[MD] Plains Talk and Pragmatism

[John Carl]

Matt,

Thanks for the quality reply.   I know you're a busy man, I'll try and be
brief.  I won't succeed, but I'll try.


> I have no opinion on the matters you present about Gavin, David
> Buchanan, Dan or the Copleston annotations.  I don't even know
> which "Dan" you're referring to (Mr. Glover? that's the only Dan I
> know, and your recapitulation of events doesn't scan for the person
> I knew as Dan Glover),


Well... yes, I see your point.  And it's an interesting one that I've also
considered.  How far can you trust any "voice" that is so easy to manipulate
and possible to re-create?  The labels, are the reality we experience.  At
least online.

But I know what you mean.  If I went astray on this forum, turning it into
my own therapy-session, as dmb claims, then it was largely through the
reaction  to and understanding of Dan Glover and Gavin Clee-Clough.  I
really started what I consider my serious effort, with the dedication  "for
dan and gave" and I meant it.

My focus has changed, needless to say.  I've learned a great deal from Royce
on Loyalty to the Great Community, and I think more in those terms these
days, rather than any particular loyalty to any individual, or individual
faction or part of a faction OF MD.



> and I haven't read the annotations in some
> years, and haven't the time to give them a genuine consideration.
>
>
I don't have much time either, these days.  I joined this
http://www.nanowrimo.org/ thing  along with my eldest daughter, as a
challenge, and I've got to get a 50,000 word novel (rough draft) done by the
end of november or face humiliation at the hands of my own offspring,  who
writes like a fiend, even while going to college.

 and I do have them (Coppl. Ann) entirely cut up and in my drafts box, in
order, for when I feel like chewing upon a piece or two.   I enjoy them
quite a bit, but boy I wish Coppleston had done a bit on the great American
Philosophical movements of the turn of the century, and Pirsig had commented
upon Royce, Pierce and Santayana in the same philosopholgical style which he
turned on Bradley, Coleridge and Carlyle.

There is a lot of meaty dialogue to be derived stuff like this.  It
practically begs for a response:


At this point Coleridge is at the same door that Phaedrus was at, but he
doesn’t have the key of Quality with him.  So he answers:

'Only in the selfconsciousness of a spirit is there the required identity of
object and of representation.'

What in the world is selfconsciousness of a spirit?

But if the spirit is originally the identity of subject and object, it must
in some sense dissolve this identity in order to become conscious of itself
as object.

Ridiculous.

Self-consciousness, therefore, cannot arise except through an act of will,

How did will get in here?

and 'freedom

How did freedom get in here?

must be assumed as a *ground *of philosophy, and can never be deduced from
it'. The spirit becomes a subject knowing itself as object only through 'the
act of constructing itself objectively to itself'.


Begs, I say...  Begs.  Choice is fundamental to Philosophy.  Heck, Choice is
fundamental to Quality!  Without choice, there is no such thing as quality.
Coleridge got that, But RMP doesn't quite see it.  He does at the end
though.  That's what makes this such an important dialogue, in my view.
Pirsig doubles back on himself.  He comes to a realization THROUGH an
interaction with the text, and he generously allows us to participate with
him, in that process that truly transcends the "mere philosophology" as he'd
term most of this exercise.



> That being said, if Pirsig says "anti-theistic," I read "anti-clerical."
>

I agree.  If anti-clerical is anti-theist, then jesus was an anti-theist
too.



>   "Anti-theism" is a just a
> leftover from bad run-ins with the American Religious Right.
>
>

That makes good sense.  However, is that pschological stance the basis for
intellectual patterns of value?  I'd bring the question out and analyze it,
if we're going to discuss metaphysical formulations of (hopefully) lasting
value.   But interestingly, it seems to be this kind of aloof
intellectualizing analysis of the MoQ's founder, that really irritates Dan.
Which I'd say is pretty ironic, considering this kind of intellectual/social
patterning that the MoQ claims is the most moral.



>
> Matt:
> Sliding from "mysticism" to "pluralism" is the right move.  Kenneth
> Burke said some startlingly similar and intelligent things about the
> relationship of mysticism to other Western philosophical traditions in
> A Grammar of Motives.  The insight is roughly: we call mystic that
> which we are unaware of the origins.  I just happened to read today
> a footnote in an essay Rorty wrote about Heidegger, who was
> claimed by many (in his later work) to hiding in an obscure
> mysticism rather than arguing it out with other philosophers.


John:

haHa!  Sounds like somebody else we know.


Matt:


> In
> suggesting what "mystic insight" has in common with argumentative
> traditions of philosophy, he adds in a parenthetical "or just plain
> insight, for that matter."  That move, from "mystic insight" to "just
> plain insight," I think, is the proper "anti-theistic" move for pragmatic
> pluralists in the Euro-American context.


John:

Well, I'm seeing more and more the fitness of the best move being Absolute
Pragmatism and the Great Community, but here's what's been rattling around
my brain the past week or so, and that's distinctifyin' relativism and
pluralism.

Without getting into the technical definition right off, but just as my
experience goes, "relativists" are beholders of the elephant, intent upon
guarding their own perspective.  It's a consequence, imo, of a values-free
world-view, tempered with an over-exaggerated, extreme individualism.

Whereas a Pluralists is somebody who tries to imagine a bigger picture,
inclusive of "the many truths".  The Zuni Brujo wasn't about excluding the
white man's world nor the traditions of the elders, he was one that pulled
two different worlds together.  He didn't say, "you've got your way of
looking at things and we've got ours".  He tried to understand the other.
He cared about the viewpoints of his enemy.  He found a bigger picture in
his head, through including all the individual perspectives.  The pluralist
gets a picture of the elephant, by accepting the community as a whole.  The
community of "faithful-I's"


Because pragmatists are
> functualists, we look at what cultural manifestations _do_ for the
> cultures.


Exactly my point.


Matt:


> Where do our ideas come from?  At a certain point, if you press the
> question with the vindictive rigor of a Descartes, you'll have to throw
> up your hands and say, "I do not know."  Whether we call the origins
> past that point "talking to the Muses," "listeing to Being," or "direct
> experience" seems to me a matter of fancy and tradition.
>
>
John, well, I have a way of thinking about it, that makes sense to me.  It's
nature.  Natural patterns have resonances we don't even comprehend because
so much experience is non-realized, or unconscious.  We take in much, much
more than we can process, but we do process it intuitively and it's this
intuition which leads to artistic endeavors and creations which resonate
within others of our community.  And that's what we call, 'the good'.

Thanks for sharing yours, Matt,

John