Mfer's
With the list growing longer and time shorter at the request of Diana
I'm reposting this here.
With the acception of Struan, who does not frequent these halls I felt
this issue was not truely relevant to a discussion of the "real"
problems with the MoQ. But it might be of some value to those who don't
monitor both forum and missed it in the MD. The problem was originally
raised by Galen Strawson, an Oxford metaphyician, in a review of Lila
which is in the MoQ forum on the website.
It is suggested you read it with tongue firmly planted in cheek as that
is, in part, how I wrote it.
> All
>
> Like Bo, I didn't contribute to developing the list of the "problems
> with the MoQ" in this month's focus though all have vexed me from time
> to time. In the giving spirit of this season I feel that if Struan can
> give of his valuable holiday time to again restate the "academic"
> problem with the MoQ, we should reciprocate with by elevating it to a
> prominent position on the list.
>
> THE STRAW (MAN) (SON) PROBLEM
>
> 0.0 The "academics" (Strawson & Struan) claim that Pirsig created a
> "strawman" argument by claiming that most of Western Philosophy is based
> on a subject/object metaphysics (A position which "no one" holds accept
> Pirsig). Struan claims that this creates a "symbiotic", "contingent"
> relationship between the "SOM strawman" and the MoQ which seriously
> weakens or destroys it.
> 0.1 Strawson goes on to say that Lila is " interlarded with heavy slabs
> of historical anthropological-philosophical ruminations which vary from
> the worthless to the plausible but rigorously unoriginal."
> *********
> COMMENTS
> If we grant that the "academics" are right, that Pirsig created a
> "strawman" position called "SOM" and then ask, "What concrete differences
> will this being true (or false) make in the basic claims of the
> Metaphysics of Quality?"
> Or, if we discard all the subject/object argumentation that Phaedrus
> used to arrive at his conclusions, "Are the conclusions still be valid?
> Can they be verified by other means?"
>
> We would first have to agree on what the "basic claims" of the MoQ
> are. My suggestion would be to start here:
>
> C-1-"The Metaphysics of Quality subscribes to what is called empiricism.
> It claims that all legitimate human knowledge arises from the senses or
> by thinking about what the senses provide." Lila- pg. 113
>
> Since this is almost a word for word definition of empiricism that most
> sources trace through the British empirical movement to Francis Bacon it
> would be difficult to see how a definition created and refined before
> Pirsig was born could be contingent on a "strawman" he created after
> their deaths. Unless of course "SOM" was and integral part of
> empiricism, which no card carrying "academic" empiricist would admit to,
> in as much as this might lend support to Pirig's "SOM" claim. No
> difference here. Moving on:
>
> C-2 "The Metaphysics of Quality is a continuation of the mainstream of
> twentieth-century American philosophy. It is a form of pragmatism, of
> instrumentalism,..."Pg 366"
>
> Pirsig specifically refers to the work of William James , radical
> empiricsm, pragmatism, and claims that he adds to James' work. His
> claims this:
>
> C-3 " Value, the pragmatic test of truth, is also the primary empirical
> experience." Lila P 365
> and
> C-4 "Quality was value. They were the same thing" Lila-pp 58 "
> and
> C-5 "Quality is the primary empirical reality of the world" Lila-pp 67
>
> James starts his essay " Some Metaphysical Problems Pragmatically
> Considered" with a discussion of the problem of substance. He says:
>
> "Every one uses the old distinction between substance and attribute,
> enshrined as it is in the very structure of human language, in the
> difference between the grammatical subject and the predicate."
>
> Various "trapped in our language" comments and threads have also been
> acknowledged and discussed here. Even if we discount James' indication
> of " problem of language" as, in part supporting Pirsig's "SOM" claim,
> what he goes on to say we should not:
>
> " A group of attributes is what each substance here is known-as, they
> form the sole cash-value for our actual experience. The substance is in
> every case revealed through them; if we were cut off from them we should
> never suspect its existence;.."
>
> My American "common man" dictionary (Webster's New World-3rd College
> Edition) gives this first definition of quality:
>
> 1. any of the features that make something what it is; characteristic
> element; ATTRIBUTE.
>
> If we subsitute "A group of [QUALITIES]" into the above, we see that
> this quote seems to support both Pirsig's and Strawson's claim. That the
> MoQ is a continuation of James work but is "rigourously unoriginal".
> But wait, lets go on to James' "Pragmatism and Common Sense" where we find:
>
> " The 'possible', as something less than the actual and more than the
> wholly unreal, is another of the magisterial notions of common sense.
> Criticise them as you may, they persist; we fly back to them the moment
> critical pressure is relaxed. 'Self', 'body,' in the substantial or
> metaphysical sense - no one escapes subjection to those forms of
> thought. In practice, the common sense denkmittel are uniformly
> victorious. Every one, however instructed, still thinks of a 'thing' in
> the common sense way, as a permanent unit-subject that 'supports' its
> attributes interchangeably. No one stably or sincerely uses the more
> critical notion, of a group of sense-qualities united by a law. With
> these catagories in hand, we make plans and plot together, and connect
> all the remoter parts of experience with what lies before our eyes. Our
> later and more critical philosophies are mere fad and fancies compared
> with this natural mother-tongue of thought."
>
> What James as much as says here is that "no one" can escape the common
> sense notion of subjects and objects as they are the "natural
> mother-tongue of thought." Pirsig acknowledges that this has been,
> generally continues to be so, and he names it "SOM". He then, contrary
> to James, goes on to claim that it is not a necessary condition, and
> that a change to "the more critical notion" of reality as " a group of
> sense-qualities united by a law", moral laws, is not only possible, IS
> MORE REAL and BETTER than the current systems of thought. So given that
> Pirsig has at least, rightly or wrongly, been original in naming the
> "nature mother-tongue" of [Western] thought "SOM" and that he believes
> that James was wrong in thinking that humans could not escaped from
> it [some schools of Eastern thought ,Zen at least, never went there] I
> feel Strawson second claim of "rigourously unoriginal"is laid to rest.
>
> While James claims we fall back into the "thing" mode of thought he
> still maintains, with Pirsig, that qualities, values, attributes are a
> metaphysically more primary form that "things as such" So to this point
> the first five basic concepts of the MoQ do not seem contingent on "SOM"
> support in anyway other than "the problem of language." common to any
> philosophic discussion
>
> I could go on and on in this manner, quote after quote of the primary
> concepts of the MoQ, leaving all of "subject-object" polemics behind as
> has been done before and it would be quite clear that while there maybe
> serious problems with the MoQ, being "contingent" on the existence of a
> subject and object metaphysics is not one of them. But if you are a
> skeptic who's primarily belief is skepticism in everything accept
> skepticism you can end up chasing your tail a lot.
>
> HARMONY
>
> and Harmony, the thread title concludes indicating the critic's dislike
> for Pirsig's "harmony" response in a recent letter to Bo. But was not
> the response very similar to James in "Pragmatism's Conception of Truth"
> where we read:
>
> "True ideas are those that we can assimilate, validate, corroborate and
> verify. False ideas are those we can not. ...Truth happens to an idea.
> It becomes true, is made true by events. Its verity is a fact and event,
> a process:...They lead us , namely, though acts and other ideas which
> they instigate, into or up to, or towards, other parts of experience
> with which we feel all the while - such feeling being among our
> potentialities- that the original ideas remain in agreement. The
> connections and transitions come to us from point to point as being
> progressive, HARMONIOUS, satisfactory. This function of agreeable
> leading is what we mean by an idea's verification."
>
> Thin, narrow, empiricism indeed ! Sounds thick as the uncomprehending skulls.
>
> 3WD
MOQ.org - http://www.moq.org
This archive was generated by hypermail 2b30 : Sat Aug 17 2002 - 16:03:29 BST