From: Kurt Friedrich (kurtfriedrich@email.com)
Date: Thu Jan 22 2004 - 16:13:02 GMT
In real life, did Pirsig develop his ideas in 2 stages, with electro shock therapy in between, as in ZMM? Or did he create that in ZMM just to have one more opportunity to explore the battle between rational and subjective?
thanks,
Kurt
----- Original Message -----
From: "Paul Turner"
Date: Thu, 22 Jan 2004 14:32:06 -0000
To:
Subject: RE: MD Objectivity, Truth and the MOQ
> Bo, Steve
>
> Bo said:
> My point is that all the "patterns" that Pirsig lists as intellectual
> (free speech, freedom of press, trial by jury ....etct.) which would be
> jeopardized in the situation he refers to are derivatives of the pursuit
> of what is objecively true (diferent from subjective opinion) while I
> can't see how "manipulation of symbols" can lead to democracy and its
> many aspects (it's simply language/thinking, but nothing about HOW one
> thinks) .
>
> Paul:
> If you give it some thought and read what Pirsig says about them, I
> think you will find that these things you list are part of the moral
> code between intellect and society a
nd are not strictly "intellectual
> patterns" themselves, as is democracy.
>
> But anyway, I think "manipulation of symbols" is to intellect as DNA is
> to biology. The manipulation of symbols is "driven" by truth (but see
> below) in the same sense that DNA is "driven" by life.
>
> Bo said:
> Right the "value of truth" does not fare badly at all, this is the
> isthmus between our views I believe, I was writing about it, but got
> caught in the logic debate with JoVo and Paul
>
> Paul:
> On December 14th in the MF discussion about intellect I wrote:
>
> "I agree that symbol manipulation is guided and this is what I think
> Pirsig tries to say in lots of different ways in ZMM e.g. his section on
> Poincare. I think a general purpose of symbol manipulation is to create
> (not discover) truth, not in the "matching up with external reality"
> sense
but in the "high quality pattern" sense. High quality patterns may
> have been mistaken for "objective" and therefore "True" in the past, but
> as all patterns evolve, so must truth. This understanding allows for an
> expansion of rationality without discarding its immense evolutionary
> worth."
>
> On January 13th in the MD I wrote:
>
> "The continuity in intellect is that they all are patterns of
> independently manipulable symbols. If you are looking for an overriding
> value then it is truth. Truth is not specific to SOM, the MOQ defines
> [truth as] a species of good by bringing truth and quality back
> together.
>
> Both SOM and the MOQ can be "reduced" to patterns of thought which can
> be graded on their "truth" and many other high quality intellectual
> patterns are not based on SOM."
>
> You seem to have overlooked these statements in our r
ecent discussions.
> My point is that it is important to see that "true" and "objective" are
> not equivalent terms. The MOQ shares the pragmatist line of "good to
> believe" and shares similarities with the coherence theory of truth,
> where coherence is a kind of harmony i.e quality. Pirsig goes further
> than the both the pragmatist and the "coherence" position by connecting
> their epistemological "tests" of truth with the fundamental empirical
> reality of his metaphysics - Quality.
>
> "Poincaré's contemporaries refused to acknowledge that facts are
> preselected because they thought that to do so would destroy the
> validity of scientific method. They presumed that "preselected facts"
> meant that truth is "whatever you like" and called his ideas
> conventionalism. They vigorously ignored the truth that their own
> "principle of objectivity" is not itself an observable fa
ct...and
> therefore by their own criteria should be put in a state of suspended
> animation.
>
> They felt they had to do this because if they didn't, the entire
> philosophic underpinning of science would collapse. Poincaré didn't
> offer any resolutions of this quandary. He didn't go far enough into the
> metaphysical implications of what he was saying to arrive at the
> solution. What he neglected to say was that the selection of facts
> before you "observe" them is "whatever you like" only in a dualistic,
> subject-object metaphysical system! When Quality enters the picture as a
> third metaphysical entity, the preselection of facts is no longer
> arbitrary. The preselection of facts is not based on subjective,
> capricious "whatever you like" but on Quality, which is reality itself.
> Thus the quandary vanishes.
>
> It was as though Phĉdrus had been working o
n a puzzle of his own and
> because of lack of time had left one whole side unfinished.
>
> Poincaré had been working on a puzzle of his own. His judgment that the
> scientist selects facts, hypotheses and axioms on the basis of harmony,
> also left the rough serrated edge of a puzzle incomplete. To leave the
> impression in the scientific world that the source of all scientific
> reality is merely a subjective, capricious harmony is to solve problems
> of epistemology while leaving an unfinished edge at the border of
> metaphysics that makes the epistemology unacceptable.
>
> But we know from Phĉdrus' metaphysics that the harmony Poincaré talked
> about is not subjective. It is the source of subjects and objects and
> exists in an anterior relationship to them. It is not capricious, it is
> the force that opposes capriciousness; THE ORDERING PRINCIPLE OF ALL
> SCIENTIFIC
AND RATIONAL THOUGHT which destroys capriciousness, and
> without which no scientific thought can proceed." [ZMM]
>
> I think Pirsig wanted to expand our understanding of truth and remove it
> from the shackles of "objectivity" and "value-freedom." I think he
> wanted to do exactly the opposite of what you are doing - restricting
> intellect to the legacy of the ancient Greeks.
>
> "[Phaedrus'] metaphysical mountain climbing did absolutely nothing to
> further either our understanding of what Quality is or of what the Tao
> is. Not a thing. That sounds like an overwhelming rejection of what he
> thought and said, but it isn't. I think it's a statement he would have
> agreed with himself, since any description of Quality is a kind of
> definition and must therefore fall short of its mark. I think he might
> even have said that statements of the kind he had made, which fall short
> of their mark, are even worse than no statement at all, since they can
> be easily mistaken for truth and thus retard an understanding of
> Quality.
>
> No, he did nothing for Quality or the Tao. What benefited was reason."
> [ZMM]
>
> Regards
>
> Paul
>
>
>
>
>
>
>
>
>
>
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