[MD] The Level of Intellectual Quality

[MarshaV]

 Who is Hunter Brown?   
 
 

On Mar 5, 2010, at 1:35 PM, david buchanan wrote:

> 
> dmb said to John:
> 
> Pretending that I didn't give my reasons or support them with the relevant textual evidence just won't work. All this stuff is recorded and archived. I can play the tape so denying it will only make you look dishonest. You've shoved the actual reasons aside and replaced them with sinister motives and character flaws. I believe that's called "adding insult to injury". Who is being closed-minded here, John? You're the one who literally refuses to even acknowledge that reasons count as reasons.
> 
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> John replied:
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> Play the tape then.  Show me where you've offered actual textual evidence that is more than a cursory dismissal.  More than some other philosophologistic opinion.   Make me look dishonest.  If I'm wrong, I'll admit it.  But you can't just whine that you've "made your case".  You actually have to make a case. ...What "reasons"?  That he's just a Hegelian?  That he used the term "Absolute Thought" at one time early in his career?  You haven't given any reasons Dave, just your knee-jerk reactions.  They only seem like all-important reasons to you because everything in your head seems all-important to you. But real reason is presenting a case that a reasonable person can follow. By all means, I invite you to do so.  I've only been asking for that all along, after all.
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> dmb says:
> 
> That's hilarious. What you've done here is pretend that I didn't make the case and you've pushed the evidence aside and replaced it sinister motives and character flaws, and you did so in response to my accusations that you had been doing exactly that. 
> 
> Apparently you have a very different idea about what constitutes valid evidence in this kind of situation. As I see it, no reasonable person could simply dismiss a case as basic as the one I just made to you. Let me walk you through it. 
> 
> The first thing I did was supply a general definition of both Royce's Absolute and the general idea of an Absolute. For that, I used a common public source just to establish what we're talking about here. Then quoted Pirsig saying that his notion of the good "is not some intellectualized Hegelian Absolute". This isn't just a denial of Hegelianism in particular. It is also a refusal to identify his good with intellectual Absolutes in general, which are all going to be contrasted with "direct everyday experience" because that defies even the general definition of an Absolute. You seem to think this is a knee-jerk reaction, apparently because it's too short and neat to count as real evidence. But I think it is short and neat because the evidence is so clear and strong. It requires no reaching or stretching because it's true.
> On top of that, I explained how the basic parameters of radical empiricism rule out "transexperiential entities" like the Absolute. Here's what that looked like....
> 
> Wiki says that Royce, "conceived the Absolute as a unitary Knower Whose experience constitutes what we know as the 'external' world", which is not much different from the general definition: "an unconditional reality which transcends limited, conditional, everyday existence. It is often used as an alternate term for a 'God' or 'the Divine'". 
> 
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> Pirsig says, "The MOQ is a continuation of the mainstream of 20th 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".
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> It's also worth noting the basic rules of radical empiricism because they practically tailor made to preclude the Absolute. James wants to reconstruct all of philosophy on the back of two simple restraints. If it IS known in experience, your philosophy can't ignore it. If it is NOT known in experience, you can't use it in your philosophy. James and Pirsig both call themselves radical empiricists and it's no accident that they both oppose this transcendent Divine Knower. If it transcends experience, then philosophers have no business making claims about it, let alone making claims about the ultimate nature of reality. ...In his essays, James calls things like the Absolute "transexperiential entities" and his aim there is to get rid of them all. He wants philosophy to proceed only on the basis of experience. 
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> I won't duplicate the quotes from secondary sources, but remind you that both of those philosophers open their comparisons of James and Royce by noting that they disagreed about the Absolute and that this was central to their thought. That was Mullin's "The Soul of Classical American Philosophy" and your gal Jackie in an introduction to the Royce section of an anthology of pragmatism.
> 
> Obviously, the case being made here is that Royce is at odds with James and Pirsig on core issues, the Absolute being the main example of that. In this case, I quoted a primary source (Pirsig denying some Absolute), summarized a primary source (explained how his radical empiricism rules out Absolutes), quoted two secondary sources (Jackie and Mullins saying they differed on that) and I used a tertiary source to establish the broad basics of what an Absolute is. In terms of philosophical comparisons, evidence doesn't get any better than that. This doesn't mean it's irrefutable or even that it's right but that is the classic form. IF you're using the relevant pieces of primary, secondary and tertiary sources and the other guy cries foul or dismisses it, he is simply playing a different game. But I don't know what that game could be nor do I see how a reasonable person could dismiss such a thing. 
> 
> John said:
> Yes, I realize that is your conclusion.  It has been your conclusion for about as long as I've been communicating with you.  That conclusion, is a big part of the problem I have with you. I don't know what it would do to make you see me any different than who I am.  I've communicated who I am as openly, honestly and sincerely as I can.  I've revealed myself as much as anybody I can think of.   To my mind, nothing you conclude about me matches the way I see myself, but how can I possibly change your mind when you don't want it changed? And what more am I supposed to say about myself that I haven't already?  I probably  say too much about myself as it is.
> 
> 
> dmb says:
> 
> Okay, let's not make it about you personally. I want to focus on one key idea here for a minute. You say that my conclusions about you don't match the way you see yourself. But all I can do is evaluate your posts, your ideas, your responses to ideas in this forum. Whatever conclusions I draw are based on what you're saying and that is right there in front of both of us. In the case above, for example, where I complain about the particular ways in which you are being unreasonable, your response was to be unreasonable again in exactly the same way. I mean, this is not just some fantasy about who you are, it is a critical analysis of your own words and those words are right in front of you. And then there is the fact that I'm also having to repeat, to "play the tape" because this unreasonableness includes your dismissal of the only kind of evidence there is for things such as this; textual evidence. What else could I conclude from this?
> 
> 
> The case can be made much more elaborately by comparing their whole systems of philosophy, with their respective changes and developments over time but we'd only come to the same conclusion. We don't need to do all that work because Pirsig and James simply tells us that their views don't include the Absolute, that their proposing something quite different. I could even show you where James says that rationalists (Absolute idealists) and empiricists are two different kinds of people with fundamentally different temperaments. He says, basically, that the former worldview makes him feel sick inside. I kid you not. It's too buttoned up and straight-laced a thing for him. Humorously, he says that not all Hegelians are prigs, but all prigs, if they develop their priggishness far enough, will become Hegelians. Yes, he and Royce were friends and Royce distanced himself from Hegel but he remained an idealist of sorts and held to an Absolute of sorts and despite all their years of friendly debate, James was never convinced and his empiricism only deepened until his last breath. 
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> 
> John said:
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> Well, I never heard of him before I enjoined this conversation, and the people I hang with don't discuss such things.   I only know he's a pretty respected thinker because Matt told me so, and the fact that he's (Kuklick) is an atheist but still he highly appreciative of  Royce's thinking led me to assume the theistic overtones aren't quite so off-putting for some as others.
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> dmb says:
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> Oh, I'm pretty sure he's legitimate. My complaint was about the lack of context and explanation from you when you quote him. I was also making fun of his name, but that's just a language joke. But, for example, it would be nice to know something about the nature of the book you're quoting from, what topic is in the section where you found it, what his terms mean and what you draw from it. This sort of stuff is so lacking, in fact, that there is nothing to indicate that you even understand what you're quoting. I'm not saying you don't, just that I can't tell if you do or not. I secretly suspect that you're just looking for an interpreter when you post that stuff. Well, that exaggerates the point a bit but still. 
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