All riffs, raffs, rogs, & daves,
Rog:
>We might want 3WD to jump in on this
3WD
As Rog knows for many months I've been investigating Pirsig's claim that:
"The Metaphysics of Quality is a continuation of the mainstream of
twentieth century American philosophy. It is a form of pragmatism, of
instrumentalism, which says the test of the true is the good. It adds
that this good is not a social code or some intellectualized Hegelian
Absolute. It is direct everyday experience." Lila Pg 366
...by tracing, not just James's work, but the continuum of empiricism
from Locke and Hume through Peirce, James, Homes, and Dewey etc. then on
to contemporary pragmatists such as Rorty, Putnam, Knapp, West, and
others. The question is not whether the MoQ has notions
similar to or is an extension of James's and other work in this vein
but:
What does it add ?
Are those additions of value, or good ?
To investigate this one has to have some idea of what evolved before him
and the mass of work is huge and growing.
THE TWO SYSTEMS
Pirsig says in Ch 29:
" James really had two main systems of philosophy going: one he call
pragmatism and the other radical empiricism." Lila Pg 363
If we boil philosophy down to the questions, What do we know? How do we
know it? and then, What do we do ?, radical empiricism speaks
primarily to the first two questions while pragmatism principally
addresses the last. That being said it is the nature of empiricism which
led to pragmatism as a necessary school of thought. In "The Present
Dilemma in Philosophy" James lists two extremes of mental make ups,
"tender minded" and "tough-minded."
The Tender Minded The Tough Minded
Rationalistic (going by principles) Empiricist (going by the facts)
Intellectuallistic Sensationalistic
Idealistic Materialistic
Optimistic Pessimistic
Religious Irreligious
Free-Willist Fatalistic
Monistic Pluralistic
Dogmatical Skeptical
James quickly goes on to say "Pray postpone for a moment the question of
whether the two contrasted mixtures...are each inwardly coherent and
self consistent or not-" and then goes on to point out that these
extremes are set up for his purpose of showing the merits of pragmatism.
In examining the "tough-minded" or "pure" empiricist column we find that
accepting its basic tenets, which includes the finite and fallible
nature of human experience, can lead one to conclusions like skepticism
(Hue) fatalism, (the existentialist movement) irreligious (Rand ,
objectivism) all which are general pretty pessimistic world views.
But our experience indicates rarely are mental make-ups exclusively in
one column or the other but are a blends of both, that shift, say from
optimistic to pessimistic and back, over time. James concludes that
this is because of the basic pragmatic nature of man. That "Grant an
idea or
belief to be true,".. "What concrete difference will its being true make
in one's actual life?" What experiences [may] be different from those
which would obtain if the belief were false? he concludes, "the true is
only the expedient in the way or our thinking, just as the right is only
the expedient in the way of our behaving." or " Truth is one species of
good, and not, as is usually supposed, a category distinct from good,
and coordinate." The true is the name of whatever proves itself to be
good in the way of belief."
Or as Pirsig restates it:
" Truth is a species of good" That was right on. That was exactly what
is meant by the Metaphysics of Quality. Truth is a static intellectual
pattern within the larger entity called Quality" Lila pg 364
So that radical empiricism need not exclude rationalism, optimism, free will,
monism, or any other BELIEF provided that it follows a pragmatic
method of selection.
James' essay " Will to Believe" became so popular that the phrase
approaches aphorism. Given the religious slant it's probably this essay
and others in a similar vein that gave rise to Pirsig's initial skepticism:
"He wanted particularly to see how much actual evidence there was for
the statement that James' whole purpose was to "unite science and
religion". That claim had turned him against James years ago, and he
didn't like it any better now. When you start out with an axe like that
to grind, it almost guaranteed that you will conclude with something
false. The statement seemed more like some philosophological
simplification written by someone with a weak understanding of what
philosophy is for. To put philosophy in the service of any social
organization or any dogma is immoral. It's a lower form of evolution
trying to devour a higher one."
JAMES (Introduction to "Will to Believe." )
"I have long defended to my own students the lawfulness of voluntarily
adopted faith; but as soon as they have got well imbued with the logical
spirit, they have as a rule refused to admit my contention to be
lawfully philosophically, even though in point of fact they were personally
all the time chock-full of some faith or another themselves."
Given that D.T. Suziki says that " the most misunderstood aspect of Zen
in the West is that it is a religion" I find it ironic that Pirsig, who
seems to have promoted and integrated the tenants of a single religious
camp (Zen) into his philosophic endeavor, should be so sensitive to one who
is willing to accept them all. But more about the Zen connection later.
In the end I don't think that Pirsig would argue that "what you believe"
is in any way divorced individual reality and that those individual
beliefs in aggregate influence the whole. Indeed the claim could be made
that the central focus of any philosophic endeavor is always about "beliefs."
PURE EXPERIENCE AND DYNAMIC QUALITY
In his early work (Principles of Psychology) James talks about
experience as "streams of though" later as "streams of consciousness" and
in later work all of reality as continuous ,ongoing, undifferentiated
flow of "stuff" out of which we can and do at any point in time attend
to only a very small portion . What he objected to in the British
empiricists was the "tendency to do away with the connections of things
and to insist most on the disjunction's. Berkley nominalism, Hume's
statement that whatever things we distinguish are 'loose and separate'
as they have no manner of connection." For James the "connection of
things" are crucial , " the relations that connect experiences must
themselves be experienced relations, and any kind of relation
experienced must be account as 'real' as anything else in the system"
So if Peirce characterized empiricism's experience as a chain compared
to radical empiricism's cable, with James experience is not just the
plural and parallel cable strands but the curl, twist, and friction
between the strands. So for all practical purposes Pirig's DQ and
James's "Pure Experience" are one in the same.
JAMES
"Pure experience is the name I gave to the immediate flux of life which
furnishes the material to our later reflection with its conceptual
categories" (The Thing and Its Relations)
PIRSIG
" Dynamic Quality is a stream of quality events going on for ever and
ever, always the cutting edge of the present. But in the wake of this
cutting edge are static patterns of value" S.O.D.V. pp 12.
What Pirsig adds to this is that he names the most basic "stuff". What
he says is the most common denominator of this huge, continuous,
ongoing, and undifferentiated flow of "stuff" is value or quality.
"The Metaphysics of Quality says pure experience is value. Experience
which is not valued is not experienced. The two are the same. This is
where value fits. Value is not at the tail end of a series of
superficial scientific deductions that puts it somewhere in the
mysterious undefined location in the cortex of the brain. Value is at
the very front of the empirical process." Lila pg 365.
THE MARRIAGE & ITS PROBLEMS
Pirsig on page 365 of Lila then says:
"In his last unfinished work, "Some Problems of Philosophy", James had
condensed this description to a single sentence: " There must always be
a discrepancy between the concepts and reality, because the former are
static and discontinuous while the latter is dynamic and flowing" Here
James had chosen the exactly same words Phaedrus had used for the basic
subdivision of the Metaphysics of Quality.
"What the Metaphysic of Quality adds to James' pragmatism and his
radical empiricism is the idea that the primal reality from which
subject and objects spring is value. By doing so it SEEMS to unite
pragmatism and radical empiricism into a single fabric." (my emphasis)
I emphasized SEEMS not indicate Pirsig doubt, but my own, and a
potential conflict between Pirsig and James. James in his essay
"Pragmatism and Humanism" defends Schiller's proposed "Humanism" which
says 'the world is.. essentially what we make it." and then in a latter
essay states that " morals are exclusively a human endeavor". What I'm
having a hard time wrapping my head around is this the leap of faith
Pirsig makes in this series:
"Because Quality 'is' morality. Make no mistake about it. They're
'identical'. And if Quality is the primary reality of the world than
that means morality is also the primary reality of the world." pg. 111
Morality is not a simple set of rules. It's a very complex struggle of
conflicting patterns of values. This conflict is the residue of
evolution. As new patterns evolve they come into conflict with old ones.
Each stage of evolution creates in its wake a wash of problems.
Pirsig, Robert M., Lila. An inquiry into morals. New York (Bantam Books)
1991, 163
"The Metaphysics of Quality says that if moral judgments are essentially
assertions of value and if value is the fundamental ground stuff of the
world, then moral judgments are the fundamental ground stuff of the
world. It says that even at the most fundamental level of the universe,
static patterns of value and moral judgment are identical. The 'Laws of
Nature' are moral laws." pg. 180
"First, there were moral codes that established the supremacy of
biological life over inanimate nature. Second, there were moral codes
that established the supremacy of the social order over biological life
- conventional morals - proscriptions against drugs, murder, adultery,
theft and the like . Third, there were moral codes that established the
supremacy of the intellectual order over the social order - democracy,
trial by jury, freedom of speech, freedom of the press. Finally there's
a fourth Dynamic morality which isn't a code." pg. 187
If the MoQ is an extension of radical empiricism and pragmatism it
should most certainly in some form or another embody "humanism" . Indeed
if all Static Qualities are purely "human" constructs I have no quarrel
with the above quotes. However when he says "First, there were moral
codes that established the supremacy of biological life over inanimate
nature" I think he has left the empirical realm, though he may still be
in a pragmatic one.
THE ZEN CONNECTION
A quick close. "Zen proposes its solution by directly appealing to the
facts of personal experience".. "Zen abhors anything coming between the
fact and ourselves"... "that we ought to make a great difference between
the acts of understanding and those of will: That the first were
comparatively of little value, and the others, all" (D.T Suziki) Saying
things like this, Zen has a long history and ongoing practice which
agrees more closely with both radical empiricism, pragmatism, and the
MoQ than most other religious practices currently in vogue.
Please excuse the length but the subject (oops) is huge.
3WD
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