[MD] "100% confident"

[MarshaV]

At 03:13 AM 10/21/2007, you wrote:
>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
>


And you would kill it with words...