[MD] "100% confident"

[Ham Priday]

Hi David --



> It is the very job of the philosopher to come up with a language
> and an approach to our existence that makes good sense and has
> great value. But its value and meaning and use have to be found
> in real lived experience. This is why I find the MOQ very useful
> and beautiful. It makes good sense of the life I find I am living
> and the life I need to find a way of directing and shaping. And what
> I know from experience that this life is like and has been in the past
> as far as we can discover.

Thank you for this candid response to my question about the purpose of 
philosophy.  It is clearly written and expresses a position that at first 
reading seems irrefutable.  I have no reason to doubt your sincerity.  And I 
agree that the "meaning and use" of a philosophy must be not only relevant 
but vital to one's life-experience.

Having said that, I look at the first sentence and note that the 
qualifications you cite for philosophy are that it "makes good sense" and 
"has great value".  I can accept the former as suggesting "logical 
plausibility", but I find the latter somewhat problematic.  How do we know 
that a philosophy has great value?

If our criterion for value is what is "useful and beautiful," which is what 
satisfies you about the MOQ, then your standard is utilitarian (i.e., what 
works) and what pleases you esthetically.  Inasmuch as science and 
technology do a fairly creditable job of making things work--certainly 
surpassing philosophy's record in that regard--and literary prose and poetry 
both relate to life and can please by virtue of their beauty, what does 
philosophy offer that science and the arts don't?

Since "man is the measure of all things", what he experiences as valuable is 
relative to his subjective experience.  If the value of philosophy is 
measured only in terms of experience, then experience becomes fundamental 
and philosophy only reflects the pragmatic goals and perceived pleasures of 
human beings.  In that case, philosophy would seem to be superfluous: it 
provides no more insight on what life is about than your own experience.  As 
you said about the MOQ, "I know from experience what this life is like."

Now, maybe there is something in Pirsig's philosophy that helps you in 
"directing and shaping" your life.  You're the best judge of that, and of 
its value to you.  But there are loads of platitudes out there that "make 
sense" and can be regarded as having value.  The Golden Rule for one, or the 
old adage about people in glass houses throwing stones, for another.  Such 
admonitions are not philosophy.  They may be poetic and reasonable, but they 
merely reflect what we already know from experience.  Pragmatism is fine for 
getting along with people and solving the problems of our environment.  But 
philosophy, in my opinion, must give us something more than an experiential 
understanding of reality.  We can (and do) learn that from a study of 
history, anthropology, sociology, psychology, and the natural sciences.

I've forgotten just what the theme "100% confident" initially referred to, 
but perhaps my closing question will give it some new relevance.  We humans 
may not be concerned about an ultimate reality beyond our finite experience, 
but how confident can we be that ultimate reality is not concerned with us?

Essentially yours,
Ham