[MD] Quantum Enigma

[X Acto]

Dave, John,

I think Brian Vescio introduction in "Pragmatism" really captures the situation
with Bob Pirsig.

"The book's rhetorical strategy is entirely in keeping with the 
anti-institutional 

bias James inherited from his father, appealing to a lay audience for a 
resolution 

to the squabbles of professional philosophers. This strategy, which 
characterized
 the "present dilemma in philosophy" as a clash between the personal 
temperaments 

of "tender-minded" idealists and "tough-minded" empiricists, had more or less
 predictable results: wild popularity among lay readers and resentment among 
professional philosophers. But the book's strategy and its ideas are ultimately 
of a piece, since James' pragmatism holds that the foundations of ultimate 
beliefs 

are generally non-rational and demands that theory be answerable to concrete 
experience."

Both James and Pirsig not only make enemies with rationalists and empiricists 
but also
professional philosophers.

The paralell doesent stop there, James and Pirsig share more qualities, it was 
after a deep
depression that James arrives at pragmatic theory.

Vescio:
"He found an important clue in the work of his friend Charles Sanders Peirce, 
who had coined the term "pragmatism" in the course of meetings of The 
Metaphysical Club, an informal group that existed briefly in the early 1870s 
and that also included such figures as Chauncey Wright and Oliver Wendell 
Holmes, 

Jr. According to James, Peirce was the first to use the word to name the view 
that
 the meaning and value of a thought lie in its practical consequences. This view 

of cognitive activity appealed to James in part because it promised an account 
of
 the mind that squared with Darwinian naturalism, making the mind and its 
products
 tools for coping with the world, weapons in the struggle for survival. It 
offered
 a compromise between the tough-minded empiricist notion that an objective world 

commands and adjudicates thought and the tender-minded idealist notion that 
subjective 

thought constructs the world, because it argued that thought was indeed a way of 

manipulating the world, but a world that is constantly pushing back. At the same 
time 

the idea appealed to James' profoundly anti-authoritarian sensibility, making 
the 

abstract, high-minded flights of philosophers answerable to the banal, everyday 
toils 

of common people. While Peirce was inspired primarily by Kantian rationalism, 
James 

found his philosophical precursors in the more down-to-earth British tradition 
of
 Locke, Berkeley, Hume, and Mill. In his book, he cites these thinkers as 
forerunners
 of pragmatism, along with even earlier thinkers, like Socrates and Aristotle, 
who 

tested their theories against ordinary experience. The existence of this 
tradition 

is what James meant when he called pragmatism "a new name for some old ways of 
thinking," but James was notorious for giving others too much credit for his own
 original ideas. In spite of the fact that the name was borrowed from Peirce, 
James' book was the first self-conscious, thorough, and consistent attempt to 
explore the implications of pragmatist thinking.
One of James' earliest developments of the ideas espoused in Pragmatism occurs 
in an 1878 article entitled "On Spencer's Definition of Mind as Correspondence.
" Many passages in the book suggest that one of the primary motives for his 
version of pragmatism is the general abandonment of the idea that truth and 
knowledge consist of a subjective mind accurately representing or corresponding 
to an objective reality. It is the positive accounts of truth and knowledge with
 which James replaces the correspondence theory that have proven most 
controversial.
 In his book, James gives the word "pragmatism" two distinct senses: it names a 
method for solving metaphysical disputes, and it also names a theory of truth. 
The 

pragmatic method, James tells us, finds solutions to metaphysical dilemmas by 
comparing the practical consequences that would result from adopting the 
alternative 

views, in itself, he says, it proposes no new metaphysical theses. The 
pragmatist
 theory of truth, however, is itself a metaphysical thesis. James begins 
famously 

by defining the true as "the good" or "the expedient" in the way of belief, and 
his 

entire sixth lecture is devoted to an explanation of these ideas. Here he 
identifies
 truth with verification, arguing that beliefs are true insofar as they can be 
made 

consistent with both existing beliefs and new experience. This theory appears to 
hold 

both that truth is made by human beings and that it can be changed over time. It 
is 

indeed the basically static relation between mind and world to which James 
objected 

in the correspondence theory, and his goal seems to have been to make truth a 
process-to make it more consistent with the world in flux described by Darwin's
 theory of evolution."




 


----- Original Message ----
From: david buchanan <dmbuchanan at hotmail.com>
To: moq_discuss at moqtalk.org
Sent: Thu, October 7, 2010 3:01:03 PM
Subject: Re: [MD] Quantum Enigma


John took a wiki-look at "Rationalism vs. Empiricism":

The most prominent distinguishing characteristic between these two philosophies 
is that strict empiricists reject all *a priori* truths, decrying any belief in 
innate knowledge or intuition  --------  So to an empiricist, "belief" is the 
problem.  Do they believe this strongly?  And from what "facts" is it derived?



dmb says:

Those are very broad terms and every thinker is some mixture of the two so it's 
really just a matter of emphasis but basically we're talking about the 
classic-romantic split or, as James put it, the tough minded and the tender 
minded. They both take the view that each school appeals to a different 
temperament or personality style. 

Remember that classroom scene in Chicago wherein Phaedrus the Ph.D. student 
confronts the Chairman about the truth of Socrates's analogy? In that analogy, 
the human soul is represented a chariot pulled by two horses, one is wild and 
passionate and the other is the rational part of the soul. In that analogy, the 
passions want to lead you down to earth and down into the desires of the flesh 
while the rational part wants to lead you upward toward the good and the true 
and the beautiful. From this point of view, empirical reality and the senses are 
not to be trusted. That's the low stuff that you're supposed to try and rise 
above. This is the original rationalism. It was spiritually oriented, 
otherworldly and very anti-empirical. 


Much later, rationalism was the notion that the truth could be arrived at 
through pure reason, the way whole mathematical or geometric systems can be 
built up from a few basic axioms or foundational principles. Descartes and 
Spinoza are rationalists in that sense. But by the time we get to William 
James's world, rationalism (or intellectualism) refers to guys like Hegel, 
Bradley and Royce. In James's time, rationalism was represented by these 
Absolute Idealists and empiricism was represented by scientific positivism, 
which was a very narrow brand of sensory empiricism with materialist 
assumptions. 


Now I think it's very important to understand that Pragmatism was invented as a 
way to integrate these two rival schools of philosophy, these two styles of 
thought, in the same way that Pirsig wants to integrate the classic and romantic 
modes of understanding. This is what the expansion of rationality is all about. 
These guys are saying that feeling and reason, sense and logic, are not enemies 
and that our best understanding of things will always make use of both together. 
Stanford puts it in terms of being the "mediator" between theses extremes but I 
think "integrator" is a much better word.

"James classifies philosophers according to their temperaments: in this case 
“tough-minded” or “tender-minded.” The pragmatist is the mediator between these 
extremes, someone, like James himself, with “scientific loyalty to facts,” but 
also “the old confidence in human values and the resultant spontaneity, whether 
of the religious or romantic type” (P, 17)." (Stanford encyclopedia of 
Philosophy)

About these two categories, James says:

"...I select them solely for their convenience in helping me to my ulterior 
purpose of characterizing pragmatism. Historically we find the terms 
’intellectualism’ and ’sensationalism’ used as synonyms of ’rationalism’ and 
’empiricism.’ Well, nature seems to combine most frequently with intellectualism 
an idealistic and optimistic tendency. Empiricists on the other hand are not 
uncommonly materialistic, and their optimism is apt to be decidedly conditional 
and tremulous. Rationalism is always monistic. [dmb adds - the Hegelian Absolute 
is monistic] It starts from wholes and universals, and makes much of the unity 
of things. Empiricism starts from the parts, and makes of the whole a 
collection-is not averse therefore to calling itself pluralistic. Rationalism 
usually considers itself more religious than empiricism, but there is much to 
say about this claim, so I merely mention it. It is a true claim when the 
individual rationalist is what is called a man of feeling, and when the 
individual empiricist prides himself on being hard-headed. In that case the 
rationalist will usually also be in favor of what is called free-will, and the 
empiricist will be a fatalist– I use the terms most popularly current. The 
rationalist finally will be of dogmatic temper in his affirmations, while the 
empiricist may be more sceptical and open to discussion." (William James in "The 
Present Dilemma in Philosophy")

As you can see, the rivalry between the tender-minded and tough-minded helps to 
explain the battle between religion and science. And we can see how the views 
are never purely one or the other. Scientist speak about the physical universe 
with religious awe and fundamentalist seek scientific support for their creation 
myth. In real life these two schools are blended, confused and adopted in all 
kinds of contradictory ways. But James and Pirsig are offering a more deliberate 
integration of the two. 


Then you get to radical empiricism. This is common to James, Dewey and Pirsig. 
It is mainstream American philosophy. Here you get an integrated picture of the 
relations between "intellectualism and sensationalism". It is a form of 
empiricism, as the name so obviously indicates, so that all knowledge begins 
with experience and is derived from experience. The concepts and ideas we have 
are always secondary. But it parts company with the more narrow forms of 
traditional empiricism. Unlike the positivists, the radical empiricists do not 
exclude feeling and interests. For them, valid empirical data is not limited to 
the five senses and "experience" not limited to disinterested observation. 
Radical empiricism is a rejection of scientific objectivity AND religious 
Absolutism. 


It's funny. By trying to integrate the two rivals, James has bitter enemies on 
both sides. Very religious types see pragmatism as the work of the devil and the 
scientific types think James is way too religious. I've seen the same reaction 
to Pirsig right here in this forum. The scientific types are scared off by 
Pirsig's mysticism and the religious types freak out over his atheism. As you 
may have guessed by now, I'm saying that the beauty of this integration is lost 
such partisans. 







                        
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