From: Ron Winchester (phaedruswolff@hotmail.com)
Date: Fri Feb 11 2005 - 03:39:49 GMT
- Scott;
Any time you want to address the reasons I gave for objecting to Pirsig's
expansion of the word "empirical", let me know. Those reasons have nothing
to do with SOM vs. MOQ, and the reasons apply to James' expansion as well.
They are about keeping the useful distinction between readily sharable
experience and private experience. This does not imply that private
experience should be dismissed, just that it is useful to distinguish
between them.
Hi Scott,
What I feel you mean is that it is more useful to distinguish between
generally accepted experience, and experience that is not so generally
accepted. It is my belief that the generally accepted experience is
restricted to historical guidelines. This being the case, then you are
placing the metaphysics of static patterns above the metaphysics of Quality.
Or, you are speaking in terms of philosophy?
All I ask is that you distinquish between the two, or acknowledge the two
are related, so I will know how to join in.
The question I might have is Do you believe metaphysics and/or philsophy
should be tied to the modern views of physicists?
Ron
>From: "Scott Roberts" <jse885@localnet.com>
>Reply-To: moq_discuss@moq.org
>To: <moq_discuss@moq.org>
>Subject: Re: MD Pure experience and the Kantian problematic
>Date: Thu, 10 Feb 2005 14:57:33 -0700
>
>Ron,
>
>Any time you want to address the reasons I gave for objecting to Pirsig's
>expansion of the word "empirical", let me know. Those reasons have nothing
>to do with SOM vs. MOQ, and the reasons apply to James' expansion as well.
>They are about keeping the useful distinction between readily sharable
>experience and private experience. This does not imply that private
>experience should be dismissed, just that it is useful to distinguish
>between them.
>
>- Scott
>
>----- Original Message -----
>From: "Ron Winchester" <phaedruswolff@hotmail.com>
>To: <moq_discuss@moq.org>
>Sent: Wednesday, February 09, 2005 9:10 PM
>Subject: Re: MD Pure experience and the Kantian problematic
>
>
>Ron said:
>I hate to join in with everyone else trying to bring you around to Quality
>thinking. Generally I like to side with the underdog, but I must offer my
>view as I see it. Three different individuals from varying backgrounds
>would
>see a redlight as a part of three totally different empirical systems.
>
>Scott:
>Then why do stoplights work to stop traffic? In this you are gutting the
>word "empirical" way beyond what Pirsig is doing. The whole *point* of
>claiming that some knowledge is empirical is that it is supposed to be
>readily sharable.
>
>Hi Scott,
>
>They work because we don't confine ourselves to any one individual's
>empirical definition. The manufacturer's, engineer's, instructor's and
>police's understanding of the 'Stoplights' enforces our views that it is
>necessary to stop ("why do stoplights work"). The system works because we
>understand "What works" to keep traffic moving in its highest efficiency
>and
>saftey. It has value; Quality. It is a system that took many different
>views
>to put together, and that is how it is with philosophy. We didn't deny
>other
>views.
>
>Scott;
>The rest of your post is simply not germane to my objection. In fact, it
>appears that you have simply no conception of what the word "empirical"
>means in modern philosophy, and unless that is agreed upon, there is no way
>to discuss the value of Pirsig's expansion of the term. Apparently you are
>treating the word "empirical" to mean "whatever I know". That way lies a
>breakdown in communication.
>
>I have a "conception of what the word "empirical"
>means in modern philosophy."
>
>But, as it disagrees with your prejudices, it is not valid. As I have
>admitted to being a 'Know-nothing philosopher', I have no reason to be
>right
>for 'Right's sake.' There is a way to discuss the value of Pirsig's
>expansion of the term.
>
>It is not 'Pirsig's expansion' of the term. Pirsig only builds upon an
>expansion that was already there. It just doesn't confine itself to
>Cartesian or Kantesian; less than modern views.
>
>I'm borrowing from Anthony McWatt's Thesis. I don't feel he would mind if
>it
>encouraged some to read it. I feel it could explain a lot of disagreements,
>or dmb's 'Blind Spots' that are holding us back;
>
>To be radical, an empiricism must neither admit into its constructions any
>element that is not directly experienced, nor exclude from them any element
>that is directly experienced. For such a philosophy, the relations that
>connect
>experiences must themselves be experienced relations and any kind of
>relation
>experienced must be accounted as 'real' as anything else in the system.
>Elements
>may indeed be redistributed, the original placing of things getting
>corrected, but
>a real place must be found for every kind of thing experienced, whether
>term
>or
>relation, in the final philosophic arrangement. (James, 1912, p.42)
>
>In a subject-object metaphysics, this experience is between a pre-existing
>object and subject, but in the MOQ, there is no pre-existing subject or
>object.
>Experience and Dynamic Quality become synonymous. Experience comes
>first, everything else [such as subjects and objects] comes later. This is
>pure
>empiricism, as opposed to scientific empiricism, which, with its
>pre-existing
>subjects and objects, is not really so pure. (Pirsig, 2002h, p.515)
>
>What the Metaphysics of Quality adds to James's pragmatism and his
>radical empiricism is the idea that the primal reality from which subjects
>and
>objects spring is value. By doing so it seems to unite pragmatism and
>radical
>empiricism into a single fabric. Value, the pragmatic test of truth, is
>also
>the
>primary empirical experience. Pirsig (1991, p.372)
>
>Northrop (1947, p.195) expands on the definition of 'concepts by intuition'
>elsewhere:
>'In other words, they are concepts the complete meaning of which is given
>by
>something which can be immediately apprehended. Such concepts we shall call
>concepts by intuition, where intuition means, not a speculative hunch, but
>the
>immediate apprehension of pure empiricism, which occurs in direct
>inspection
>or pure
>observation. Descriptive, natural history biology with its classification
>of
>genera and
>species constructed in terms of directly observable characteristics is an
>example of a
>science [using concepts by intuition].'
>
>Empirically, we immediately apprehend what we immediately apprehend,
>the image of the snake on the bedpost with the same vividness and purely
>factual immediacy as the image of the snake in the zoo. Nor does the former
>image come with a tag on it saying 'I am illusory,' or the latter image
>come
>with
>a tag reading 'I am the image of a real public, external animal.' Both
>images
>are equally factual, the one as real, so far as pure empiricism can tell,
>as
>the
>other. (1947, pp.43-44)
>
>The Orientals of the Far East, who brand all knowledge as illusory except
>that given as pure fact, or, to use their words, by intuition, arrived long
>ago at
>the. pure empiricist's thesis that nothing but what we immediately
>apprehend
>is genuine knowledge. Their dialectic of negation forced them, therefore,
>to
>negate, i.e., reject, the common-sense man's belief in the reality of a
>persisting
>determinate substantial self underlying the empirically given sensuous
>qualities.
>This happens in the realistic Hinayanistic School of Buddhism and
>corresponds
>exactly to the conclusion of David Hume following the latter's acceptance
>of
>Bacon's pure empiricism in the Modern West.
>
>"Everything real is experienced somewhere. Everything experienced is real
>somewhere." James (Possibly misquoted)
>
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