From: Scott Roberts (jse885@earthlink.net)
Date: Thu Sep 02 2004 - 00:59:15 BST
David M,
> [Scott prev]:
> Pirsig's attitude toward intellect derives from nominalism and
> the empirical tradition
>
>
> DM: no, Pirsig does not start with the particular,
> he starts with holistic quality, and then applies
> SQ/DQ to start understanding experience,
> could you have any more universal concepts?
Well, Paul got me to correct myself when I called Pirsig a nominalist, so I
wish to point out that I didn't quite do so here in my statement above.
However, I would maintain that the general nominalist bias of modernism has
had an influence on Pirsig.
The fact that Pirsig uses concepts, universal or no, to build his
metaphysics, is beside the point on whether one is a nominalist. You can't
do otherwise. A nominalist is one who says all concepts are "just words",
that all that is are pre-linguistic particulars. (A "universalist" as a
non-nominalist, BTW, is not referring to the universality of concepts in
the sense that they are all-pervading. In the controversy, any concept,
like horseness, is called a universal.) There are several points in LILA
where Pirsig makes "just words" sort of comments, which I have pointed out
many times.
Now as Paul pointed out, strictly speaking, Pirsig escapes the nominalist
charge because at the intellectual level, the concept must be treated as a
real thing, not reducible to biologic or inorganic SPOV. So my adjusted
charge is that in calling DQ pre-intellectual, Pirsig is continuing a
modern trend of treating the intellectual as only a derived level in the
great scheme of things. Or to put it another way, by seeing intellect as
sitting on top of the other levels, rather than as underpinning all levels,
Pirsig continues to be in the modern tradition, which is largely nominalist
and empiricist. He assumes that thinking is something that is done once one
has gathered particulars, and is a matter of abstracting from particulars.
This ignores the problem that without universals there are no particulars
to begin with.
- Scott
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