[MD] philosophology

[david buchanan]

Ian said to Dan:

I see the same point, but maybe disagree where the problem lies. (You and dmb both bring in "intent" to understand and agree understandings - as I did). In fact, I think most people ARE  "trying" to reach out to that, and do understand that that is the difference which Pirsig brings, but .... and here's the big but .... we only seem to have SOmist language for our discourse, when it comes to any kind of argument we expect to lead to any "rational" definitions and conclusions.   I'm OK with that, because I don't feel bound with intellect or philosophy being constrained by that kind of logic. Pirsig used a greater aesthetic in his rhetorical communications - and we find quality in him for that very reason.


dmb says:

What!? We only have SOMist language? Are you saying that the rejection of SOM also entails an opposition to any rational definitions and conclusions? You don't think that intellect or philosophy should be constrained by logic?

Oh. My. God. 

That's not what it means to reject SOM but rather it's simply a rejection of intellectual quality. It's just knuckle-dragging, reactionary anti-intellectualism. This view is wildly inconsistent with Pirsig's root expansion of rationality and totally undermines his project! Plus it doesn't make any sense, defies the textual evidence from Pirsig and lots of other thinkers too. It's wrong in every way that I can think of. 

"Definitions are the FOUNDATION of reason. You can't reason without them." (Emphasis is Pirsig's. ZAMM, page 214.)

"A metaphysics must be divisible, definable and knowable, or there isn't any metaphysics." (Pirsig in Lila, page 64.)

"The tests of truth are logical consistency, agreement with experience, and economy of explanation. The Metaphysics of Qqulity satisfies these." (Pirsig in Lila, chapter 8.)

At the end of chapter 29 in Lila, Pirsig says, "The MOQ also says that DQ - the value-force that chooses an elegant mathematical solution to a laborious one, or a brilliant experiment of a confusing, inconclusive one - is another matter altogether. ...Dynamic value is an integral part of science. It is the cutting edge of scientific progress itself."


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, emphasis is mine)  It's 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)
"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)

Do NOT confuse the disease with the patient. SOM is the disease. Intellect is the patient who needs to be healed, not the disease that needs to be destroyed. To kill the patient is to totally miss the point, is malpractice of epic proportions. Obviously, there is no shortage of textual evidence for this point.

And this confusion is exactly the mistake that leads know-nothing trolls like Marsha to adopt her vacuous nihilism and her sophomoric relativism. Follow her at your own peril.