[MD] Trance state

[Steven Peterson]

Hi Platt, Bo,


> Bo wrote:
>
>> What "pragmatism" has to do with the MOQ I have never understood.

Platt:
> Me neither. It's a step backwards from the intellectual level.. Pirsig
> explains:
>
> "But the Metaphysics of Quality states that practicality is a social
> pattern of good. It is immoral for truth to be subordinated to social
> values since that is a lower form of evolution devouring a higher one."
> (Lila, 29)

If you reread Chapter 29 you may get a better understanding. I'll try
to help point out the relevent parts.

A review of ZAMM "in the Harvard Educational Review had said that his
idea of truth was the same as James...the comparison with James
interested him most because it looked like
there might be something to it." Pirsig was excited because "...if
philosophologists were willing to accept the
idea that the Metaphysics of Quality is an offshoot of James' work,
then that "cult" charge was shattered.  And this was good political
news in a field where politics is a big factor." He didn't want to see
the MOQ written off as New Age nonsense.

Pirsig had understood "James' dislike of the dichotomy of the universe
into subjects and objects. That, of course, put him automatically on
the side of Phædrus' angels."

"... to Phædrus it seemed that James' generalizations were heading
toward something very similar to the Metaphysics of Quality.  This
could, of course, be the "Cleveland Harbor Effect," where Phædrus' own
intellectual immune system was selecting those aspects of James'
philosophy that fit the Metaphysics of Quality and ignoring those that
didn't.  But he didn't think so.  Everywhere he read it seemed as
though he was seeing fits and matches that no amount of selective
reading could contrive."

"James really had two main systems of philosophy going: one he called
pragmatism and the other radical empiricism. Pragmatism is the one he
is best remembered for: the idea that the test of truth is its
practicality or usefulness.  From a pragmatic viewpoint the squirrel's
definition of "around" was a true one because it was useful.
Pragmatically speaking, that man never got around the squirrel."

"Phædrus, like most everyone else [apparently including Platt], had
always assumed that pragmatism and practicality meant virtually the
same thing, but when he got down to an exact quotation of what James
did say on the subject he noticed something different: James said,
"Truth is one species of good, and not, as is usually supposed, a
category distinct from good, and coordinate with it."  He said, "The
true is the name of whatever proves itself to be good in the way of
belief." "Truth is a species of good."  That was right on.  That was
exactly what is meant by the Metaphysics of Quality.  Truth is a
static intellectual pattern within a larger entity called Quality.

"James had tried to make his pragmatism popular by getting it elected
on the coattails of practicality.  He was always eager to use such
expressions as "cash-value," and "results," and "profits," in order to
make pragmatism intelligible to "the man in the street," but this got
James into hot water. Pragmatism was attacked by critics as an attempt
to prostitute truth to the values of the marketplace.  James was
furious with this misunderstanding and he fought hard to correct the
misinterpretation, but he never really overcame the attack. What
Phædrus saw was that the Metaphysics of Quality avoided this attack by
making it clear that the good to which truth is subordinate is
intellectual and Dynamic Quality, not practicality.  The
misunderstanding of James occurred because there was no clear
intellectual framework for distinguishing social quality from
intellectual and Dynamic Quality, and in his Victorian lifetime they
were monstrously confused.  But the Metaphysics of Quality states that
practicality is a social pattern of good.  It is immoral for truth to
be subordinated to social values since that is a lower form of
evolution devouring a higher one.

The idea that satisfaction alone is the test of anything is very
dangerous, according to the Metaphysics of Quality...James would
probably have been horrified to find that Nazis could use his
pragmatism just as freely as anyone else, but Phædrus didn't see
anything that would prevent it.  But he thought that the Metaphysics
of Quality's classification of static patterns of good prevents
this kind of debasement.

The second of James' two main systems of philosophy, which he said was
independent of pragmatism, was his radical empiricism.  By this he
meant that subjects and objects are not the starting points of
experience. Subjects and objects are secondary.  They are concepts
derived from something more fundamental which he described as "the
immediate flux of
life which furnishes the material to our later reflection with its
conceptual categories."  In this basic flux of experience, the
distinctions of reflective thought, such as those between
consciousness and content, subject and object, mind and matter, have
not yet emerged in the forms which we make them.  Pure experience
cannot be called either physical or psychical: it logically precedes
this distinction."

It continues with a bit that Bo will either hate or it will cause him
to have an epiphany:

"In his last unfinished work, Some Problems of Philosophy, James had
condensed this description to a single sentence:  "There must always
be a discrepancy between concepts and reality, because the former are
static and discontinuous while the latter is dynamic and flowing."
Here James had chosen exactly the same words Phædrus had used for the
basic subdivision of the Metaphysics of Quality. What the Metaphysics
of Quality adds to James' pragmatism and his radical empiricism is the
idea that the primal reality from which subjects and objects spring is
value.  By doing so it seems to unite pragmatism and radical
empiricism into a single fabric.  Value, the pragmatic test of truth,
is also the primary empirical experience.  The Metaphysics of Quality
says pure experience is value. Experience which is not valued is not
experienced.  The two are the same.  This is where value fits.
...Value is at the very front of the empirical procession."

And finally, to summarize: "The Metaphysics of Quality is a
continuation of the mainstream of twentieth 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
everyday experience.  Through this identification of pure value with
pure experience, the Metaphysics of Quality paves the way for an
enlarged way of looking at experience which can resolve all sorts of
anomalies that traditional empiricism has not been able to cope with."

Regards,
Steve