[MD] FW: Essay on James

[David M]

Hi DMB

You need to break out of your familiar & wooden arguments to make progress I 
think.
I get all that DMB but.....

Hey, maybe another day.

DM



dmb said to DM:
I suppose Hegel's Absolute (and similar Gods) would be the quintessential 
example of a fictional metaphysical addition.

DM replied:
What I think, is that whenever the absolute or the transcendent is used as 
concepts by phiolsophers they are often talking about what Pirsig would call 
DQ, and if you look at it like this, you can get something out of reading 
idealists, etc. I would also suggest that unlike Pirsig, and like Ham, they 
often think they can tell us all about the structure/content/powers of the 
transcendent and absolute. This is a mistake and over reach. We can say what 
DQ makes manifest, SQ/values/experience/qualities, but after that DQ is 
without form, it is the intense potential that is left when all SQ is put 
aside for Tao, ...but what is the test for DQ? I have an answer, what's 
yours?

dmb says:
What?! Seems to me that if follow your advice and look at the absolute as if 
it were DQ I'll only be going on another wild goose chase. Pirsig is talking 
about experience. As in the hot stove example, the primary empirical reality 
is no abstraction. At the very end of chapter 29, where he explains the 
MOQ's similarities to James's ideas, Pirsig says "The MOQ is a continuation 
of the mainstream of 20th century American philosophy. It is a form of 
pragmatism, of instrumentalism, which says the test of the true is the good. 
It adds that this good is not a social code or some intellectualized 
Hegelian Absolute. It is direct everday experience." Don't you think this is 
about as far away from "transcendent" as it gets? I do. There's nothing 
hidden or supernatural about it. This primary empirical reality or DQ is 
just a reference to experience that we all know already - from experience. I 
think its a bit like the Eastern Mystical idea that the truth is already 
right in front of you, like the little fish who swam around everywhere 
looking for that stuff they call "water". Maybe that why Hegal hated Eastern 
philosophies.
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