[MD] Reifying carrots

[X Acto]

Dave,
Its quite evident that Marsha has nothing better to do
than to be a troll. I dont read her posts anymore
since she does not exist and has nothing to say.

just a bitter lonely old person looking for attention

sad really

just a stupid asshole pretending to be a human being.


 


----- Original Message ----
From: david buchanan <dmbuchanan at hotmail.com>
To: moq_discuss at moqtalk.org
Sent: Sun, December 5, 2010 5:11:36 PM
Subject: Re: [MD] Reifying carrots


MOQers:
Marsha seems to think that denigrating William James is a good way to defend 
Pirsig's MOQ. She seems to think that James is obsolete, that he is only 
"historically" interesting. Nothing could be further from the truth and all the 
evidence is against her. The evidence is plain, explicit and unequivocal. 
Everything needed to see this can be found in the last 3 or 4 pages of chapter 
29. There, Pirsig says:

"...But to Phaedrus it seemed that James's generalizations were heading toward 
something very similar to the Metaphysics of Quality. This could, of course, be 
the 'Cleveland Harbor Effect', where Phaedrus' own intellectual immune system 
was selecting those aspects of James' philosophy that fit the MOQ 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 not amount of selective reading could 
contrive." (p. 363)

"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 MOQ. 
Truth is a static intellectual pattern WITHIN a larger entity called Quality." 
(p. 363-4. Emphasis is Pirsig's in the original.)

"...James had condensed this description [of radical empiricism] 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 Phaedrus had used for the 
basic subdivision of the Metaphysics of Quality." (p. 365)

"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." (p. 366)


How much selective reading would it take to ignore this and construe James's 
thought as irrelevant, obsolete or at odds with Pirsig's?


How could the similarities between James and Pirsig be any clearer or more 
straightforward? 


Marsha's relentless campaign against James is wholly indefensible and the 
evidence against her is about as powerful and abundant as these things ever get. 
Her willful disregard of the evidence and her constant evasions are downright 
obscene. The whole campaign seems to be carefully calculated to arouse disgust 
and contempt. And she wages this dishonest attack on the core of Pirsig's work 
in order to maintain her foolish solipsism, relativism and nihilism. This is 
intellectual vacuous and morally outrageous. It's also not productive, helpful 
or fun.





                        
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