[MD] Awareness and consciousness in the MOQ

[John Carl]

Ant I am delighted to find your receptiveness because many times I have
tried to point out to MD. some of the things you discern here, only to be
shot down for specious and inane reasons.  I will be glad to discuss this
forgotten philosopher with a fair-minded scholar, and more to the point,
some of the reasons he has been neglected by the academy.

On Sun, Apr 15, 2012 at 6:43 AM, Ant McWatt <antmcwatt at hotmail.co.uk> wrote:

>
> John,
>
> Many thanks for pointing me to Josiah Royce and to actually provide
> relevant quotes.  He's definitely on the side of the MOQ angels though I
> can't  see where he states (more or less) that VALUES COME BEFORE subjects
> and objects in the empirical train of events in the quotes you cited below
> or in the Stanford Encyclopedia of Philosophy's entry on Royce that I
> looked up yesterday.  Before I read the latter article, the name of William
> James did cross my mind.  It was strange to read then that they knew each
> other; in fact, I can't see yet exactly where James and Royce disagree.
>

John:  More than merely "knowing" each other Ant, they were life-long
friends and debate partners.  It was James that landed Royce his job at
Harvard and for the rest of their lives, they could be seen walking around
Cambridge, earnestly discussing some deep metaphysical point long into the
evening.  It was James that paid for Royce's son's Christopher's
hospitalization when he was diagnosed with severe mental illness and who
helped Royce by sponsoring him on a long sea voyage to Australia when Royce
had a breakdown of his own, after Christopher died at the age of 23. And it
was Royce who delivered the eulogy when James died.  The love they shared
was far beyond any mere "knowing".

Bruce Kuklick, in his Intellectual History of Josiah Royce states that he
and W. James agreed metaphysically probably around 95%.  The chief
disagreement being Jame's opposition to Royce's postulation of an Absolute.
 However Royce greatly modified his Absolute Idealism after publication of
his World and Individual and its subsequent critique by CS Pierce,  and
Royce's final philosophical stance he termed, Absolute Pragmatism.  It's
unfortunate that James didn't live to see this final final evolution of
Royce's thought, as his acceptance might have meant much to Royce's
reputation to subsequent generations.


> Regarding my assertion that Pirsig was original in at least how he
> approached (and solved) the "value problem" and the putting of VALUES IN
> ORDER OF COSMOLOGICAL EVOLUTION, I think if there had been a relatively
> well known philosopher or philosophy that had already made a similar MOQ
> "Copernican Revolution" with VALUES (in regard to subjects & objects)
> before Pirsig, one of those philosophologists at Liverpool University would
> have gleefully told me in the decade or so while I was studying for the
> Ph.D.  That they didn't leads me to suspect that Pirsig is at least an
> original thinker in these two regards.  Remember, I did NOT say to Mark
> that Pirsig was the first philosopher to refute SOM or the first one to
> introduce East Asian mysticism in Western philosophy!
>


The ignorance of  Royce's philosophy is something I find very surprising
and even shocking.  I myself came to him by the most unusual route.  I was
helping my wife in a mural art class, paint a mural in the Grass Valley
Library named after Royce and so I got curious about him and started
reading up a bit.  His similiarrty to PIrsig struck me so hard that it
drove me back to MD to discuss and see if I was right in my initial
impression of the similarity of their views.  What piqued my interest, was
reading Royce early in his career where he comes to the conclusion of the
fundamentalness of values through the path of extreme skepticism.  His
strongest early influences was Schopenhauer and it was from the depths of
that skepticism, that he asked himself the question "what is error"?  Much
as Pirsig's inquiry into Quality led him to the MoQ, Royce's realization of
the utter unquestionable existence of error led him to Absolute Idealism
and all that followed.

Right away, when I joined MD, I was pointed (I think it was by Matt ...
thanks Matt!) to Pirsig's critique of British Idealism host on your site
(thanks Ant!) and came at the end to Pirsig's enthusiasm over FH Bradley,
the other Famous proponent of Absolute Idealism in the late 19 century.
 That gave me enough affirmation to believe I was on the right track, but
ever since, none of the intellectuals around here have seen fit to grant
the slightest interest in the subject, except for Marsha,  and so I spend
my time these days discussing my passion on lilasquad.

 For a more erudite introduction, Dr. Kara Barnette speaks at length on
Royce and some on James here <http://www.mefeedia.com/watch/30995713>, in
one of my favorite vids on the net.

Thanks for your time and interest, Dr. McWatt,

John