[MD] Know-how

[Steven Peterson]

Hi Matt,

Matt:
>...In this metaphor, DMB has always
> thought that radical empricism is part of the meat.  And
> what I haven't understood is what the connection is
> between these different pieces that some people like DMB
> perceive as all meat, and I perceive as falling into two
> piles, meat (pragmatism) and optional packaging (radical
> empiricism).

Steve:
I think for Pirsig radical empricism is part of the meat only because
he uses it for metaphysics and to argue against tradictional
sense-experience empiricism. DMB thinks it is meaty because it is good
for epistemology, though I can't see how it could add anything that we
don't already have in just saying that some beliefs lead to successful
action and some do not. I don't think that Pirsig ever thought of
radical empiricism as what gets him out of trouble for having a
relativistic notion of truth...

Pirsig in Lila:
"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."

I can't see how radical empiricism could get you moral clarity and any
arguments to make against Nazis, and it seems that Pirsig couldn't
either. Pirsig thought his evolutionary theory of value patterns
rather than radical empiricism is what lends his philosophy moral
clarity. But we well-know that even that can be used (twisted?) to
support lotsof things we know Pirsig doesn't support.

Recall also Pirsig in his intro to LC:
"...I've concluded that the biggest improvement I could make in the
Metaphysics of Quality would be to block the notion that the
Metaphysics of Quality claims to be a quick fix for every moral
problem in the universe. I have never seen it that way. The image in
my mind as I wrote it was of a large football field that gave meaning
to the game by telling you who was on the 20-yard line but did not
decide which team would win. That was the point of the two opposing
arguments over the death penalty described in LILA.That was the point
of the equilibrium between static and Dynamic Quality. Both are moral
arguments. Both can claim the Metaphysics of Quality for support...."

It makes you wonder to what degree the Nazi could even claim the MOQ
for support.

Best,
Steve