From: Ian Glendinning (ian@psybertron.org)
Date: Mon Jan 24 2005 - 10:58:50 GMT
Sam said
Quote
[Pirsig]'s doing exactly what [the pragmatists / empiricist] William James
was trying to do, just with more Zen (and much better novels).
Unquote
That's pretty much exactly my sentiment too.
The rest is natural language semantic arguments about ancient words like
"piece".
Ian.
----- Original Message -----
From: "Sam Norton" <elizaphanian@kohath.wanadoo.co.uk>
To: <moq_discuss@moq.org>
Sent: Sunday, January 23, 2005 1:27 PM
Subject: Re: MD Pure experience and the Kantian problematic
> Hi Paul,
>
>> Paul:
>> As I recall from my reading of Northrop, the only thing he explicitly
>> takes from William James is just that which you have quoted. That is, he
>> points to James as being different from other empiricists in that he
>> doesn't regard all experience as discrete and differentiated but notes
>> that there is an undifferentiated element which is as immediately
>> apprehended as the differentiations. He then says that if one is being a
>> thoroughgoing empiricist, this fact should not be shut out.
>
> So far as I understand it, this is exactly what Schleiermacher does. So to
> "regard all experience as
> discrete and differentiated" is to follow Kant, and to say "there is an
> undifferentiated element
> which is as immediately apprehended as the differentiations" is the
> Schleiermacherian spin. This is
> why I think James is doing the same sort of thing that Schleiermacher was
> doing. Of course, the
> interesting question for us is whether Pirsig is doing the same, so:
>
>> Also, James talks of 'pieces of pure experience' which Pirsig takes
>> issue with:
>>
>> "I think the MOQ would say there is no 'piece' of pure experience. By
>> the time it has become a piece it is already a static pattern. To call a
>> perceived book 'pure experience' is, I think, to slip back into a
>> subject object metaphysical format." [Pirsig to McWatt, November 2001]
>>
>> So, if Pirsig has unconsciously inherited concepts from James he has, in
>> this case at least, consciously distinguished the pure experience of the
>> MOQ from the pure experience of James.
>
> OK, good point, but this is what I think we need to spend some
> concentrated time on. Let's accept
> that 'pieces' is immediately lapsing into static perceptions etc (and
> therefore SOM). The key
> question is whether the language of 'experience' - whether pure or not -
> is not also something which
> is (consciously or unconsciously) relying upon SOM assumptions. That is,
> when Pirsig uses the
> language of empiricism, is he able to avoid the 'inheritance' that would
> otherwise come his way
> through the feeding in to his system from Eastern thought (and native
> american, presumably)? So
> specifically, the question I most want to ask is, when Pirsig says "The
> Metaphysics of Quality
> subscribes to what is called empiricism. It claims that all legitimate
> human knowledge arises from
> the senses or by thinking about what the senses provide" how does he avoid
> all the baggage that has
> historically gone with use of language like 'empiricism', 'legitimate
> human knowledge', 'the
> senses'? The word "experience", in particular, is put to a very specific
> philosophical use in the
> Western empirical tradition, and if Pirsig is trying to do something
> _different_ with it, then he
> needs to be careful about saying "The Metaphysics of Quality subscribes to
> what is called
> empiricism." It just seems to me that there is a very strong _prima facie_
> case to say that he's
> doing exactly what William James was trying to do, just with more Zen
> (and much better novels).
>
> Cheers
>
> Sam
>
>
>
> MOQ.ORG - http://www.moq.org
> Mail Archives:
> Aug '98 - Oct '02 - http://alt.venus.co.uk/hypermail/moq_discuss/
> Nov '02 Onward -
> http://www.venus.co.uk/hypermail/moq_discuss/summary.html
> MD Queries - horse@darkstar.uk.net
>
> To unsubscribe from moq_discuss follow the instructions at:
> http://www.moq.org/md/subscribe.html
>
MOQ.ORG - http://www.moq.org
Mail Archives:
Aug '98 - Oct '02 - http://alt.venus.co.uk/hypermail/moq_discuss/
Nov '02 Onward - http://www.venus.co.uk/hypermail/moq_discuss/summary.html
MD Queries - horse@darkstar.uk.net
To unsubscribe from moq_discuss follow the instructions at:
http://www.moq.org/md/subscribe.html
This archive was generated by hypermail 2.1.5 : Mon Jan 24 2005 - 11:53:07 GMT