Greetings,
ROGER:
>Sorry for so many messages! I just found the abridged version of the Pirsig
>quote that Struan used. It was in SODV.
Er, hang on a minute Roger let us put the record straight here. You did not find the abridged
version of the quotation I used. You found the exact quotation I used and I quoted it in its
entirety. As you say, it is from SODV and, while I admit that I am in part responsible for not
citing the source directly, I suggest that all this stuff about editing out narrative and your
'clarification' is fallacious. I had assumed that SODV stood up on its own merits and it is, after
all, Pirsig's latest effort, so it is odd that it apparently does not. Unfortunately, I can't check
out the earlier argument in ZAMM because I no longer have a copy, having passed it on to a student
last year.
Bugger it, it really is a pain in the arse when someone presents a supposedly academic paper with an
argument including premises they themselves rejected two decades before.
Despite this, the logical gap still pertains. Pirsig has not shown how, logically, he comes to the
conclusion he does. He can dress this up as 'getting warmer' if he likes, but it does not help the
argument. All we have is an, 'It might have been this, but it isn't, then again it might have been
this but it isn't either. In fact it is this.' This is not a valid way of reasoning, it is simply a
bald statement of what is and what is not with no evidence to back it up. Silly me for mistaking an
unsupported series of assertions for an academic paper. I suppose, again, it is partly my fault.
Thus when you write:
ROGER:
"As clarified above, you have totally distorted Pirsig's argument in the book.
You are faulting him for inconsistencies in his argument that he himself
rejects"
and
ROGER:
"You are totally dismissing the narrative development and subsequent rejection
of thoughts in UMM Ch 19."
I have to retort that I wasn't dismissing or distorting anything. I was taking an argument at face
value and in its entirety and showing it to be flawed. A complete waste of time and I regret the
effort I put in. We live and learn.
Now all of this IF TAKEN AS A METAPHYSICAL POSITION reduces to Idealism.
ROGER:
JAMES:
".....a given undivided portion of experience, taken in one context of
associates, plays the part of the knower, of a state of mind, of
consciousness; while in a different context, the same undivided bit of
experience plays the part of the thing known, of an objective content .....
in one group it can figure as a thought, in another as a thing"
ROGER [again]:
Pirsig says the same thing throughout ZMM and Lila. He explains in Ch 9 that
Whitehead's "dim apprehension" is DQ and that objects are not primary but
rather "... a complex pattern of static values derived from primary
experience.... In this way, static patterns become the universe of
distinguishable things."
In Ch 29 of Lila, Pirsig directly addresses radical empiricism and James term
"pure experience," equating it to "pure value":
RMP:
"...subjects and objects are not the starting point of experience. Subjects
and objects are secondary. They are concepts derived from something more
fundamental which [James] described as 'the immediate flux of life' .... Pure
experience cannot be called either physical or psychical: it logically
precedes this distinction."
Yes I do know about James. He was a psychologist primarily and his philosophy was entirely concerned
with human experience and consciousness. THIS PRE-SUPPOSES A HUMAN MIND!!! Thus when he talks about
undivided experience he is talking about something that happens IN THE MIND before THE MIND
differentiates the experience. His contributions to the philosophy of Pragmatism ran along similar
lines. In a nutshell, he believed that any philosophy was true if the consequences of holding it
were satisfactory to the individual - truth being relative to the individual. This IF IT WERE TAKEN
AS A METAPHYSICAL POSITION is pure idealism.
Pirsig - if he is remotely talking about the same thing James is - and judging by the way he
continually distorts language he may well not be - falls into exactly the same category. " .... Pure
experience cannot be called either physical or psychical: it logically precedes this distinction."
Yes, this is true, but 'pure experience' still presupposes a mind to have that experience and this
does not in any way detract from the fact that experience has not yet been divided into subjects and
objects. Again Pirsig tells us, ""...subjects and objects are not the starting point of experience."
And we can all go along with that; but what is having this experience? Experience logically
presupposes an experiencer does it not?
ROGER:
"The Space, time and radio waves argument is also weak. All of these
are derived from pure experience. They are all part of "the universe of
distinguishable things." He does customarily abbreviate this to "matter", or
"object", but this is just for ease of understanding."
And what does the distinguishing? Our old friend the human mind? Even emergentism doesn't help. If
electrons can in some primitive way, 'experience,' then they must be the ones which are presupposed
in order to divide this pure experience. Whichever way you cut it, it will not work.
Struan
------------------------------------------
Struan Hellier
< mailto:struan@clara.co.uk>
"All our best activities involve desires which are disciplined and
purified in the process."
(Iris Murdoch)
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