[MD] Trance state

[Platt Holden]

Hi Steve,

Very helpful quotes distinguishing Pirsig's view of pragmatism -- "Truth is 
a species of good" --  from the commonly held view --"Truth is the 
practical efficacy of an idea." (Will Durant Glossary)

It was the latter view -- a social level value --that I (and perhaps Bo) 
referred to and that Pirsig criticized as something that "Nazis could use."
Pirsig was able to get James out of that "hot water" by "making it clear 
that the good to which truth is subordinate is intellectual and Dynamic 
Quality, not (social level) practicality." (parens added) 

Finally, the "discrepancy between concepts and reality" (next to last 
paragraph below)  was acknowledged by Pirsig near the beginning of his 
"conceptual" MOQ. He wrote: "Quality is essentially outside definition, 
this means that a 'Metaphysics of Quality' is essentially a contradiction 
in terms, a logical absurdity" (Lila, 5)

Given that the MOQ is an intellectual pattern, it was the built in logical 
absurdity that I found to most enlightening.   

Best,
Platt

P.S.  I think you meant that the quotes in the paragraph below beginning 
with "A review if ZAMM" were from Chapter 26.

> > 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