[MD] reifying carrots

[david buchanan]

Marsha said:
I agree subjects and objects, whether understood as things-in-themselves or patterns of value, are secondary.  (And, as you know, my understanding of patterned value is as nothing that could be called independent or autonomous.)

dmb says:
The mistake I've been complaining about is contained in those two sentences. Those sentence show me that you still do not understand the problem, which is treating the cure as if it were the disease. 
When subjects and objects are understood as things-in-themselves or as independently existing primary realities, that is the disease. That is how subjects and objects are taken when they have been reified.
When subjects and objects are understood as intellectual static patterns of quality, then they are taken as secondary and conceptual. That is the cure. That is how subjects and objects are taken when they have NOT been reified.
What's primary in the MOQ is immediate experience, is empirical reality and all concepts are secondary. The MOQ is one big anti-reification program and yet you keep insisting that reification is inherent to all conceptualization. This is not some trivial little mistake. Blunders don't get any more obvious or epic than this one and yet you just don't see it. 


Marsha said:
Seems to me, though, that you are suggesting that "rationality" is something other than an intellectual static pattern of value contained within the MoQ's fourth level?  What would that be?  I have asked you about the static (patterned) value in the fourth level and your response is about one particular pattern.  ..I understand all these quotes as static patterns (explanations: being suspended in language) coming from a man who is pointing to a reality that is beyond them; a reality based on direct experience.


dmb says:
Huh? Intellectual static patterns of quality are just ideas and concepts. Concepts and ideas are just intellectual patterns of Quality. The intellectual LEVEL includes the capacity to think and all the products of thought. Pirsig's efforts to "expand rationality" is a matter of identifying the problem (SOM) and offering a solution (MOQ). The main difference between the problem with rationality and the solution that improves the intellect is that the former reifies subjects and object while the latter does not. 

I accuse you of being anti-intellectual because YOUR conception of the intellect says that all conceptualization reifies, says all concepts are inherently fallacious and inescapably stuck with SOM. I'm saying that you're wrong about that claim and I've tried to explain why it's wrong, why it doesn't add up. By treating the cure as if it were the disease, you've killed the patient. You've denigrated and distorted the MOQ's highest static good and undermined the whole project. It would be a lot more upsetting if it made any sense, if it were a real threat to the project. It's far too weak to cause concern on that level but it's sad and frustrating to watch you hang on to nonsense with such tenacity for soooo long and in the face of a mountain of textual evidence.

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Previously, dmb put this mountain of evidence on Marsha table: 
> > 
> > And I keep showing you the textual evidence that James and Pirsig both did what you claim is impossible, which is to see subjects and objects as concepts rather than the ontological starting points of reality. Like I just said, if your claims were true, it would not be possible to recognize or articulate the concept of reification itself. If your claim were true, Pirsig (and James) would be doing something impossible when they recognized subjects and objects as concepts rather than as primary ontological categories. That is what they're doing right here:
> > 
> > "By this (radical empiricism) he (James) meant that subjects and objects are NOT the starting points of REALITY. Subject and objects are SECONDARY. They are CONCEPTS derived from something more fundamental which he described as 'the immediate flux of life which furnishes the material to our later reflection with its conceptual categories'. In this basic flux of experience, the distinctions of reflective thought, such as those between consciousness and content, subject and object, mind and matter, have not yet emerged in the forms wich we make them. Pure Experience cannot be called either physical or psychical; it logically precedes this distinction." (Lila, 364-5)
> > 
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> > I think that one piece of textual evidence is enough to defeat your claims, but if that's not enough there is plenty more where that came from. Pirsig's central purpose is to expand rationality and improve the intellect and the textual evidence should make it very clear what that means, especially to those who've read and thought about Pirsig's work. And please remember Pirsig's first reply to the intellect question; Anyone that's capable of reading a philosophical novel already knows what intellect is, what thinking is, he said. I always took that as a polite way of saying, "what a stupid question!".
> > 
> > Anyway, here is what we SHOULD be talking about; the expansion of rationality as Pirsig sees it.
> > 
> > "...So I guess what I'm trying to say is that the solution to the problem isn't that you abandon rationality but that you expand the nature of rationality so that it's capable of coming up with a solution." [ZMM] 
> > 
> > "[Phaedrus] did nothing for Quality or the Tao.  What benefited was reason. He showed a way by which reason may be expanded to include elements that have previously been unassimilable and thus have been considered irrational." [ZMM] 
> > 
> > "I want to show that that classic pattern of rationality can be tremendously improved, expanded and made far more effective through the formal recognition of Quality in its operation." [ZMM] 
> > 
> > "I think that it will be found that a formal acknowledgment of the role of Quality in the scientific process doesn't destroy the empirical vision at all.  It expands it, strengthens it and brings it far closer to actual scientific practice." [ZMM] 
> > 
> > "In a sense, the MOQ is an acceptance of this fact, that quality is here, and that if we can't explain it, you're not going to get rid of the quality. We have to adjust our system of explanation in such a way that we can incorporate quality into a rational system of thought." [Pirsig, AHP Lecture, 1993] 
> > 
> > "Quality is not going to go away and if our system of thought cannot comprehend what quality is and lay it out in a rational, orderly form then we must modify our whole system of thought to accommodate this existence of quality or value in our lives.  The MOQ is that attempt to completely up-end and change the entire theory of the universe from a subject-object theory of the universe, which has existed in the past, to a value-centered universe in which suddenly you have a system of thought in which "quality" is a real, usable, rational term and in which no destruction is made to subjects and objects as they are conceived in our present metaphysics." [Pirsig, AHP Lecture, 1993] 
> > 
> > "Because of his different metaphysical orientation [i.e., not SOM] Phaedrus saw instantly that those seemingly trivial, unimportant, "spur of the moment" decisions that Mayr was talking about, the decisions which directed the progress of evolution are, in fact, Dynamic Quality itself." [LILA] 
> > 
> > "The Metaphysics of Quality says that science's empirical rejection of biological and social values is not only rationally correct, it is also morally correct because the intellectual patterns of science are of a higher evolutionary order than the old biological and social patterns." [LILA] 
> > 
> > "But the Metaphysics of Quality also says that Dynamic Quality - the value-force that chooses an elegant mathematical solution to a laborious one, or a brilliant experiment over a confusing, inconclusive one - is another matter altogether.  Dynamic Quality is a higher moral order than static scientific truth, and it is as immoral for philosophers of science to try to suppress Dynamic Quality as it is for church authorities to suppress scientific method.  Dynamic value is an integral part of science.  It is the cutting edge of scientific progress itself." [LILA] 
> > 
> > "It seemed that when you add a concept of "Dynamic Quality" to a rational understanding of the world, you can add a lot to an understanding of contrarians." [LILA]
> > 
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> >                         
> > 
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