[MD] Taking words Seriously

[david buchanan]

Steve said to Andre:
Conspicuously absent from his talk about truth is the notion of adequate correspondence with or representation of reality. dmb and I actually agree upon that much.  ...Having the wrong ideas doesn't take one out of reality. ..Concepts don't take one closer to or further from reality. ...The point is that "not being in touch with DQ" can't be what is wrong with our concepts. ...



dmb quotes Pirsig to the contrary:
"A subject-object metaphysics presumes that this kind of Dynamic action without thought is rare and ignores when possible. [Pirsig is referring to his hot stove example.) But mystic learning goes in the opposite direction and tries to hold on to the ongoing Dynamic edge of all EXPERIENCE, both positive and negative, even the ongoing Dynamic edge of thought itself. Phaedrus thought that of the two kinds of students, those who study only subject-object science and those who study only meditative mysticism, it would be the mystic students who would get off the stove first. The purpose of mystic meditation is not to remove oneself from EXPERIENCE but to bring one's self CLOSER TO it by eliminating stale, confusing, static, intellectual attachments of the past." (LILA 116)


"The tests of truth are logical consistency, AGREEMENT WITH EXPERIENCE, and economy of explanation. The Metaphysics of Quality satisfies these."


"What the MOQ would do is take this separate category, Quality, and show how it contains within itself both subjects and objects. The MOQ would show how things become enormously more coherent--fabulously more coherent--when you start with an assumption that Quality is the primary EMPIRICAL reality of the world..." 


"The MOQ not only passes the logical positivists' tests for meaningfulness, it passes them the highest marks. The MOQ restates the EMPIRICAL basis of logical positivism with more precision, more inclusiveness, more explanatory power than it has previously had. It says that values are not outside of the EXPERIENCE that logical positivism limits itself to. They are the essence of the EXPERIENCE. Values are more EMPIRICAL, in fact, than subjects or objects."