Platt, 3WD, David, Bo, others
The question of Wilber and the MOQ raises three issues for me.
1 The rather stupid judgement that unless Wilber says exactly the same
things as Pirsig, and in the same terminology, he is just laughably wrong. I
am completely in agreement with David in this. There are none so blind as
those who will not see, and the narrow understanding of SOM betrayed by most
Wilber critics in this forum simply shows a virulent form of MOQ
fundamentalism is already growing. We have our saviour - everyone else go
away.
2 3WD's helpful contribution makes the point that Wilber "extends
"subjective" or internal values to all of reality from quarks to humans". I
think this is a weakness of Wilber's position, or perhaps it suffers from
the weakness that it is all too easily be distorted into a laughable
caricature.
Platt's quote from Pirsig is helpful in this regard.
"I think the answer is that inorganic objects experience events but do
not react to them biologically, socially or intellectually. The react to
these experiences inorganically, according to the laws of physics."
This is very close to the understanding of Whitehead that Wilber elucidates,
and which I have already discussed enough times in this forum not to inflict
it again.
3 There is a big difference between what Wilber sets out to do and what
Pirsig sets out to do. Pirsig is quite explicit in his desire to write a
metaphysics in Lila. Despite the talk about showing and telling, and so on,
this is both the strength and weakness of his undertaking. He wants to
present a consistent mental construct for our experience of 'reality', and
so values clarity, economy, and so on, but also logic, definition, and other
'academic' tools. The problem with this is that in Wilber's aphorism,
metaphysics can be "thought without evidence".
Wilber's approach is to take all the available systems of organising
'reality' that have some rigour about them, and assume that they must have
some 'truth' to them to have survived. He then attempts to find overarching
generalisations that allow us to put them into a larger structure so that
nothing important is omitted ( the major problem with science) and in this
attempt arrives at many conclusions that are indeed very similar to those of
Pirsig. However, the process is something like what Pirsig describes in his
discussion of Poincare in ZMM. Two different realms of investigation end up
arriving at a very similar place, but from very different starting points.
The analogy of the varying paths to the top of the mountain also fits.
The discussion so far in this forum on this issue has been characterised by
narrow prejudice, rather than openness to 'truth'. I find it sad that
otherwise intelligent people have to resort to such low levels of argument
to support the MOQ. I do not see myself as a supporter of Pirsig, or Wilber.
I am intrigued by the commonality of their views, while wanting to honour
their differences. At the end of the day the MOQ will thrive or otherwise in
as much as it furthers our search to understand 'what is'. Name calling and
ignorant attacks on other views will not help to advance this one iota.
John B
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