From: Scott R (jse885@spinn.net)
Date: Sun Nov 02 2003 - 22:45:07 GMT
DMB,
> Scott said:
> My objection to Pirsig's response is his treating "an abstraction" as
> somehow inferior to "concrete". This is the nominalism of Pirsig that I
> object to. Basically, Pirsig is adopting the basic nominalist orientation
> that the more "sense perceptible" something is, the more real it is, in
the
> style of Dr. Johnson refuting Berkeley by kicking a stone. Now he (Pirsig}
> would expand that orientation to argue that "art and morality and even
> religious mysticism" belong in the concrete, and hence "more real" (and so
> distinguishes the MOQ from materialism), but would deny that to
> "abstraction".
>
> dmb says:
> As I understand it, nominalism is the denial of the existence of
universals.
> It says things like truth and beauty do not exist excepts as an abstract
> feature of all true and beautiful things, apart from the particular forms
of
> the natural world. I think this is exactly what Pirsig is NOT saying. He
> saying we ought not treat them as abstractions, but as real things. He's
not
> even coming close to saying they are material things, only that they are
no
> less real. And of course, he's only how we ought to TREAT them, that we
> should act AS IF they were real.
"He [is] saying we ought not treat them as abstractions, but as real
things." I want to say that we should treat them *as* abstractions and
*therefore* as real things. "He's not even coming close to saying they are
material things." I want to say that the more material something is the less
real it is (not ultimately, but to shake you all out of your nominalist
bias).
>
> On Wednesday, Scott said:
> I think you're correct on this, though Pirsig first defines empiricism as
> "[empiricism] claims that all legitimate human knowledge arises from the
> senses or by thinking about what the senses provide." [Ch. 8], though he
> goes on to include art and morality and "even religious mysticism" as
> "verifiable". Nevertheless, this attitude seems to me to more than a
little
> nominalist, since it looks to that which comes from the outside as
> privileged over that which comes from the inside.
>
> dmb says:
> The outside is privileged in the MOQ? Again, I think this is exactly what
> Pirsig is NOT saying. The traditional empiricism that Pirsig describes
above
> is yer standard SOM position and pretty much defines what objectivity is.
> This is the kind of empiricism that priviledges the outside. This is one
of
> the main problems with SOM, especially the dominant variety: scientific
> materialism. Pirsig's expanded empiricism seeks to overcome this problem.
> Not only does he add a sense of value, there is also the insistence that
> legitimate intellectual knowledge not only comes through, is mediated by,
> our biological senses, but also that it should be mediated through the
> social level, that we shouldn't even pretend our ideas are produced by
> biological brains and nothing more. And unlike SOM it treats the "inside"
as
> real as the "outside", if you will.
By assigning the intellect as a fourth level of SQ, Pirsig loses the
distinction between inside and outside which, though ultimately (that is,
with transcendence) may be overcome is nevertheless very much present in us
now. SOM folks, when faced by the impossiblity of dealing with two sets of
reality (res cogitans and res extensa), tend to treat one as real and the
other as illusory. Pirsig avoids this with respect to Quality, but fails
with respect to the sense of self, which he deems illusory. That is, he
makes out that it is an idea, and hence a static pattern. In doing so he
ignores the difference we feel between what we experience as coming from
outside (sense perceptions) and what we feel comes from inside (our
thoughts). In effect, he calls the latter feeling an illusion, and hence
does no better than SOM materialists in this regard, in that he ignores the
actual feeling of being a self in a world of non-self, just as materialists
do.
- Scott
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 : Sun Nov 02 2003 - 23:37:58 GMT