From: Matt Kundert (pirsigaffliction@hotmail.com)
Date: Sun May 15 2005 - 20:56:00 BST
Matt said:
My first softening up move will be to point out that not everybody believes
in Quality, as you say they do. To say that they do is to make the same
move the theist does when they say that God exists whether particular people
believe in Him or not. The only way to "believe in Quality" is to first
have read Pirsig's books (which not everyone has) and then to have been
persuaded by them (which even fewer people have been). To say otherwise is
to make the same kind of appearance/reality distinguishing move that Plato
gave us, where Quality/God/whatever is there whether we like it or not.
Matt:
Mark and DMB think this a pretty stupid claim. Mark even thinks I've missed
something in Pirsig. The claim I'm making here, however, is that belief in
"Quality," which is Pirsig's idiosyncratic term for a number of
philosophical theses, would require reading Pirsig. DMB agrees. In fact,
DMB points out what I'm going to: there is a difference between belief that
"some things are better than others" and belief in "Quality." Pirsig uses
the obvious point that we all, commonsensically, believe and act as if some
things are better than others to persuade readers to believe in "Quality,"
and therefore a number of other claims also built into "Quality," like what
DMB calls "Pirsig's brand of philosophical mysticism."
Likewise, I would argue that to believe in the God of the Hebrews, you'd
need to read the Torah. To believe in the Dao, you'd need to read some
stuff about Lao-tzu.
I think it highly fallacious to say that God is something only a few
experience, whereas Quality and Freedom is something everybody experiences.
All three are things people experience when they are brought up in certain
traditions. Now, clearly Mark and DMB think that God is somehow different
in kind from Quality and Freedom, but that's why I'm arguing that their
reasoning is based on a bad Platonic and/or Enlightenment tradition of
reasoning, one we should get passed.
But most of my argument, apparently, is either laughed off the field or
ruled out of court (because, for instance, its "philosophology," a highly
suspect concept itself). My struggle has always been to get a hearing
because I need to attack so many bad assumptions all at once, and all my
opponents have to do at any particular time is rely on the others that I'm
not currently subjecting to critical pressure to laugh at me.
But go ahead, laugh away. The struggle will always continue. Just look at
Pirsig: he had to question a lot of assumptions to get a fair hearing for
Quality without being laughed off by, for instance, the Aristotelian
laughter. And now that we're giving Quality a fair hearing, I just think we
should question a few more.
Matt
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