From: Platt Holden (pholden@sc.rr.com)
Date: Mon Oct 14 2002 - 17:29:45 BST
Hi Matt:
> Enter Pirsig. We have an outer track and an inner track and never the
> twain shall meet. Well, in solving the problem, Pirsig moved everything to
> the outer track. He made morals experiential. He saw that the outer track
> was where Reality was, where people placed great importance (be it in the
> metaphysical sense or economic sense), so he collapsed everything into
> Reality. Pirsig usurped the realist answer. By this token, this is the
> best way to respond to Struan's charge of the MoQ being idealism (from
> December 2001). Its not in this reading. Its a realist hybrid.
You're right if you accept the usual SOM premise that experience is
something a subject has.You're also right if you accept the premise of
"inner-outer tracks." But Pirsig denies your premises as well as those of
Kant, Plato, and all the rest.
Pirsig's premise is that experience is Reality, prior to any division,
especially the subject/object one that has prevailed down the ages. His
division or "first cut" (necessary for cognition and communication) is to
split universal experience (Quality-Reality) into Dynamic and static.
In Chap. 5 Pirsig lays out his initial premise:
"Quality is a direct experience independent of and prior to intellectual
abstractions. Quality is indivisible, undefinable and unknowable in the
sense that there is a knower and a known, but a metaphysics can be
none of these things. A metaphysics must be divisible, definable, and
knowable, or there isn't any metaphysics. Since a metaphysics is
essentially a kind of dialectical definition and since Quality is
essentially outside definition, this means that a "Metaphysics of
Quality" is essentially a contradiction in terms, a logical absurdity.(5)"
Experience prior to any inner-outer, subject-object distinction, is the
ahistorical, universal foundation of the MOQ. You may not agree with it,
you may not believe there can be experience without subjects, but there
it is, the beginning of the Pirsigian revolution. It's only when you
assume an "outer track" (SOM) to begin with that you can assign Pirsig
to it.
Incidentally, count me as one who looks forward to your posts. They are
always thoughtful and challenging, as quality posts should be.
Platt
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