[MD] DMB and Me

[Steven Peterson]

Hi DMB,

> dmb says:
>
> No, as a matter of fact I quoted chapter five, where ...BUT EVEN THEN the assertion that metaphysics is meaningless SOUNDED FALSE TO HIM. ..
>
> I think this shows that Pirsig's distaste for positivism goes all the way back to his school days, but that isn't quite the point.

Steve:
Yeah, it's beside the point which one rejected SOM at a younger age.
My point was that they both come out of a tradition where, to
paraphrase Pirsig, society hands us a set of intellectual glasses that
presuppose subjects and objects.



DMB:
I'm trying to explain that Rorty and friends are offering a
post-positivist critique of positivism. I'm saying that Rorty and
friends are attacking a certain kind of empiricism. They assert the
linguistic approach against traditional empiricism in general and
logical empiricism in particular. See, this is just the beginning part
of a larger argument about the differences between that empiricism and
radical empiricism.


Steve:
No one is saying that radical empiricism is the same as the empiricism
attacked by analytic philosphers.



> Steve said:
> ...Once you've dropped all that "sense data" empiricism, why argue anymore about what is more or less empirical?  How can anything experienced be more experiential than anything else that is experienced? How can the low quality of sitting on a hot stove be any more empirical than the low quality of a bad idea?
>
> dmb says:
>
> If you're asking about the Pirsig quote, the unloaded question is "how can Quality be more empirical than subjects and objects?"

Steve:
The philosophical point for Pirsig in the quote is to debunk a "myth
of the given" with regard to subjects and objects. A more
thorough-going (radical) empiricism should not take the common sense
notion of subjects and objects as "givens" for granted.


DMB:
That's what the DQ/sq distinction is all about. Conceptual, verbal
reality is secondary. That doesn't mean that talking and thinking
don't count as experience but this is derived from a more fundamental
empirical experience.

Steve:
The experience that is talked or thought about is conceptualized which
means that it is not itself the original experience described. I grant
that in that sense it is secondary secondary.

But a thought is itself also experienced directly. The experience of a
thought is as "direct" as the experience of a hot stove. Neither is
more primary or more empirical. That direct experience is Quality
whether we are talking about the low quality of a bad idea or the low
quality of sitting on a hot stove. In thinking and talking, what is
secondary is only what the talk is *about* when we think about ideas
as representations of experience. Pirsig wanted to show that subjects
and objects fall in the latter category of ideas *about* something
rather than directly experienced Quality.

But once we get there, this "representations of experience" versus
actual experience idea is exactly the appreance-reality dualism that
we want to drop, right? So once we drop it, we also drop this
primary-secondary experience idea that was helpful in getting us to
see that we ought to drop the appearance-reality dichotomy.



DMB:
Primary and secondary experience are two kinds of experience or two
elements in experience. This primary experience is said to be MORE
empirical because the secondary concepts are always a small portion, a
taking from or an extract of the original experience as it is had and
felt.


Steve:
Instead of kinds of experience I prefer your "two elements in
experience" or two aspects of experience--a dynamic and a static
aspect.

Concepts are "always a small portion." They are not all of reality.
But why exclude concepts from reality as mere derivations, an
"extract" as you say, from reality--as a separate and secondary
reality? This sounds too much to me like the Platonic "mental realm"
we want to drop.

Once we have come to see intellectual patterns as part of an
evolutionary story instead of as a separate "mental realm," it seems
to me that we can and should dispense with all the primary/secondary
teaching even though it may have helped us to get there.

I don't think Pirsig wants his primary/secondary teachings or any
teachings to be dogma. Once we cross the river, as the old Buddhist
story goes, we don't need to keep carying the raft around with us. I
think that your insistence that ideas are "secondary" is doing just
that.

Best,
Steve