[MD] What's up?

[david buchanan]

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.   See how I've highlighted the word specifically? James's problem wasn't one of understanding the problem.  He understood the problem.  It was one of how he went about articulating his understanding of the problem and his solution to it.  James gets caught out articulating his solution to the problem because he fails to tackle the problem in the fundamental way Pirsig does.  Pirsig realised the source of the problem extends all the way back to ancient greek times and that many of our modern day philosophical problems can be traced back to this time when truth was placed before what was good.  He thus realised that the problem was a metaphysical one and that thus a new metaphysics is what is required because it doesn't logically follow that the best way to break up what's true is the same as the best way to break up what's good.  He gave these *two metaphysics* two different names to highlight their fundamental difference.  Again, no other philosopher that you mention below has done this..

dmb says:
So now you are objecting because James doesn't articulate the problem and solution in the same specific terms? Well, even if that were true, it would still be a very silly and trivial reason to reject anything. But it's not even true, David. Pirsig himself tells us that William James rejects SOM and instead puts forth a metaphysic of Pure Experience and the term "Pure Experience" is what Pirsig calls DQ. What purpose does it serve to be so inflexible with respect to names and labels? What purpose would it serve to be so unimaginative with respect to ideas? With all due respect, your objections are baseless and petty. Since you continue to demand what was contained in the textual evidence I already presented, I can only conclude that you're just not understanding the facts of the matter. And so I don't have the gumption to try any further.

"Metaphysics has usually followed a very primitive kind of quest. You know how men have always hankered after unlawful magic, and you know what a great part in magic words have always played. If you have his name, or the formula of incantation that binds him, you can control the spirit, genie, afrite, or whatever the power may be. Solomon knew the names of all the spirits, and having their names, he held them subject to his will. So the universe has always appeared to the natural mind as a kind of enigma, of which the key must be sought in the shape of some illuminating or power-bringing word or name. That word names the universe’s principle, and to possess it is after a fashion to possess the universe itself. ‘God’, ‘Matter’, ‘Reason’, ‘the Absolute’, ‘Energy’, are so many solving names. You can rest when you have them. You are at the end of your metaphysical quest.
But if you follow the pragmatic method, you cannot look on any such word as closing your quest. You must bring out of each word its practical cash-value, set it at work within the stream of your experience. It appears less as a solution, then, than as a program for more work, and more particularly as an indication of the ways in which existing realities may be changed.
Theories thus become instruments, not answers to enigmas, in which we can rest. We don’t lie back upon them, we move forward, and, on occasion, make nature over again by their aid. Pragmatism unstiffens all our theories, limbers them up and sets each one at work." -- William James, Pragmatism