[MD] humpty dumpty

[david buchanan]

Here you go. For your convenience, the last two batches gathered in one place. I wonder if Marsha will have anything interesting to say about the substance of these remarks. Anything is possible but I'm not gonna hold my breath or make any bets. If I had to bet, I'd predict some silly, face-saving nonsense rather than anything like philosophical reflection or a reasonable response. I'd predict that my answers will be followed by a repetition of the questions and a denial that any answers have been given. Round and round she goes, for years now.  

> dmb says:
> Yea, one scholar was even bold enough to claim that the original Buddha himself was a pragmatist and a radical empiricist. I think a MOQer can understand what this means without reading James, Dewey, Hagen, Wallace or anyone else because Pirsig's MOQ is a form of pragmatism and radical empiricism too. To get at what this means, I think, is to sort out the relation between concepts and reality, between beliefs and experience. It's not a matter of rejecting or endorsing ideas and concepts as such but rather a matter of whether or not they are given priority over experience. In Pirsig's case, he describes this relationship in terms of what's primary and what's secondary. For all our pragmatists and radical empiricists, concepts are always secondary and experience itself is the primary empirical reality. Experience itself is reality and our ideas and concepts only have meaning and truth in relation to that primary reality. That's what Pirsig means by saying that thought can't bring you closer to reality. That statement, among other things, is a rejection of a long rationalist tradition - going all the way back to Plato and Socrates - which prioritizes logic and definitions over empirical reality. In ZAMM this attack on the Platonic tradition is dramatized as a defense of the Sophist's long-lost cause, as a re-assertion of artful rhetoric over logical rigor or precise verbal formulas. I mean, Pirsig is quite consistent through both books on this point.
> 
> Let's not forget to remember how anti-intellectual Pirsig in NOT. The whole point of the MOQ, as Paul Turner explained so well, is to expand and improve rationality. The aim is a root expansion of rationality. As Pirsig puts it, "the thing to be analyzed, is not Quality, but those peculiar habits of thought called 'squareness' that sometimes prevent us from seeing it. ..The subject for analysis, the patient on the table, was no longer Quality, but analysis itself. Quality was healthy and in good shape. Analysis, however, seemed to have something wrong with it that prevented it from seeing the obvious." (ZAMM 218-9) 
> Pirsig says his central aim is to show how "rationality can be tremendously improved, expanded and made far more effective through a formal recognition of Quality in its operation." (ZAMM 278) That's where "direct experience" or "the primary empirical reality" comes in as a priority over concepts and ideas. It's not just a new philosophy, he says, it's "even broader than that - new form of spiritual RATIONALITY". (ZAMM 358, emphasis is Pirsig's) "He did nothing for Quality or the Tao. What benefited was reason." (ZAMM 257)
> 
> "Reason and Quality had become separated and in conflict with each other" (ZAMM 358) back in the days of Plato. "It's been necessary since before the time of Socrates to reject the passions, the emotions, in order to free the rational mind for an understanding of nature's order", Pirsig says, but now it's time for "reassimilating those passions which were originally fled from. The passions, the emotions, the affective domain of man's consciousness, are a part of nature's order too. The central part." (ZAMM 294)
> 
> In Lila, then we find the nuts and bolts version of what it means to subordinate reason to Quality instead of the other way around. "Truth is a species of the good," James and Pirsig say together, quite pragmatically. They both want thought to serve life and not the other way around. Our ideas are derived from the immediate flux of life and they are useful and true only to the extent that they are successfully "set to work within the ongoing stream of experience", as James puts it. And if our philosophies are going to be the servants of life, then what hope is there unless we're willing to "admit that all our philosophies are hypotheses, to which all our faculties, emotional as well as logical help us, and the truest of which will at the final integration of things be found in possession of the men whose faculties on the whole had the best divining power?"
> 
> This re-prioritization is also expressed in terms of Dynamic experience as distinguished from static concepts by both Pirsig and James. You've seen this quote many times; " 'There must always be a discrepancy between concepts and reality, because the former are static and discontinuous while the latter is dynamic and flowing.' Here James had chosen exactly the same words Phaedrus had used for the basic subdivision of the Metaphysics of Quality." (Lila, 365)
> 
> The quote you posted, Dan, comes from the same page and it makes this same point. "... Value, the pragmatic test of truth, is also the primary empirical experience. The Metaphysics of Quality says pure experience is value. ... Value is not at the tail-end of a series of superficial scientific deductions that puts it somewhere in a mysterious undetermined location in the cortex of the brain. Value is at the very front of the empirical procession." (Lila 365)
> 
> My hunch, Dan, is that you've followed Marsha's line of thinking and ended up with an excessively anti-intellectual position as a result. I'm not a mind-reader, of course, but I think it's quite clear that a bogus anti-intellectualism is her central mistake, from which many other mistakes flow. For whatever it's worth, I really think that reading her posts are a waste of time and you ought not take her views seriously. She'll only lead you down some dark alley or dead end. Here brand of vacuous nihilism is very un-Pirsigian, I think, and it's not very Buddhist either.

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dmb said to Dan and all:My hunch, Dan, is that you've followed Marsha's line of thinking and ended up with an excessively anti-intellectual position as a result. I'm not a mind-reader, of course, but...
Dan replied:...I am left to wonder if you have bothered at all to read what I said. I will reproduce a small section here: "What RMP seems to be saying is that value doesn't start with a set of beliefs like pragmatism or radical empiricism or even the MOQ. It starts with pure unadulterated experience. That tree doesn't lean towards belief at all. It falls away from it in the same way Buddhism does." Where am I espousing a brand of nihilism? ...I am not anti-intellectual any more than I am anti-biological or anti-social. ...Buddhism seeks to shake that notion and allow one to know reality directly without the trappings of any preconceived beliefs, assumptions, or prejudices. If the MOQ is an extension of Buddhism then it too will not lean on a set of beliefs and assumptions but instead will point to knowing experience directly.
And then later, Dan said to Arlo:...But Buddhism isn't interested in activity. It espouses non-activity. ...Robert Pirsig recommended a book called Buddhism: Plain and Simple written by a man who is an expert, however. Perhaps this quote might clarify what I mean:“The buddha-dharma does not invite us to dabble in abstract notions. Rather, the task it presents us with is to attend to what we actually experience, right in this moment. You don't have to look "over there." You don't have to figure anything out. You don't have to acquire anything. And you don't have to run off to Tibet, or Japan, or anywhere else. You wake up right here. In fact, you can only wake up right here." "So you don't have to do the long search, the frantic chase, the painful quest. You're already right where you need to be.”

dmb says:The main thrust here is to characterize philosophical debate and reflections as "dabbling in abstract notions," as "the frantic chase, the painful quest" and to characterize concepts and abstractions as "preconceived beliefs, assumptions and prejudices" which the MOQ "falls away from" and "doesn't lean toward. That's as good an example as any. That's what I mean by anti-intellectualism. This position denigrates philosophical reflection, warns against the use of abstract concepts as a painful trap to be avoided. I think anti-intellectualism this is a big mistake. As I read it, Hagen is talking about enlightenment, about spiritual awakening, and, like Pirsig, says that this cannot be achieved through intellectual understandings. But this does not mean that philosophical reflection is a bogus activity. I mean, we cannot reach Nirvana by following a trail through the woods but that doesn't mean we should chop our legs off. This is why I spent so much effort making various distinctions between concepts and reality. This is the difference between static and Dynamic and I'm fairly certain that the MOQ is NOT aimed at denigrating static concepts or intellectual value. The point is to expand and improve our ways of thinking by prioritizing direct experience, by subordinating our reflections and conceptual categories to that primary empirical reality. 
I think it's quite right to say, as you did, that Pirsig is "saying is that value doesn't start with a set of beliefs," but then you go on to use this against, "beliefs like pragmatism or radical empiricism or even the MOQ". This is where you start to go off the rails precisely because the MOQ is a form of pragmatism and radical empiricism, one which says "that value doesn't start with a set of beliefs". You see how that works? The MOQ says that value comes first and concepts are always secondary but you're mistakenly using that point to undermine that point. The result is not just to subordinate intellectual quality but to construe Pirsig's own intellectual descriptions as inherently illegitimate. This transforms the MOQ's constructive criticism of rationality into a deeply anti-intellectual rejection of philosophy as such. Pirsig's aim is to make philosophical reflection into an art form, a highly evolved form of morality and a high quality endeavor that improves your life. The art of thinking is very different from the undivided experience known to mystics and the various kinds of mystics all agree that thinking is, by definition, not undivided but that doesn't mean we shouldn't also aim for excellence in thought and speech. Pirsig's goal is the root expansion of rationality and this simply cannot be accomplished nor appreciated without intellect. In other words, putting Value or Quality at the center of our thinking is NOT done in order to trash thinking or to reject intellectual activity but to improve it. 
And so, when I see these dismissive or even hostile attitudes toward the philosophical work Pirsig has done, it strikes me as very wrong and even a little heart-breaking. 
Again, please reflect on how anti-intellectual Pirsig is NOT being with statement like....

As Pirsig puts it, "the thing to be analyzed, is not Quality, but those peculiar habits of thought called 'squareness' that sometimes prevent us from seeing it. ..The subject for analysis, the patient on the table, was no longer Quality, but analysis itself. Quality was healthy and in good shape. Analysis, however, seemed to have something wrong with it that prevented it from seeing the obvious." (ZAMM 218-9)
Pirsig says his central aim is to show how "rationality can be tremendously improved, expanded and made far more effective through a formal recognition of Quality in its operation." (ZAMM 278) 
His aim is not just a new philosophy, he says, it's "even broader than that - new form of spiritual RATIONALITY". (ZAMM 358, emphasis is Pirsig's)
"He did nothing for Quality or the Tao. What benefited was reason." (ZAMM 257)
The problem is that "Reason and Quality had become separated and in conflict with each other" (ZAMM 358) back in the days of Plato. 
"It's been necessary since before the time of Socrates to reject the passions, the emotions, in order to free the rational mind for an understanding of nature's order", Pirsig says, but now it's time for "reassimilating those passions which were originally fled from. The passions, the emotions, the affective domain of man's consciousness, are a part of nature's order too. The central part." (ZAMM 294)
So the solution is subordinate reason to Quality instead of the other way around.
"Truth is a species of the good," James and Pirsig say together, quite pragmatically. 
" 'There must always be a discrepancy between concepts and reality, because the former are static and discontinuous while the latter is dynamic and flowing.' Here James had chosen exactly the same words Phaedrus had used for the basic subdivision of the Metaphysics of Quality." (Lila, 365)
"... Value, the pragmatic test of truth, is also the primary empirical experience. The Metaphysics of Quality says pure experience is value. ...Value is at the very front of the empirical procession." (Lila 365)