[MD] What's up?

[david buchanan]

dmb said to Arlo:
I agree.  If everything outside the MOQ is viewed as SOM, then that view will simply dismiss academia, science and philosophy. It's not very hard to see how this absurd position leads directly to an excessively robust anti-intellectualism. 


David H replied:
I'm not sure how you could draw this conclusion.  Far from rejecting academia, science and philosophy I think they would benefit greatly from the metaphysical language which the MOQ brings with it.  Wouldn't you agree? 

dmb says:
I agree that the MOQ is intended to improve rationality itself but that's not the point, David. The problem is misreading the scope and scale of SOM in such a way that it can be used to dismiss or condemn academia (and intellect) in general. The problem is this weird attitude that Pirsig is the only person in the world with a valid outlook, that no other philosopher ever escaped the grip of SOM. If that were true, then academia, science and philosophy would all be trapped in SOM unless and until they reformed themselves into the MOQ. That is way too stark and grandiose and it is profoundly anti-intellectual. It produces a contemptuous attitude toward intellectual work of just about any kind, of anything intellectual outside the MOQ. That's way too stark, grandiose and fantastic. 


David H continued:
There might be other philosophies which reject the SOM outlook, but they would still all pretty much value truth as the most important thing and how it is supreme above all would they not?  I would classify metaphysical outlooks which do not replace truth with something else as SOM based. ...The person who comes closest to the MOQ, as you note below, is James. This is confirmed by Pirsig in Lila.  However James still didn't appreciate the magnitude of the problem.. He tried to explain himself but was still caught up in the SOM thinking of everyone else. He couldn't explain himself in a way that others would understand.

dmb says:
See, that's what I'm talking about. I'm quite certain that James was NOT caught up in SOM. It could be that you weren't hanging around when I posted ample evidence showing that James, Dewey and the contemporary scholars who write about them are quite explicit about rejecting SOM. James and Dewey are definitely in agreement with Pirsig on this point AND they also agree on the basic solution, on the alternative to SOM. See, so if James and Dewey are attacked as part of the problem, you've mistakenly attacked the solution. This is one of Marsha's crucial errors and it's contagious, apparently. 
This is what I've been saying about the pragmatic theory of truth, in fact. It is the solution, not the problem. The pragmatic theory of truth is what you get after you reject SOM's correspondence theory of truth. To say, "I'm not interested in truth," as Marsha does, is to say "I'm not interested in the MOQ's answer to the problem of SOM". The effect is to reject the MOQ's expanded rationality. Supposing I'm right, can you see what a HUGE mistake that would be? I'm constantly hammering this point against anti-intellectualism for that simple reason; because it is such an EPIC blunder.
It is totally unreasonable to expect complete agreement between any two philosophers and nobody ever claimed that Pirsig and James were identical in every way. But they are so similar that it's downright spooky, especially considering that he never even mentioned James in his work until it was pointed out to him after his first book was published. Amazingly, Pirsig tells us, James had even adopted the terms "static" and "dynamic" to describe the relation between concepts and the immediate flux of experience. For both James and Pirsig, not to mention Dewey, truths exist within a larger entity. Pirsig calls it DQ whereas James calls it Pure Experience but both of their terms refer to the primary empirical reality, refer to cutting edge of experience. The objective truth of SOM is nowhere to be seen in their pragmatic theory of truth. Truths are true in relation to experience, not in relation to objective reality.
And finally, while it's true that James has been misinterpreted since the day he was first published, it would be quite an exaggeration to say that nobody ever understood him. Dewey and Schiller did. Pirsig does. I do, thanks to Pirsig. And I was able to find contemporary scholars who seem to understand it as Pirsig does. In fact, Pirsig's idea of getting James two doctrines together, of fusing the pragmatic theory of truth with his radical empiricism, was already taking shape in James's mind and there are contemporary scholars who also think it's best to view pragmatism as "a special chapter" within radical empiricism. 


David H said:
Right, well to defend myself here I was not bashing academia, I was doing the opposite in noting how important it is and how great it would be if the MOQ was accepted by academia.


dmb says:
Again, I'd say that paints a picture that's unrealistically stark and grandiose, as if Pirsig's work could single-handedly transform the whole academic world. It just doesn't work like that. It's more like a complex eco-system with many different ongoing conversations such that one can only realistic hope to have some real influence and impact on some of them. Pirsig's second book took that idea seriously, which is exactly why we find Pirsig preforming a little philosophological work with respect to his own MOQ, identifying it with mainstream American Pragmatism in general and William James in particular. Granger's thesis on Dewey and Pirsig was accepted by "academia" in Canada. McWatt's thesis on Pirsig (the world's first) was accepted by "academia" in the UK, not to mention the MOQ study day at Oxford. My little Master's thesis on James and Pirsig was accepted by "academia" in the USA. IN that sense, the MOQ has already been officially launched and is already part of "academia". There has been a resurgence of pragmatism among academic philosophers and so in terms of getting the MOQ into the mix, Pirsig's positioning and timing could hardly be better. BUT it's not as if the whole of academic philosophy marches in lockstep with the current fashions, which healthy and democratic. It's not like some academic Pope sets the doctrines down for everyone. It's always in motion, always a jungle of disagreements, disputes, dialogues and debates. All anyone can do is get in there and try to say something convincing and helpful. If this task is approached with anti-intellectual attitudes or the presumption that academic professionals are all guilty until proven innocent, there'd be zero chance of success. 

Don't take this criticism personally. I mean, the idea here is simply to criticize anti-intellectual interpretations of the MOQ, to explain why such a reading is wrong and - hopefully- how to eliminate that mistake and adopt a reading that doesn't make that mistake. All I have to go on, of course, is what people write. Beyond that, I can only guess at how others understand things, what their exact conception is like. But I think a real discussion of the matter absolutely depends on whether or not a person can honestly assess the substance of the criticism - as opposed to some kind of face-saving evasion or back-peddling. That's just pride getting in the way, you know? Is it really so horrible to be corrected. Are some people traumatized at the thought that somebody might be able to teach them something? That sort of attitude is extremely destructive in a situation like this, you know? A philosophy discussion group can't function rightly if the participants are unwilling to be criticized. Lashing out in anger is exactly the wrong reaction - assuming the criticism is reasonably fair, intelligent and directed against actual comments and assertions. The right reaction, obviously, is to make a sincere effort to understand the criticism and to answer it. We don't need a lot of fancy rules. It's just about being honest, fair, relevant and clear. We're supposed to be looking at ideas together precisely because there's always somebody who thought of something that you didn't see, because everybody needs to be corrected about something.
What's the big deal about that, anyway. Is there any living person who isn't wrong about something every day? And yet there's always some hairy ego-drama going on. It spoils the party like nothing else. The egotistical reaction acts like cotton in the ears every time. I guarantee it. C'mon, admit it. We see it every freakin day in this place. It's almost nothing but. That's a shame. Literally.