[MD] Philosophy and Abstraction

[david buchanan]

In post #1, Steve said:
The anti-Platonist in me gets concerned when he [Pirsig] talks about this primary reality as something that we can get closer to or further from, as something that the mystic is in touch with and the rest of us are not. .. You'd rather wenot read such statements as Platonism, but Matt and I wish that he wouldn't say things that can be so easily construed as Platonism. 

In post #2, Steve said:
You've got it twisted. Matt and I obviously don't see Pirsig and James as enemies. Far from it. The issue is that you seem to see Rorty and anyone else as an enemy who doesn't embrace the terms "direct" or "pure" or "primary" with regard to experience.

In post #3, Steve said:
Platonism IS the problem with those terms, but it's not that I think Pirsig is a Platonist or intends those terms to punch up Platonism. I don't. ... I prefer not to use the terms that Pirsig uses for doing anti-Platonism when I do anti-Platonism because I think those terms are too easily construed as more Platonism. 




dmb says:
Can you see how I might be a bit frustrated by this?

You know the terms don't really reflect Platonism and yet you reject them anyway simply because it's possible to misconstrue them? The anti-Platonist is concerned even though you say that you know there is no cause for concern? 

Well, I think that's a very weak and silly reason to avoid Pirsig's central terms, especially in a Pirsig discussion group. 


Steve said:
Since Pirsig says that the quality that can be defined is not Quality, I can't legitimately be faulted by a Pirsigian for avoiding defining Quality with those or any other specific terms. I certainly have not "rejected the whole MOQ [the philosophy of Robert M Pirsig] in a very big way" though I have more than a couple quibbles with it.

dmb says:
But Quality is NOT referenced by just those specific terms and none of the terms are intended as definitions. When I explain that "pure experience" only means the pre-conceputal cutting edge of experience, you reject all the terms and generally deny that value and validity of the general notion of Quality as the first moment of awareness. It's just a compliment, Matt says. To take Quality that way is to completely miss the main idea. To tell us what you think about this or that is exactly what Quality can not be. And this is what the terms do. They don't define it. They tell us why it cannot be defined and they tell us what it is not. 

Beyond the misplaced anti-Platonism, there is another very large problem. If you translate all the negative descriptions from all the terms used for DQ, we can say it is not reflection, not verbal, not intellectual, not conceptual, not mediated, not divided, not the past, not the future, not a thing, not a thought and it's not static. Rorty says its language all the way down. Since language is all the things that DQ is not and language goes all the way down, there is no DQ. Or if there is we have to remain silent about it and philosophy ought not go there.

You really don't see how that makes Rorty an enemy of the MOQ. You really don't see how Rortyism leads you to eviscerate the MOQ? Really?

I mean, what DO you think Pirsig's central term is all about? I'd honestly like to know.