[MD] Words and concepts

[MarshaV]

dmb,

I'm so flattered that you need so much of my attention.  Nine out of ten of your posts are directed towards what I have said.  While I think you are cute, I still cannot vote for you to become prom queen.  I am going to vote for Arlo.   


Marsha 






On Jun 11, 2011, at 3:30 PM, david buchanan wrote:

> 
> 
>> "Definitions are the FOUNDATION of reason. You can't reason without them." (Emphasis is Pirsig's. ZAMM, page 214.) 
>> "A metaphysics must be divisible, definable and knowable, or there isn't any metaphysics." (Pirsig in Lila, page 64.) 
> 
> Ron commented:
> Often the rhetorical device is brought into play of not having to make sense in a philosophical, reflective conversation because what they mean is outside of languages conceptual ability to entirely, wholly and absolutely encapsulate and ultimately define what they mean. This is regularly confused with explanations of the ineffiable appearing as cryptic and enigmatic to those not "in the know". Their arguement being more based on the consequences of esoteria rather than the ouright rejection of meaning they believe thay are defending.    And the confusion grows from there.
> 
> 
> dmb says:
> If I get what you mean, the "rhetorical device" (not having to make sense) isn't really a deliberately used technique. It's actually just the result of Marsha's own confusion and conflation of the key concepts and central distinctions of the MOQ. It's a result of the way she defines static patterns, which is approximately the opposite of Pirsig's. It's a result of the way she conflates conceptualization and definition with reification. The result is a meaningless salad of misused words. 
> In both cases, the Pirsig quotes come from a context in which he is talking about the discrepancy between intellectual definitions and undefined Quality. This same discrepancy or distinction can be talked about in terms of static and Dynamic, the menu and the food, or concepts and reality. We could say that definitions are secondary and intellectual but the primary empirical reality is pre-intellectual and pre-verbal. Those are just different ways of saying the thing. There are slightly different terms used but they all express the same basic concept, the same distinction. And this is probably the most important distinction of all, assuming the goal is to understand the MOQ. 
> Pirsig is saying that concepts are secondary and they are distinguishable from the primary empirical reality precisely because they can be defined while the primary empirical reality cannot be defined. But Marsha completely misses the point of this central distinction and somehow construes it to mean that words and concepts can't be defined. This effectively erases the distinction between what is definable and undefinable thereby erasing the distinction between concepts and empirical reality, between static quality and DQ.
> 
> Ironically, that's exactly what reification is: the inability to distinguish concepts from reality.
> 
> That's what Pirsig is pushing back against when he attacks Plato's fixed and eternal Form of the Good and when he attacks the notion of a single, exclusive objective reality. Those are both cases of reification. This is what's behind his attack on subject-object metaphysics too. He and James are both saying "subjects" and "objects" are concepts rather than the structures of reality itself. If Marsha understood the concept of reification properly she would be bringing Buddhism in to support the MOQ central distinctions, not undermining them. She thinks the Buddhist claim against permanence is something other than the MOQ's claim against the fixed and eternal, as if permanent and eternal don't mean the same thing because she can't translate english into english.
> 



 
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