Hugo Fjelsted Alroe (alroe@vip.cybercity.dk)
Mon, 26 Jan 1998 16:51:35 +0100
I will make use of this quiet time on the Lila Squad to provide a few
shreds of evidence that we (as Pirsig-followers) are not alone in this
quality-hostile world.
First, on a discussion list on John Dewey (one of the three original
american pragmatists, the other two being William James and Charles S.
Peirce), Tom Burke wrote on the 24.jan.98 on Dewey's metaphysics. I have
copied the last part of a rather long mail, starting with a quote from
Dewey where he refers to an earlier discussion of his use of the term
metaphysics:
_____________Tom Burke__________________
" This genuine subjectmatter [of metaphysics, in the way I [Dewey] used that
word] is the fact that the natural world has _generic_ as well as
specific traits, and that in the one case as in the other experience is
such as to enable us to arrive at their identification. And that is only
the beginning of the matter. What is said of [this subjectmatter] is
said moreover in a discussion of _existence and value_; for concern for
values as they eventuate in the course of life-experience is taken to be
the concern that marks _philosophy_ off from other intellectual
undertakings. ... Discussion of generic traits is opened by [my] saying
that a statement of them _seems_ to have nothing to do with criticism and
choice of values; that is, with "effective love of wisdom," this latter
being the theme under discussion. The remainder of the discussion of
them is devoted that this specious conclusion (the one held in the
traditional view) is reached because detecting and registering general
traits is taken to be self-sufficient, the end of the matter. Against
this view it is held that their detection and noting is in the interest
of providing "a ground-map of the province of criticism"; criticism, that
is, of values as concrete events. ... The entire discussion, while short,
is given to showing that the sense and point of recognition of generic
traits lies in their application in the conduct of life: that is, in
their _moral_ bearing provided _moral_ be taken in its basic broad human
sense. [LW16:385,387--389]
Dewey reiterates the point here that metaphysics, as a particular kind of
inquiry, does not reach outside of the reach of experience but is an
attempt to rectify and correct experience in its most general sense, in the
most general terms. To even make sense of this characterization of
metaphysics to begin with requires a broader philosophical view of
experience in which we have or from which we obtain (prior to
characterizing metaphysics) a proper notion of "existences". More
fundamentally, this characterization of metaphysics draws wholly on a prior
philosophical view of experience in which we have or from which we obtain a
proper notion of "values" as concrete events, etc., hence as existences in
their own right. This is not a metaphysical or ontological claim, but a
more general philosophical claim which in fact makes or puts "values"
theoretically prior to "existences" as such, within a pre-metaphysical
theory of experience drawn from "the concrete situation of life" -- a
theory which in formulating it Dewey claims to have "moved progressively in
the direction of using such terms as _Life-behavior_ or _Life-activities_,
with the understanding of course that, in the case of philosophy, the
behavior and/or activities are those of _human_ beings and hence are
_culturally_ affected throughout."
[In] my treatment philosophy is _love of wisdom_; wisdom being not
knowledge but knowledge-plus; knowledge turned to account in the
instruction and guidance it may convey in piloting life through the
storms and the shoals that beset life-experience as well as into such
havens of consummatory experience as enrich our human life from time to
time. [LW16:389]
This basic philosophical stance -- a pre-metaphysical theory of experience
couched in concrete concerns for better and worse conduct of life -- is a
foundation on the basis of which metaphysics (in the only acceptable sense
of the word, says Dewey) is then rendered at all viable. In the end, the
differences between ethics, phenomenology, epistemology, logic, ontology,
etc. -- all couched within a single philosophical view of experience -- are
rather subtle, being differences as to immediate aims and methods rather
than in subject matters.
_________________End Tom Burke___________________
And second, (shamelessly advocating my own view of the intellectual as
distingushed by an ability of selfreferential relations), in the science of
consciousness they are slowly working their way towards a view which will
(I think) be compatible with some MoQ-like general frame of understanding.
>From the mailing-list Psyche-D, discussing consciousness; Brendon Hammer,
24.jan.98:
"Thus, I think it likely that a clearer understanding
of the potential for information and information
processing systems to be *dynamically self-referential*
is what eventually will allow the hard problem [of
consciousness] to be solved."
'The hard problem' is posed by David Chalmers, who stated on the first
Tucson conference on the science of consciousness, that the really hard
question was how to connect the *feeling conscious* with the
neurophysiological/behavioral scientific sort of studying consciousness.
The hard problem is why there is any experience, any rich inner life at
all, and how this can be understood in connection with our scientific
knowledge of what the world is like.
My motivation for posting these bits of discussion here is to point out
that there are lines of thought in the more 'established' philosophy and in
science (apart from physics, which is often referred to on the squad) which
are moving in the same direction as Pirsig and us.
We are not alone.
Hugo
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