[MD] [Bulk] Re: Humanism

[Arlo Bensinger]

[Mark]
Such difference is that you believe you know what Pirsig is saying 
and that everybody should see it in the same way.  Life does not work that way.

[Arlo]
When Pirsig says "Intellect!=SOM" I am not sure how anyone could 
"interpret" this to mean "Intellect=SOM". There are always, in 
discourse, matters where clarity is needed, and we can discuss them, 
but the GOAL of that discussion is to solidify what was said so that 
a proper response (agreement or disagreement) can be offered.

If I say "I interpret Pirsig to mean that trees are intellectual 
patterns" I would hope this would be seen as incorrect and, if I 
chose to pursue it, instead a different metaphysics I am proposing 
out of disagreement with Pirsig. You can't use "interpretation" to 
justify that anything you want to believe an author said was said 
simply because say that's my "interpretation". At that point, 
everything becomes meaningless, and our "interpretations" become 
simply projections of what we want other people to have said.

So again, I'm not exactly sure of what your point is. Can I attribute 
anything to Pirsig by simply declaring it to be my "interpretation"?

[Mark]
OK, it's a deal, when you say The MOQ, you are talking about a subset 
of MOQ.  I am OK with that.

[Arlo]
Well that makes it cumbersome, I'd personally prefer we drop "The 
MOQ" altogether and talk about Pirsig's ideas and James' ideas and 
your ideas and my ideas. We don't talk about "The Pragmatism" or "The 
Idealism", we talk about philosophers and their ideas and when we 
agree and when we disagree.

So we could say something like "A Metaphysics of Quality" is a 
metaphysics that proposes that the primary division of "reality" is 
Dynamic/static. And that's as far as we could go. Anything after that 
becomes "Pirsig's MOQ" in the same way that while Peirce and James 
were in the Pragmatism field they had specific ideas that we 
differentiate by saying "Peirce's Pragmatics" or "James' Pragmatics".

Sometimes I get the sense that this is beating a dead horse for most 
people here, because I think most understand that Pirsig's use of 
"The MOQ says..." was a narrative device and "The MOQ" says nothing, 
Pirsig did. But I think, evidenced by the Bo fiasco, this continues 
to be a great source of consternation and confusion by those who see 
only an argument about "what the MOQ says", and THAT is the morass of 
"interpretative legitimacy".

[Mark]
Just for the record, MOQ, like Zen, is an ART.

[Arlo]
I think the central theme of ZMM was that ART is "everyday, lived 
experience" (with a nod to Granger). "Art" is a high quality response 
to experience. Whether it is building rotisseries, repairing 
motorcycles, painting a landscape, or writing Haiku.

[Mark]
My guess is that you like music and art, and the feeling of a fast 
car or beautiful woman (Marsha, don't start now).  All romantic in my 
estimation, not requiring the classical categorization of things like 
an instruction manual.

[Arlo]
Well I think we can appreciate these things aesthetically, but that 
includes (in my estimation) a synthesis of the romantic and classical 
understandings. I can enjoy chocolate by virtue solely of its 
pleasurable taste, but I can also admire the art that goes into the 
creation of chocolate, even though such a process is based on 
procedures and experimentation and hierarchies etc.