From: David Buchanan (DBuchanan@ClassicalRadio.org)
Date: Mon Jan 31 2005 - 00:29:19 GMT
Matt and all:
Matt said:
None of our "empirical evidence" changes: just the way we look at
it. In ZMM, Pirsig seems to have understood (at least at that point) that
he was rearranging our conceptual equipment and not discovering something
that others had not. In Lila, it is much less clear how Pirsig views what
he is doing.
dmb says:
I already responded to this post and dealt with the issue of empiricism, but
wanted to address a seperate issue. This idea of rearranging concept as
opposed to discovering something. I have to confess that the distinction
makes very little sense to me, but that's not really the issue I'm talking
about anyway. It seems you WANT Pirsig to be doing or claiming only so much,
only shuffling the cards not adding to them, so that he can be a pragmatist
like you. It seems that Lila disappoints you because the more explicit
version MOQ does not allow you to read him as part of that club, am I right?
Matt said:
This is why I've on occasion asserted that Pirsig misrepresents
the problem with SOM: it isn't that SOM can't describe "art, morality, and
mysticism" worth a damn and that the MoQ can. Its that SOM doesn't describe
them in a way that Pirsig likes and the MoQ does. The only criteria in the
area that could be of service to Pirsig are pragmatic criteria: his MoQ
(dis)solves more philosophical problems than SOM does. Its consequences are
better than SOM's.
dmb says:
Oh, there's some pragmatism in 'em, just not the kind you want. You want his
DQ to be turned into something that you can handle. Woah! Watch out, here
come the metaphysics! And by 'metaphysics' the guys in your club mean
'nonsense'. That's why you what Dynamic Quality to be "a compliment after
the fact". You want Pirsig to be on your side. Mysticism ruins it for you
and so you want to exorcise it and condemn all his mystical musings as
confusing. But its not confusing. You're confusing it because you want it to
be something other than what Pirsig says in Lila, am I right? Little bit?
No?
Matt said:
But if I'm right in this, than I think that very turn to pragmatism in his
hour of need destroys some of the other conceptual equipment he uses along
the way. ...But if Pirsig's move is taken to be a "discovery,"
then that means that everything worked like that before, despite the fact
that we didn't know it then.
dmb says:
If I follow you here, if Pirsig is to be consistently pragmatic he's gonna
have to let loose some of his ideas. Hmmm. Let me guess which one is at the
top of your list. Does it have anything to do with pure experience, a
mystical experience and its validity? Wait, wait, don't tell me... I just
had it on the tip of my tongue... Creationism!!? No. That's not it. Hang on.
I almost have it...
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