From: Scott Roberts (jse885@localnet.com)
Date: Thu Feb 10 2005 - 21:57:33 GMT
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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