social constellation of several humans where women take a good 
part of the time, the knowledge about how to keep things at the four different 
levels straight according to their morals is quite useful.  
The experience of a well-balanced social pattern, regarding amount, form and 
expression should not be underestimated.  

I have been involved in a micro brewery for decades and learned a lot about the 
fine art of brewing a good beer. Without the understanding about the difference 
between physics and chemistry, organics, sociology, psychology, computer and 
process mathematics, economics and law, we never would have reached the top at 
the charts. A perfect balanced beer such as Kaggen stormaktsporter would 
never appeared without ZAMM and LILA.  

MOQ is not just a brain dance, it is a tool for making something good while you 
are alive.  

cheers  

Jan-Anders  



 12 dec 2014 kl. 00:58 skrev David Harding da...@goodmetaphysics.com:  
  
 Hi Arlo,  
  
 Good to hear from you.  
  
 [David]  
 Second only to the MOQ you like biological things? The MOQ would say that  
 is immoral.  
  
 [Arlo]  
 I think the MOQ would only say this is immoral only if social and  
 intellectual values were being subordinated to biological patterns. I am  
 not sure we can deduce from Jan-Anders short reply that such a  
 subordination is occurring. If Jan-Anders preference for beer and boobs was  
 advocating alcoholism and rape, then, yeah, for sure the MOQ would have  
 something to say about the immorality of this preference.  
  
 Just thought it strange that these were the first things he said. And your  
 answers confuse me too. Maybe I'd assumed most would immediately think of  
 intellectual or Dynamic pursuits. I just figure some folks on here like  
 yourself are pretty intelligent and might have some ideas about what's  
 valuable in either of these areas. To my surprise neither JA or yourself  
 has really said anything on either of these two levels. But if that's how  
 it is then so be it.  
  
  
 But I don't think the MOQ makes elitist claims about what a person should  
 like or value. I mean, is it immoral to prefer punk-rock to Wagnerian  
 opera? To enjoy hiking more than painting? Pizza more than soccer? Or  
 soccer more than Greek drama?  
  
 Yes of course each to their own. The MOQ doesn't give the final answer.  
 It's just the beginning so to speak. The MOQ provides us with a language  
 with which we can discuss and indeed disagree about what's valuable. A  
 healthy, well thought out MOQ based disagreement about the moral standing  
 of punk rock v Wagner opera I think would indeed be worth listening to. But  
 that's not really why I asked the question. The reason is explained above.  
  
 Also, to be fair too, you didn't actually ask what people value second  
 to the MOQ.  
  
 Right I asked generally what's valuable. But why should the assumption be  
 randomness? This is an MOQ discussion board. I assume folks are living by  
 it or at least trying to and will give their best.  
  
 [David]  
 Anyone have anything worthwhile they value other than the MOQ itself?  
  
 [Arlo]  
 I'm guessing from your reply to Jan-Anders that your question, and your  
 addition of the word worthwhile here, is not so much about what people  
 value, but what they SHOULD value. And I'm guessing what you wanted was for  
 people to say things like art, violin concertos, poetry, and maybe  
 mediation and tea ceremonies. Or maybe you were looking for the big  
 categories: love, honor, trust, etc.  
  
 In any event, I have to say I agree with Jan-Anders, two things I value  
 (besides the MOQ) are: the camaraderie of friends and the warmth of  
 intimacy.  
  
 Me too. They're valuable for sure. But I wasn't really asking about what  
 was randomly good.  
  
 What do I value second to the MOQ? Most days I'd answer empathy. Some  
 days, I'd consider answering Hannah (my daughter), but she mostly holds a  
 second-to-nothing spot. But on a cold, snowy, winter's day like today, I  
 admit I'd be tempted to go with winter ale and a warm embrace. (TL/DR;  
 agape, philia, eros).  
  
 I must be too intellectual. I find love a social thing and a word used in  
 so many different ways I don't really know what it intellectually means.  
 Empathy though less ambiguous still very much social. Beer's anti  
 intellectual and takes things to the lower levels.  
  
 Does that mean I don't love or drink beer? Of course not, I love everyday  
 and drink most

Re: [MD] Fwd: What's valuable?

[David Harding]

[David] 
Just thought it strange that these were the first things he said. And your 
answers confuse me too. Maybe I'd assumed most would immediately think of 
intellectual or Dynamic pursuits. 

[Arlo] 
Why strange? Camaraderie, warmth, empathy, kin, love... these are all among the 
top things I would EXPECT someone to say. If you wanted to know what 
intellectual pursuits, apart from the MOQ, people here valued, maybe that is 
something you should have specifically asked? And, I am not sure what a 
Dynamic pursuit would be, apart from say art as lived experience. 
Jan-Anders mentioned how Pirsig's ideas inform the way he approaches and 
understands the crafting of beer, which reflects the way Quality informed 
Pirsig's approach to motorcycle maintenance in ZMM. Yet you seemed to criticize 
this, so I get the notion that your category for Dynamic pursuits is more 
along the lines of culturally-sanctioned art (theatre, painting, dance, 
etc.). 
Nope, happy with the Zen and the Art of Crafting Beer.  JA hadn’t mentioned 
this previously.

But, so, to answer your intended question: two intellectual pursuits that i 
have found most valuable are (broadly) socio-cultural theory (or, 
cultural-historical psychology) and its direct descendant activity theory. A 
current project I am working on (which I would argue is a Dynamic pursuit) 
involves expanding Artaud's theatrical imperative (his Theatre of Cruelty) to a 
more general pedagogical imperative. (To tease a relation to Pirsig, you can 
see this first evident in Pirsig's English classroom in ZMM. How are we 
supposed to know what quality is? they said. You're supposed to tell us!... 
I sat there all night long, one said. I was ready to cry, I was so mad, a 
girl next to the window said. You should warn us, a third said. ... But then, 
below the definition on the blackboard, he wrote, But even though Quality 
cannot be defined, you know what Quality is! and the storm started all over 
again. Oh, no, we don't! Oh, yes, you do. Oh, no, we don't! Art 
aud was responding to growing dominance of passive 'theatre', mostly in the 
form of cinema. Consider the above classroom scene reading Artaud's call to 
arms, Our long familiarity with theatre as a form of distraction has led us to 
forget the idea of a serious theatre, a theatre which will shove aside our 
representations, and breathe into us the burning magnetism of images and 
finally will act upon us in such a way that there will take place a therapy of 
the soul whose effects will not be forgotten.) 

So is this the sort of answer you had wanted?
Absolutely, now we’re talkin’ Arlo.  First off your current project reminds me 
of Joseph Campbell. 

Anyway from wiki reading it seems sociocultural theory is a response to 
behaviourism (apologies for my ignorance here). Obviously SOM has issues as 
explained in Lila dealing with things like anthropology and psychology and it 
struggles at basic levels to even agree on how to talk about these things.  Do 
you think an acceptance of value as the source of experience would 
significantly change the field?  

 Just to be clear, though, if you ask me which I value more, working on this 
project or Camaraderie, warmth, empathy, kin, love..., I would likely chose 
the latter. And, by the way, I take objection to the statement that empathy is 
very much social. But that's another argument. 
Another one indeed.



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Re: [MD] What's valuable?

[David Harding]

Amazing. Second only to the MOQ you like biological things? The MOQ would
say that is immoral. There are social and intellectual goods which are
better. Anyone have anything worthwhile they value other than the MOQ
itself?



 On 11 Dec 2014, at 10:39 pm, Jan Anders Andersson janander...@telia.com
wrote:

 Well, David

 My first thought was music

 But what I mostly prefer is Titties  Beer

 Cheers to womanity of the world!

 Jan-Anders


 11 dec 2014 x kl. 12:33 skrev David Harding da...@goodmetaphysics.com:

 Hi All,

 Just wondering what folks on here think is valuable besides the MOQ
itself?  To keep the discussion MD friendly perhaps use the MOQ to justify
why it's valuable..


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Re: [MD] What's valuable?

[david]

David Harding asked:


What's valuable? Just wondering what folks on here think is valuable besides 
the MOQ itself?  To keep the discussion MD friendly perhaps use the MOQ to 
justify why it’s valuable..  



dmb says:

Pirsig is attacking attitudes of objectivity and value-free science (SOM), in 
order to replace it with a view in which reality is nothing but values. In 
addition to the distinction between static quality and Dynamic Quality, there 
are also four distinct levels of static values. This hierarchy of goods (like 
health, wealth, and truth) is supposed to cover everything. 



  
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[MD] Fwd: What's valuable?

[David Harding]

Hi Arlo,

Good to hear from you.

 [David]
 Second only to the MOQ you like biological things? The MOQ would say that
is immoral.

 [Arlo]
 I think the MOQ would only say this is immoral only if social and
intellectual values were being subordinated to biological patterns. I am
not sure we can deduce from Jan-Anders short reply that such a
subordination is occurring. If Jan-Anders preference for beer and boobs was
advocating alcoholism and rape, then, yeah, for sure the MOQ would have
something to say about the immorality of this preference.

Just thought it strange that these were the first things he said. And your
answers confuse me too. Maybe I'd assumed most would immediately think of
intellectual or Dynamic pursuits. I just figure some folks on here like
yourself are pretty intelligent and might have some ideas about what's
valuable in either of these areas. To my surprise neither JA or yourself
has really said anything on either of these two levels. But if that's how
it is then so be it.


 But I don't think the MOQ makes elitist claims about what a person should
like or value. I mean, is it immoral to prefer punk-rock to Wagnerian
opera? To enjoy hiking more than painting? Pizza more than soccer? Or
soccer more than Greek drama?

Yes of course each to their own. The MOQ doesn't give the final answer.
It's just the beginning so to speak. The MOQ provides us with a language
with which we can discuss and indeed disagree about what's valuable. A
healthy, well thought out MOQ based disagreement about the moral standing
of punk rock v Wagner opera I think would indeed be worth listening to. But
that's not really why I asked the question. The reason is explained above.

 Also, to be fair too, you didn't actually ask what people value second
to the MOQ.

Right I asked generally what's valuable. But why should the assumption be
randomness? This is an MOQ discussion board. I assume folks are living by
it or at least trying to and will give their best.

 [David]
 Anyone have anything worthwhile they value other than the MOQ itself?

 [Arlo]
 I'm guessing from your reply to Jan-Anders that your question, and your
addition of the word worthwhile here, is not so much about what people
value, but what they SHOULD value. And I'm guessing what you wanted was for
people to say things like art, violin concertos, poetry, and maybe
mediation and tea ceremonies. Or maybe you were looking for the big
categories: love, honor, trust, etc.

 In any event, I have to say I agree with Jan-Anders, two things I value
(besides the MOQ) are: the camaraderie of friends and the warmth of
intimacy.

Me too. They're valuable for sure. But I wasn't really asking about what
was randomly good.

 What do I value second to the MOQ? Most days I'd answer empathy. Some
days, I'd consider answering Hannah (my daughter), but she mostly holds a
second-to-nothing spot.  But on a cold, snowy, winter's day like today, I
admit I'd be tempted to go with winter ale and a warm embrace. (TL/DR;
agape, philia, eros).

I must be too intellectual. I find love a social thing and a word used in
so many different ways I don't really know what it intellectually means.
Empathy though less ambiguous still very much social. Beer's anti
intellectual and takes things to the lower levels.

Does that mean I don't love or drink beer? Of course not, I love everyday
and drink most weekends. I just thought there might be something good out
there which all else being equal is good and worth recommending to someone
if they asked.  I'm also interested in what folks on MD value other than
the MOQ itself.  I'd be lying if I wasn't surprised by the first two
responses so I guess this has been worth it.

Thank-you,

David
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Re: [MD] MOQ and science

[David Morey]

 idealism does not exclude realism, see the link I gave 
to a book about Zizek it discusses this in detail. At best the MOQ 
contextualises all isms, realism and antirealism are 2 sides of the same coin, 
I suggest we keep our ability to look at both sides, so in a way antirealism 
comes first and tells us about the inescapability of experience, but realism 
allows us to reason about what might lie beyond the human, but logically must 
be as experiential as our entirely human existence. All goes back to Paul's 2 
aspects, my position is emphasising the intellectual/realist/cosmological 
aspect but only do we do not get left with a single vision aspect, I do accept 
that in terms of direct experience, DQ and the pre-intellectual, that is more 
 fundamental and is, in a pre-intellectual sense, anti-realist.

David MOn 10 Dec 2014 07:54, Dan Glover daneglo...@gmail.com wrote:

 David, 

 I don't know... this seems like pretty much a yawn to me. But let's go 
 ahead and kick the tires and see if the engine cranks. You never 
 know... 

 On Tue, Dec 9, 2014 at 2:59 PM, david dmbucha...@hotmail.com wrote: 
  David Morey asked the MOQers: 
  
  
  How does the MOQ describe science? 

 Dan: 
 I'd say science is a set of high quality intellectual patterns. 

 DM: 
 Does science study SQ? 

 Dan: 
 Now, see? This is an asshole question if there ever was one. Come on, 
 Morey. You've been at this long enough to know better. Read the first 
 two paragraphs of chapter 12 in Lila and get back with me on this. 

 DM: 
 Does science discover SQ processes that take place in the world beyond 
 the confines of direct experience? 

 Dan: 
 Now this is somewhat interesting. If by using the term 'direct 
 experience' you mean Dynamic Quality, then of course static quality is 
 all that exists beyond 'it.' But that isn't really right. I get the 
 sense you don't actually understand what it is you are saying, 
 otherwise you wouldn't be saying it. 

 DM: 
 If not how should the self-understanding of science be corrected or 
 redescribed in MOQ terms? 

 Dan: 
 If you want self-understanding, I suggest meditation. Science is more 
 about intellectual understanding. 

  
  
  
  dmb says: 
  
  This could be a really great question, a great way to discuss the 
  difference between SOM and the MOQ, but there is a glitch in it that needs 
  fixing first. In the MOQ, there is no such thing as the world beyond the 
  confines of experience - or rather if there were we couldn't know anything 
  about it. How would it be possible for us to go beyond the world of 
  experience? In the MOQ (and for James), experience and reality amount to 
  the same thing because there is no sense in talking about what might be 
  beyond our limits. 

 Dan: 
 Yes, exactly. By dropping the qualifier 'direct' the term 'experience' 
 becomes synonymous with Dynamic Quality. Once defined, we have static 
 quality. Science is one possible process of identifying experience. 

  
 dmb: 
  I think one of the best ways to get at the question is to frame it in terms 
  of metaphysical realism or scientific realism - that's more or less the SOM 
  view of truth and reality - and then pragmatists like Pirsig and James can 
  be put on the other side along with certain kinds of anti-realists. Here 
  are the opening lines to a Stanford article called Challenges to 
  Metaphysical Realism. 
  
  
  According to metaphysical realism, the world is as it is independently 
  of how humans take it to be. The objects the world contains, together 
  with their properties and the relations they enter into, fix the 
  world's nature and these objects exist independently of our ability to 
  discover they do. Unless this is so, metaphysical realists argue, none 
  of our beliefs about our world could be objectively true since true 
  beliefs tell us how things are and beliefs are objective when true or 
  false independently of what anyone might think. 

 Dan: 
 This is some stuff David Harding ought to be hoisting onto his SOM 
 website. This is the whole reason behind the MOQ, to combat the notion 
 of an objective reality that exists independently of observation. What 
 the realists consistently fail to consider is that there is no way to 
 know one way or another if reality exists separately and apart from 

  
 dmb: 
  Many philosophers believe metaphysical realism is just plain common 
  sense. Others believe it to be a direct implication of modern science, 
  which paints humans as fallible creatures adrift in an inhospitable 
  world not of their making. Nonetheless, metaphysical realism is 
  controversial. Besides the analytic question of what it means to 
  assert that objects exist independently of the mind, metaphysical 
  realism also raises epistemological problems: how can we 
  obtain knowledge of a mind-independent world? There are also prior 
  semantic problems, such as how links are set up between our beliefs 
  and the mind-independent states of affairs

Re: [MD] MOQ and science

[david]

Dan to D. Morey:

I get the sense you don't actually understand what it is you are saying, 
otherwise you wouldn't be saying it.



dmb says:

Right. It seems pretty clear that David Morey cannot discern the difference 
between the disease (SOM) and the cure (the MOQ). He's misreading the MOQ as if 
it were SOM with a few new labels. He wants Pirsig's pragmatism and mysticism 
to be a version of realism. 

It's like finding fault with atheism because it fails to list the attributes of 
God. So very uncomprehending. 




  
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Re: [MD] MOQ and science

[David Morey]

Well thanks for the chat guys, not much of a debate, not going to attract much 
attention is it? Never mind, looks like you have talked yourselves into a 
corner and think there is no need to consider any different possibilities, or 
even consider the natural pros and cons of an alternative approach. Your loss 
not mine. I guess you've been at it a long time, sorry if you can't follow what 
I am saying, or see why I think your suggestions are unnecessarily 
self-limiting, our differences seem clear and transparent to me, and I think I 
have set out my reasoning pretty clearly for why I suggest what I have, I 
suppose if you can't follow my reasoning, I can't really expect you to be able 
to pick out any flaws in what I am saying, certainly nothing that has been said 
has any significance for me, or shows any great benefit or reason for 
rethinking my views on any of this, although I feel entirely happy that I see 
where you are both coming from, just don't agree it is the only possible 
approach, and for me certainly not the best one, for the reasons I have set 
out, shame you cannot follow my reasoning, because then perhaps you could 
compare and contrast the pros and cons of the alternative approaches, as I have 
tried to do, and then defend the reasons for your choices and preferences, but 
we can't seem to get to that reasonable stage of debate. Nevermind, I'll be on 
my way.

All the best
David MOn 10 Dec 2014 17:49, david dmbucha...@hotmail.com wrote:

 Dan to D. Morey: 

 I get the sense you don't actually understand what it is you are saying, 
 otherwise you wouldn't be saying it. 



 dmb says: 

 Right. It seems pretty clear that David Morey cannot discern the difference 
 between the disease (SOM) and the cure (the MOQ). He's misreading the MOQ as 
 if it were SOM with a few new labels. He wants Pirsig's pragmatism and 
 mysticism to be a version of realism. 

 It's like finding fault with atheism because it fails to list the attributes 
 of God. So very uncomprehending. 




      
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Re: [MD] Fwd: Re: DMB on pure experience

[david]

David Morey asked:

Look at how complex this looks for Zizek, I like James, but does he resolve all 
these issues?



dmb says: 

I think Zizek is the kind of thinker that makes pragmatists shudder. It's Hegel 
topped with Marxism and post Freudian psychoanalysis, which means it's one big 
stack of metaphysical speculations and untestable theories. I think James would 
file it under vicious abstractionism. If Chomsky is right, Zizek is a clown 
and a charlatan but it would be antithetical to pragmatism even if Chomsky was 
wrong about that. 




David Morey asked:

A world of pure experience? So take one of those movies where we count how many 
basketball passes are made but fail to observe the gorilla in the background 
until we watch a rerun of the video and someone suggests we look out for the 
gorilla this time. How would James describe this and would he avoid suggesting 
any epistemic gaps?



dmb says:

That's just a case of misdirection, I think. It shows that some parts of 
experience are on the fringe awareness and go unnoticed. As Pirsig painted it, 
our world is just a handful of sand taken from an endless landscape of 
awareness. James also insisted that something is always left unverbalized and 
unnoticed. It's related to and consistent with the philosophical mystics who 
say reality is outside of language. We can't put the whole dresser into one of 
its own tiny drawers. 


  
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Re: [MD] MOQ and science

[david]

David Morey asked the MOQers:


How does the MOQ describe science? Does science study SQ? Does science discover 
SQ processes that take place in the world beyond the confines of direct 
experience? If not how should the self-understanding of science be corrected or 
redescribed in MOQ terms?



dmb says:

This could be a really great question, a great way to discuss the difference 
between SOM and the MOQ, but there is a glitch in it that needs fixing first. 
In the MOQ, there is no such thing as the world beyond the confines of 
experience - or rather if there were we couldn't know anything about it. How 
would it be possible for us to go beyond the world of experience? In the MOQ 
(and for James), experience and reality amount to the same thing because there 
is no sense in talking about what might be beyond our limits. 


I think one of the best ways to get at the question is to frame it in terms of 
metaphysical realism or scientific realism - that's more or less the SOM view 
of truth and reality - and then pragmatists like Pirsig and James can be put on 
the other side along with certain kinds of anti-realists. Here are the opening 
lines to a Stanford article called Challenges to Metaphysical Realism.


According to metaphysical realism, the world is as it is independently
of how humans take it to be. The objects the world contains, together
with their properties and the relations they enter into, fix the
world's nature and these objects exist independently of our ability to
discover they do. Unless this is so, metaphysical realists argue, none
of our beliefs about our world could be objectively true since true
beliefs tell us how things are and beliefs are objective when true or
false independently of what anyone might think.


Many philosophers believe metaphysical realism is just plain common
sense. Others believe it to be a direct implication of modern science,
which paints humans as fallible creatures adrift in an inhospitable
world not of their making. Nonetheless, metaphysical realism is
controversial. Besides the analytic question of what it means to
assert that objects exist independently of the mind, metaphysical
realism also raises epistemological problems: how can we
obtain knowledge of a mind-independent world? There are also prior
semantic problems, such as how links are set up between our beliefs
and the mind-independent states of affairs they allegedly
represent. This is the Representation Problem.



Anti-realists deny the world is mind-independent. Believing the
epistemological and semantic problems to be insoluble, they conclude
realism must be false.



  
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[MD] Fwd: Re: DMB on pure experience

[David Morey]

-- Forwarded message --
From: David Morey david...@blueyonder.co.uk
Date: 8 Dec 2014 23:29
Subject: Re: [MD] DMB on pure experience
To: david dmbucha...@hotmail.com
Cc: 

 Hi David B

 A world of pure experience? So take one of those movies where we count how 
 many basketball passes are made but fail to observe the gorilla in the 
 background until we watch a rerun of the video and someone suggests we look 
 out for the gorilla this time. How would James describe this and would he 
 avoid suggesting any epistemic gaps?

 David MOn 3 Dec 2014 23:55, david dmbucha...@hotmail.com wrote:
 
 
 
  The first great pitfall from which such a radical standing by 
  experience will save us is an artificial conception of the relations 
  between knower and known. Throughout the history of philosophy 
  the subject and its object have been treated as absolutely discontinuous 
  entities; and thereupon the presence of the latter to the former, 
  or the 'apprehension' by the former of the latter, has assumed 
  a paradoxical character which all sorts of theories had to be 
  invented to overcome. Representative theories put a mental 
  'representation,' 
  'image,' or 'content' into the gap, as a sort of intermediary. 
  Common-sense theories left the gap untouched, declaring our mind 
  able to clear it by a self-transcending leap. Transcendentalist 
  theories left it impossible to traverse by finite knowers, and 
  brought an Absolute in to perform the saltatory act. All the while, 
  in the very bosom of the finite experience, every conjunction 
  required to make the relation intelligible is given in full. -- William 
  James, A World of Pure Experience. 
 
 
  As you can see here, James construes subject-object metaphysics as a 
  problem that's existed throughout the history of philosophy. In other 
  words, it's a philosophical problem. It certainly CAN be described in terms 
  familiar to fans of philosophy, it should be described in those terms. It 
  should be described in terms that non-philosophers can learn by simply 
  using a dictionary or encyclopedia. Notice how James lists some of the 
  various theories that have been invented to overcome the problem created by 
  this artificial conception of the relations 
  between knower and known? When the subject (knower) is treated as an 
  entity that is absolutely discontinuous 
  objective entities (known) all sorts of theories have to be 
  invented to overcome the gap between them. Since this gap is between 
  knower and known, it is called an epistemic gap. These ontological 
  assumptions create a very paradoxical knowledge problem, a truth problem. 
  The various theories listed by James, please notice, are theories of Truth. 
  (Representative theories put a mental 'representation,' 
  'image,' or 'content' into the gap, as a sort of intermediary. 
  Common-sense theories left the gap untouched, declaring our mind 
  able to clear it by a self-transcending leap. Transcendentalist 
  theories left it impossible to traverse by finite knowers, and 
  brought an Absolute in to perform the saltatory act.) That's basically what 
  all the isms are all about; crossing that epistemic gap. I believe the 
  representative theories are a reference to old-school sensory empiricism, 
  the common sense theories would be called naive realism (not really a 
  philosophical position), and the transcendentalists were quasi-theological 
  idealist like Hegel or maybe even Kant, who had introduced the 
  transcendental ego to fill the gap. 
 
  But James and Pirsig will say that subjects and objects are not entities at 
  all, they are not the ontological starting points of reality or the 
  conditions that make experience and knowledge possible. They're just very 
  handy ideas. They're just thought categories into which we sort experience 
  - and so there is no epistemic gap. 
 
  Just as Pirsig's rejection of SOM represents a Copernican revolution, 
  James's rejection is described as a revolution, as a radical 
  reconstruction of philosophy. And of course it's hard to appreciate their 
  solution without first understanding what the problem is all about. 
 
 
  How's that? 
 
 
 
 
       
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Re: [MD] Fwd: Re: DMB on pure experience

[David Morey]

Look at how complex this looks for Zizek, I like James, but does he resolve all 
these issues?

http://quod.lib.umich.edu/o/ohp/12763629.0001.001/1:6/--ontological-catastrophe-zizek-and-the-paradoxical?rgn=div1;view=fulltext

David MOn 8 Dec 2014 23:30, David Morey david...@blueyonder.co.uk wrote:

 -- Forwarded message --
 From: David Morey david...@blueyonder.co.uk
 Date: 8 Dec 2014 23:29
 Subject: Re: [MD] DMB on pure experience
 To: david dmbucha...@hotmail.com
 Cc:

  Hi David B
 
  A world of pure experience? So take one of those movies where we count how 
  many basketball passes are made but fail to observe the gorilla in the 
  background until we watch a rerun of the video and someone suggests we look 
  out for the gorilla this time. How would James describe this and would he 
  avoid suggesting any epistemic gaps?
 
  David MOn 3 Dec 2014 23:55, david dmbucha...@hotmail.com wrote:
  
  
  
   The first great pitfall from which such a radical standing by 
   experience will save us is an artificial conception of the relations 
   between knower and known. Throughout the history of philosophy 
   the subject and its object have been treated as absolutely discontinuous 
   entities; and thereupon the presence of the latter to the former, 
   or the 'apprehension' by the former of the latter, has assumed 
   a paradoxical character which all sorts of theories had to be 
   invented to overcome. Representative theories put a mental 
   'representation,' 
   'image,' or 'content' into the gap, as a sort of intermediary. 
   Common-sense theories left the gap untouched, declaring our mind 
   able to clear it by a self-transcending leap. Transcendentalist 
   theories left it impossible to traverse by finite knowers, and 
   brought an Absolute in to perform the saltatory act. All the while, 
   in the very bosom of the finite experience, every conjunction 
   required to make the relation intelligible is given in full. -- William 
   James, A World of Pure Experience. 
  
  
   As you can see here, James construes subject-object metaphysics as a 
   problem that's existed throughout the history of philosophy. In other 
   words, it's a philosophical problem. It certainly CAN be described in 
   terms familiar to fans of philosophy, it should be described in those 
   terms. It should be described in terms that non-philosophers can learn by 
   simply using a dictionary or encyclopedia. Notice how James lists some of 
   the various theories that have been invented to overcome the problem 
   created by this artificial conception of the relations 
   between knower and known? When the subject (knower) is treated as an 
   entity that is absolutely discontinuous 
   objective entities (known) all sorts of theories have to be 
   invented to overcome the gap between them. Since this gap is between 
   knower and known, it is called an epistemic gap. These ontological 
   assumptions create a very paradoxical knowledge problem, a truth problem. 
   The various theories listed by James, please notice, are theories of 
   Truth. (Representative theories put a mental 'representation,' 
   'image,' or 'content' into the gap, as a sort of intermediary. 
   Common-sense theories left the gap untouched, declaring our mind 
   able to clear it by a self-transcending leap. Transcendentalist 
   theories left it impossible to traverse by finite knowers, and 
   brought an Absolute in to perform the saltatory act.) That's basically 
   what all the isms are all about; crossing that epistemic gap. I believe 
   the representative theories are a reference to old-school sensory 
   empiricism, the common sense theories would be called naive realism (not 
   really a philosophical position), and the transcendentalists were 
   quasi-theological idealist like Hegel or maybe even Kant, who had 
   introduced the transcendental ego to fill the gap. 
  
   But James and Pirsig will say that subjects and objects are not entities 
   at all, they are not the ontological starting points of reality or the 
   conditions that make experience and knowledge possible. They're just very 
   handy ideas. They're just thought categories into which we sort 
   experience - and so there is no epistemic gap. 
  
   Just as Pirsig's rejection of SOM represents a Copernican revolution, 
   James's rejection is described as a revolution, as a radical 
   reconstruction of philosophy. And of course it's hard to appreciate 
   their solution without first understanding what the problem is all about. 
  
  
   How's that? 
  
  
  
  
        
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Re: [MD] MOQ and science

[David Morey]

Hi MOQers

How does the MOQ describe science? Does science study SQ? Does science discover 
SQ processes that take place in the world beyond the confines of direct 
experience? If not how should the self-understanding of science be corrected or 
redescribed in MOQ terms?

David! 
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[MD] Pirsig Interview

[david]

http://www.cbc.ca/news/arts/a-fresh-look-at-robert-pirsig-s-zen-and-the-art-of-motorcycle-maintenance-1.2856138



The CBC has updated a radio show about Pirsig (and with Pirsig) from 40 years 
ago. It's very good. Check it out.


A few months after Pirsig's book came out in 1974, I travelled —
 not on a Harley but in a Toyota (it was November) — to meet the 
author at his home.  From our intimate and engrossing conversation, which began 
almost the minute I walked in the door, I made a radio feature for CBC Radio's 
Ideas that itself became something of a landmark. Pirsig, an intensely private, 
humble man (he is still alive, in his 80s and living in New England), has 
granted few interviews since.







  
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