From: hampday@earthlink.net
Date: Sat Apr 16 2005 - 23:00:34 BST
Dmb, Sam and all:
Ham said:
> This obsession with empiricism seems to be a hang-up peculiar to Mr.
Pirsig
> and his MOQ defenders. ....Empirical is a term used to distinguish
> knowledge gained from direct observation or experience [*a posteriori*]
from
> ideas or concepts conceived intuitively [*a priori*].
Likewise, Sam said:
> I would agree that the concern to make the MoQ 'empirical from head to
toe'
> is a mistake. But I am doing some work on justifying precisely how and
why,
> so I won't pre-empt that here.
dmb says:
> I noticed that both of you responsed by snipping my main point, which was
an
> explanation (the umpteenth one) of epistemological pluralism. If you're
> going to ignore that I wonder why you bother to respond at all. Sigh.
David, is this your statement that explains "epistemological pluralism"?
It's the only reference I found, and I quoted it fully in my 4/6 response to
you.
"The MOQ's basic structure, as you know, divides DQ from sq and
then subdivides sq into the four levels. Basically, this divides our
experience into five kinds. Each person can know all five kinds. We can
experience sunshine on our faces, we can feel the heat. And when we are
looking at the behaviour of inorganic quality for scientific purposes, we
can measure heat (or whatever) very carefully and draw conclusions based on
that data. We experience biological quality when hungry,tired or lusting. We
experience the social level in even more ways. Sahme, guilt, pride and
patriotism. We can experience the world of ideas. We can know direct
experience (DQ) with more a little more difficulty, but this is an
experience we can know too. That's what I mean by saying the MOQ is
empirical from head to toe. The basic structure is based on various kinds of
experience."
You begin by saying that the MOQ structure "divides DQ from sq and
subdivides sq into the four levels. Please tell me how this explains the
epistemology? Who or what does this dividing? (The way you've stated it,
the MOQ structure is the prime mover, which tells us nothing.) But you
needn't feel bad; Mr. Pirsig doesn't shed any light on differentiation
either. (He thinks metaphysics is unnecessary.) I do seem to recall
someone saying that Intellect was the divider, which makes some sense if it
refers to the individual's intellect, but this suggestion fell apart when it
was pointed out that, according to the MOQ, Intellect is universal rather
than individual. So it would appear that somebody's got some more 'splainin
to do -- and it isn't me. After all, according to you, I'm the "nice guy"
who is "giving metaphysics a bad name." Maybe Sam's work will unrael the
mystery.
> Sorry guys, but all I see in your response is an anti-Modern,
> anti-intellectual, reactionary move that utterly fails to address the
issue.
> Its like talking to a brick wall. I should give up. I must be insane to
> think you could be persuaded by any explanation.
Well, I've addressed the issue in my thesis and am trying to address it
here. But all you guys want to do is hurl insults at each other. What on
earth do you find "anti-modern", "anti-intellectual", and "reactionary"
about the fact that there is nothing empirical except the word itself in Mr.
Pirsig's theory, and that it wouldn't help if there were?
Essentially confused,
Ham
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