[MD] The Hero's journey

[Matt Kundert]

DMB said:
Hypochondria and therapy are similar analogies?

Matt:
Are they not?

DMB said:
Isn't the question about whether or not SOM is a real problem or a 
fake one?

Matt:
Sort of.  More like, "In what way fake."  Didn't you, after all, call 
SOM a case of "hypochondria," which is I thought a fake illness with 
real effects.  I thought that was an excellent analogy for dealing with 
the problem.

DMB said:
Isn't the question about whether or not our concepts can have a blind 
spot with respect to DQ?

Matt:
Well, that wasn't my formulation of the question.

DMB said:
What do you and/or Wittgenstein mean by "therapy" such that it's 
relevant or similar to my assertion that SOM is a real problem?

Matt:
What you meant by calling it "hypochondria."  It's a disorder that 
needs to be treated and worked through.  It's real until the person 
can be shown how it isn't.

DMB said:
Wouldn't therapy be some kind of cure while hypochondria is some 
kind of illness? 

Matt:
Isn't the MoQ some kind of cure while SOM is some kind of illness?

DMB said:
And doesn't Pirsig do exactly what Wittgenstein insist we can't do, 
which is talk about the ineffable. Wouldn't his stance preclude or 
even forbid the MOQ?

Matt:
Well, this might be more minutiae than we need for the broad-scale 
agreement.  (And I'm not sure Wittgenstein and Pirsig exactly differ 
on the ineffable as you say.)  Sometimes you like to dismiss people 
for a thing they said without bothering to much articulate any depth 
to an incongruity.  It reminds me of Pirsig's initial dismissal of James 
(and how he came around later).

Hey, if you sense that there isn't much purpose in coming to 
understand Wittgenstein, I'm not going to tell you you have to.  We 
all make judgements for ourselves and what lines of thought we're 
going to pursue.

DMB said:
I thought you were asking me to reconcile an apparent contradiction 
in the MOQ. Was that not the case? Was that not successful?

Matt:
I guess you missed the part where I had been approaching cautiously 
my own answer, and how it looks similar to yours.  When I prompted 
you for a reconciliation, it was prompting you to deal with the 
problem I was dealing with, which you hadn't the first time (by not 
explicitly dealing with Pirsig's collapse of the experience/reality 
distinction).  You then did deal with it, and I think successfully, but 
then that's also because I take it to be the same thing I'd want to 
say, and I after all think my answer is somewhat successful.  
Thanks for carefully reading!

Matt