From: hampday@earthlink.net
Date: Sat Mar 19 2005 - 06:29:13 GMT
Greetings, Matt --
How does a pragmatist destroy epistemology? Isn't that like an electronics
engineer destroying Newton's laws? I had been under the assumption that you
and I both felt the principal weakness of the MOQ to be its lack of a
defined epistemology. Interesting, isn't it, how we deceive ourselves!
Anyway, I'm glad you joined my "challenge", despite my disappointment on
reading your position statement:
> Existence is primary to essence,
> which means that we create essences, which, following the line of thought
to
> completion (which many of original existentialists didn't do), means that
> talk about "essences" and "primacy" doesn't make a lot of sense anymore.
Do you believe this position statement speaks for MoQ's author, as well? If
so, it's no wonder that I've had problems trying to digest it.
My use of the word "arbitrary" with respect to Mr. Pirsig's choice of
Quality for his thesis stems from its etymology. (As you must know, it was
suggested to the author as the theme for an English assignment during his
teaching years). I think the overall MoQ concept is nothing short of
brilliant, and it is a workable leitmotif for his novels; it just hasn't
been developed structurally as a philosopher is generally obliged to do.
And I attribute the disparate range of ideas attached to it as a consequence
of its epistemological shortcomings.
I'm troubled by your dismissal of Quality (may we use the term Value?) as
'essential'. You may not expect the author to have considered Value the
Essence of reality; yet, I'm sure I can find at least one passage in which
he cites it in this context. While you may consider yourself a logical
positivist [to me, it's tantamount to pragmatism], I don't believe you are a
nihilist. It does surprise me, though, that you feel the need to escape
essentiality. You say, for example:
> I've come to characterize Quality as
> an anti-essence, that part of the reason Pirsig uses it is to dispel the
> notion that we should search for essences, and therefore, that we should
> even need a "metaphysical ontology." Which is also why I think Pirsig
> calling his project a "metaphysics" is sorely misleading.
Sorry, Matt, but since I'm a fundamentalist in the metaphysical sense, I'm
unable to take a philosophy seriously if it has no core value. That Mr.
Pirsig intended Quality to be the core value of the MoQ is apparent to me
from a review of his SODV paper and from his reference to Quality as "the
primary 'empirical reality' of the world".
I also happen to be an anthropocentrist, a position which the MoQ does not
support. Thus, for me it is a truism that if existence has any meaning for
mankind, whatever is the essence of reality must also be essential to man.
You may regard this as "egocentristic", and perhaps it is. But to espouse a
philosophy which views life as meaningful only in an existential
(materialistic) sense is bordering on nihilism. So long as intellectual
cynicism rules the day, idealism will be "out of fashion", and philosophy
will be reduced to little more than a literary art form reflecting the
history of man's culture. As a philosopher, can you be sanguine about such
a future?
Essentially yours,
Ham
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