[MD] MOQ & Continental Philosophy

[David M]

  Hi fellow MOQers

David B asked me a while ago to say something about Continental
Philosophy and the MOQ and how they relate. Actually I think
the following from Simon Critchley in his book called Continental
Philosophy says it all with no mention of the MOQ or Pirsig at all.
I'd be interested in any comments. For me, the MOQ is such an
example of phenomenology. It is a good one, and unlike others,
it does reach out towards eastern thought, but it is very foolish to think
it is utterly unique or that the many other forms of phenomenology do
not equally make useful contributions to this territory. I think the best
future the MOQ has is to achieve recognition as a signifiant contribution
to the sort of philosophy that should emerge from the current dominance
of uncritical scientific naturalism.

"So, how can phenomenology avoid both scientism and obscurantism?
Let me begin with scientism.In my view, scientism rests on the fallacious
claim that the theoretical or natural scientific way of viewing things 
provides the
primary and most significant access to ourselves and our world, and that the
methodology of the natural sciences provides the best form of explanation of
all phenomena. Phenomenology shows that the scientific conception of the 
world,
in Carnap and Neurath, say, is parasitic upon a prior practical view of the 
world
as pre-reflectively there in a handy, matter-of-fact, sort of way. This 
world is what
we might call the environment, the world that surrounds us, which is 
closest, most
familiar, and most meaningful to us. This environing world that is always 
already coloured
by our cognitive, ethical and aesthetic values. That is to say, scientism, 
or what Husserl calls
objectivism, overlooks the phenomenon of the life-world as the enabling 
condition for
scientific practice. In the Crisis of the European sciences Husserl 
describes the life-world
in the following way:

   It belongs to what is taken for granted,prior to all scientific thought 
and all
   philosophical questioning, that the world is -always is in advance- and 
that
   every correction of an opinion, whether an experiential or other opinion,
   presupposes the already existing world, namely as a horizon of what is 
the
   given case is indubitably valid as existing ...... Objective science, 
too, asks
   questions only on the ground of the world's existing in advance through
   prescientific life."

Regards
David M