[MD] humpty dumpty

[david buchanan]

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)