From: Matt the Enraged Endorphin (mpkundert@students.wisc.edu)
Date: Mon Jan 06 2003 - 05:46:14 GMT
DMB,
I don't expect you to understand, but at least Platt was trying. Mad props
to you Platt.
Matt said:
The turn back towards the metaphysical is the turn away from James.
DMB said:
Further, Pirsig does not
abandon James or Pragmatism. He goes into some detail as to the differences
between himself and James in chapter 29 of Lila.
Matt:
Pretend I know what I'm doing. For one moment, pretend I've done some of
my homework, particularly when it comes to things I've talked about over
and over, like how James is one of Pirsig's heroes. Pretend for a second,
that someone out here in internet-land knows as much as you do. Now,
granted that, read my sentence again, "The turn back towards the
metaphysical is the turn away from James." Now, read between the lines.
Because I know Pirsig tries to adopt James as his own, pull him into
metaphysics, what I must be doing is trying to block that move.
Matt said:
I think the difference between Quality and the MoQ can be summed up by
comparing them to Derrida's neologism "logocentrism." Logocentrism is...
DMB said:
The comparison didn't help me compare the two books a bit. Let's move on.
Matt:
I bought a used copy of Campbell's book The Hero with a Thousand Faces
today. Look's pretty interesting.
DMB said:
Oh, I see. You want quality to only be our ordinary enviroment because
pragmatists would never make any claims about ultimate reality. This
ultimate reality is the metaphysical reality that we should leave alone.
Again, this is already in the MOQ. The enviroment, as you put it, is static
quality and the ultimate reality is Dynamic Quality, which is left
undefined. No problem. But please be more careful. All this talk about
leaving metaphysics and quality out of the Metaphysics of Quality sounds
absurd and confusing here.
Matt:
Since you won't indulge me, I'll make it more explicit: DQ as ultimate
reality drops out for pragmatists. That's what I'm saying. The whole
"ultimate reality" bit, it all drops out. That's what I'm asserting. I
know that's not what Pirsig says, that's why I'm contrasting ZMM to Lila
and the MoQ to logocentrism.
DMB said:
See? There you go again. We're all here to discuss the MOQ and your
suggestion is that we put metaphysics aside? Can't you see how that looks?
Not too flattering, my friend. Matt, I have news for you. In the MOQ,
Quality is a metaphor and DQ is left undefined. The MOQ does re-describe the
"enviroment", as static patterns of quality. I think its not so much that
your criticism are unfounded, although that's true too, so much as they were
already addressed on the day Lila was ppublished.
Matt:
Okay, granted you missed a lot of my posts. You missed what my project has
been for the past six months. Oh, wait, I reposted my first expression of
what my project was. Of course, you didn't grant me the time of day on
that one, either. Oh well. If you want a good leaping off point for what
I'm talking about, you can either wait until my new essay hits the site
(God/Horse willing ;-) or you can take a look at Charlton's essay. His
essay is really good and pretty commensurate with my project.
Of course, if you think my project is crap, that's valid. We're all
entitled to our opinions.
Matt
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