[MD] What's up?

[david buchanan]

dmb says to David Harding and all MOQers:

My first attempt to reply is too big to fit through the door, apparently, so I whittled it down and I'm re-sending it.

I realize that you're raising other objections, David. But please let us focus on your main objection. We can get to the other issues later, if you like, but let's take a look at your main objection first. This is not an evasion, I swear. In fact, I've already worked out a good reply to the objections to James's "cash value" and I'd be happy to discuss the other related objections - but not right now. Other issues like that will be much easier to deal with if we address your main concern first. And this time I will include textual evidence for that purpose. Okay? 



David Harding said to dmb:
Did James ever *specifically* say that he thought the problem was one of metaphysics? No. Did James ever *specifically* say that the world is best seen when one places quality first metaphysically and everything else second? No.  ...The MOQ, unlike James alternative, goes much deeper than problems of utility or the stock exchange. It goes to the problem which is at the very heart of Western philosophy - SOM. The MOQ is a metaphysics which is an answer to the problems created by SOM over the last two millennia. This was never articulated by James because he never saw it worth mentioning. Critics of Pirsig cannot say he was trying to replace truth with values of the marketplace. Pirsig has clearly identified the problem (SOM exclusivity) and the solution - the MOQ.


dmb says:
I take this to be your main objection. That is the point I'm addressing in this post and I'm going to show you that your objection is unfounded. (I think I already did, actually, but you're not yet seeing that I did.) In direct opposition to your negative answers to these questions, I can answer "yes" in each case. Did James think the problem of truth was one of metaphysics? YES. Did James put Quality first and make truth a secondary manifestation? YES. Did James specifically attack SOM as the problem at the very heart of Western philosophy? YES.

William James in “A World of Pure Experience”:

“The first great pitfall from which a radical standing by experience will save us is an artificial conception of the relations between knower and known. Throughout the history of philosophy the subject and its object have been treated as absolutely discontinuous entities” and their relations have “assumed a paradoxical character which all sorts of theories had to be invented to overcome.” 



Robert Pirsig explaining James's radical empiricism in Lila:

“The second of James’ two main systems of philosophy …was his radical empiricism. By this he meant that subjects and objects are not the starting points of experience. Subjects 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 which we make them. Pure experience cannot be called either physical of psychical: it logically precedes this distinction” (LILA 365).


And here is the contemporary scholar John Stuhr explaining Dewey's rejection of SOM:

“In beginning to understand his view, it cannot be overemphasized that Dewey is not using the word ‘experience’ in its conventional sense. For Dewey, experience is not to be understood in terms of the experiencing subject, or as the interaction of a subject and object that exist separate from their interaction. Instead, Dewey’s view is radically empirical” wherein “experience is an activity in which subject and object are unified and constituted as partial features and relations within this ongoing, unanalyzed unity”.


Here is Dewey explaining his rejection of SOM in “The Need for a Recovery of Philosophy”:
“The characteristic feature of this prior notion [SOM] is the assumption that experience centres in, or gathers about, or proceeds from a centre or subject which is outside the course of natural existence, and set over against it” (PCAP 449). This “prior notion” is what radical empiricism is rejecting. It is seen as a mistake and as the source of many fake problems in philosophy. As Stuhr puts it, “the error of materialists and idealists alike” is “the error of conferring existential status upon the products of reflection” (PCAP 437).

And finally, David Granger neatly includes all three of our radical empiricists on this point:
"...Dewey and Pirsig also argue that experience or Quality is ultimately a continuous, ongoing phenomenon. The sorting process [into conceptual categories upon reflection] never effects a complete break in the course of events. Experience, they claim, really begins with the initiation of life and ends with its cessation. [As Pirsig says, the only ones who don't do metaphysics are the unborn.] One is at no time 'outside' of it, in other words, because the 'interaction of the live creature and environing conditions is involved in the very process of living'. And because it is born of the continual interaction between organism and environment, qualitative immediacy is what James famously called 'double-barrelled,' meaning that it 'recognizes in its primary integrity no division between act and material, subject and object'. This double-barrelledness,.. is a key feature of the theory of sense-making that came to be known as 'radical empiricism'." 


dmb continues:
See, here you have five different voices (James, Dewey, Pirsig, Stuhr and Granger) using slightly different terms and yet they are all attacking SOM in the same way. Actually, there are six if you count my voice too.  Now it seems to me that this is more than enough textual evidence to defeat your objection. This is more than enough to shatter that objection into a million tiny pieces. These quotes are going to be totally convincing if and only if you understand their meaning. I'd be happy to explain and clarify as needed.