[MD] Why William James?

[MarshaV]

dmb,

I think it is fine that you want to investigate and compare the MoQ with William James.  I don't much care.  It's that in 2005 RMP wrote "The Metaphysics of Quality is not intended to be within any philosophic tradition...", and I believe the statement is quite clear.  It does not prohibit your interests.  I suggest that you are not, in any pure way, protecting RMP's words, distinctions, definitions and ideas.  What you seem to be protecting is the Pirsig-James connection which is your interpretation filtered Hildebrand, Granger, Stuhr, Hickman, Anderson, Richardson , "Charlene'' and that Master's thesis you expect to get you the Nobel Prize.  And your rudeness and bullying in doing so is not in the MoQ's best interest.   I amazes me that good people have left because of your nonsense. Your bullying in an effort to seem powerful and is pathetic.  Maybe you are a good speaker.  Maybe you will someday write a good book.  But personally I have a no respect for your behavior or what you post on this list.  If others do that's fine.  But you posing as someone protecting the purity of RMP's work is a joke.  

---
"The Metaphysics of Quality is not intended to be within any philosophic tradition, although obviously it was not written in a vacuum. My first awareness that it resembled James' work came from a magazine review long after “Zen and the Art of Motorcycle Maintenance” was published. The Metaphysics of Quality's central idea that the world is nothing but value is not part of any philosophic tradition that I know of. I have proposed it because it seems to me that when you look into it carefully it makes more sense than all the other things the world is supposed to be composed of. One particular strength lies in its applicability to quantum physics, where substance has been dismissed but nothing except arcane mathematical formulae has really replaced it."
       (RMP, 'A brief summary of the Metaphysics of Quality, October 2005)

Marsha:
And I have many times presented the October 2005 quote as an updated view that RMP does not want the MoQ to fall within any philosophic tradition.  Why?  Because:  1.) "The Metaphysics of Quality's central idea that the world is nothing but value is not part of any philosophic tradition that I know of. "   2.)  "I  have proposed it [Quality] because it seems to me that when you look into it carefully it makes more sense than all the other things the world is supposed to be composed of."  3.) "One particular strength lies in its [Quality] applicability to quantum physics, where substance has been dismissed but nothing except arcane mathematical formulae has really replaced it."  


Marsha




On Mar 6, 2013, at 1:42 PM, david buchanan wrote:

> 
> As far as I can tell, Marsha is the only one who has a problem with William James. Apparently, nobody else needs an apology from me for employing James's as a way to illuminate the MOQ - which is what Pirsig himself does in Lila. 
> But just for the record let me dispense with her latest straw man (i.e. silly fabrication) and then I'll add some thoughts of my own about James and my reasons for using his work. Marsha has accused me of ignoring the following quote, which isn't true. 
> 
> 
> "The Metaphysics of Quality is not intended to be within any philosophic tradition, although obviously it was not written in a vacuum. My first awareness that it resembled James' work came from a magazine review long after “Zen and the Art of Motorcycle Maintenance” was published. The Metaphysics of Quality's central idea that the world is nothing but value is not part of any philosophic tradition that I know of. I have proposed it because it seems to me that when you look into it carefully it makes more sense than all the other things the world is supposed to be composed of. One particular strength lies in its applicability to quantum physics, where substance has been dismissed but nothing except arcane mathematical formulae has really replaced it."
> (RMP, 'A brief summary of the Metaphysics of Quality, October 2005)
> 
> And, I suppose, she thinks that this quote cancels out or undoes the quotes from Lila wherein Pirsig identifies the MOQ as a "continuation of mainstream American philosophy" and where he shows us that James had used exactly the same terms as Phaedrus for the basic subdivision of the MOQ.
> But actually, I have already addressed this point many times and did so again in my last few posts too. Apparently, Marsha is too oblivious to have noticed that. With respect to Pirsig's intentions, this is what I said just yesterday...
> 
> "...More than half of my Masters thesis consists in simply showing all the many ways they are saying the same thing. And that doesn't even include Lila, for the most part. Pirsig was already a pragmatist and a radical empiricist back in ZAMM, before he even thought to identify with James or pragmatism. It's really quite astonishing and illuminating...." 
> 
> In other words, Pirsig didn't intend to join the pragmatists club or fit himself into radical empiricism but that's where he landed. Those are the positions he was asserting even back in ZAMM and he only became aware of this connection after the fact, when it was pointed out by the reviewer after ZAMM was published. Then in Lila, we learn that Pirsig looked into it and that's where he gets explicit about this connection. In other words, there is no contradiction in saying that Pirsig's work is comparable to James's work and also saying that Pirsig had not followed pragmatism intentionally. That's what makes the similarities so astonishing. Pirsig was doing his own thing and it just so happens that he came to many of the same conclusions. The rejection of SOM, the distinction between static and dynamic, the pragmatic theory of truth and the experiential starting point (Pure experience and Dynamic Quality). The fact that he could land in the same spots as James before he was aware of that connection and before he was familiar with James is, I think, downright mind-blowing. If Pirsig had studied and then intended to simply join that club, the similarities would not be astonishing at all. In that case, we'd rightly condemn the MOQ as unoriginal and derivative. 
> 
> And yesterday I dismissed this accusation as one of many straw men she's fabricated....
> 
> "Marsha fabricated many straw men with which to do battle. One of these fake Daves doesn't want the MOQ to be compared to Buddhism,..  another Dave wants to limit the MOQ by jamming into some other philosophic tradition, one denies that Pirsig ever said anything original, and all of them have a hidden and sinister agenda, etc.. I'll just roll my eyes a dozen times and skip to the last one."
> 
> If the quote is taken as a flat-out prohibition against comparing James to the MOQ or taken as forbidding the use pragmatism and radical empiricism to clarify the meaning of the MOQ, then you'd have a situation where Pirsig is condemning his own words and deeds. If we read the quote as Marsha apparently wants to read it, then we have a situation wherein Pirsig is reversing himself and otherwise taking back all the things he said in Lila about James's pragmatism and radical empiricism. Obviously, this is nonsense because that way of reading it would turn Pirsig into a back-pedler, a fool or even a hypocrite. But if you read it rightly, there is no problem. 
> 
> 
> Apparently, Marsha thinks the line, "The Metaphysics of Quality is not intended to be within any philosophic tradition," means "the MOQ should never be compared or identified with any philosophic tradition". It doesn't. It can't mean that unless Pirsig's thinking on this topic is full of contradictions and reversals. He's simply saying that he has his own ideas and that he only became aware of those connections to James when it was noticed by somebody else. Once this was pointed out, however, Pirsig saw it too and he took it as very good news for the MOQ because James is widely considered to be respectable and mainstream. This is the text that Marsha cannot reconcile with her misunderstanding of the 2005 quote (above):
> 
> 
> "...But the comparison with James interested him most because it looked like there might be something to it.   It was also very good philosophological news. James is usually considered a very solid mainstream American philosopher, whereas Phaedrus' first book had ofter been described as a 'cult' book. ...if philosophologists were willing to accept the idea that the MOQ is an offshoot of James' work, then that 'cult' charge was shattered." (Lila 324)
> 
> "...But to Phaedrus it seemed that James's generalizations were heading toward something very similar to the Metaphysics of Quality. ...Everywhere he read it seemed as though he was seeing fits and matches that no amount of selective reading could contrive." (Lila 363)
> 
> The trick, of course, is to read these pieces of textual evidence in a way that does NOT construe Pirsig as being at odds with himself, that does not paint Pirsig as making the kind of contradictory statements that poor, sloppy thinkers like Marsha makes all the time - like her illogical phrase "ever-changing static patterns", for example. The trick is to see how all of these statements fit with each other into a coherent picture. This is exactly what she's never able to do. 
> "The Metaphysics of Quality is not intended to be within any philosophic tradition,.." 
> 
> "James had chosen exactly the same words Phaedrus had used for the basic subdivision of the Metaphysics of Quality." (p. 365)
> 
> 
> "The Metaphysics of Quality is a continuation of the mainstream of twentieth century American philosophy." (p. 366)
> 
> 
> I guess Marsha could try to make an intelligible case that one quote cancels the other but I don't see how that can be done without painting Pirsig as contradictory and incoherent. In a contest between Pirsig and Marsha, I'm definitely putting my money on the author and not on the incoherent troll. 
> 
> As I see it, the connection to mainstream American philosophy is not only shatters the "cult" reputation of ZAMM and represents good news for the MOQ politically, it also affords the use of more than a hundred years of professional scholarship. If it can be shown that Pirsig and James are mostly saying the same things, coming to the same conclusions independently of each other (I spent about 60 pages of my thesis showing just that), then we have a century of scholarship with which to examine the MOQ by proxy. 
> If I had to rely on the existing academic scholarship on Pirsig, there would be just three papers to cite instead of tens of thousands of books and papers. I suppose it's possible to pull that off but, I thought, it would be much better to have too many sources rather than too few. Plus it made tons of sense to simply follow-up on the connection that Pirsig himself had already made so clearly and explicitly. Sneddon followed up on the connection to Whitehead process philosophy, which is both appropriate and illuminating because Pirsig and James are both considered to be process philosophers too. Granger's thesis connects Pirsig with John Dewey. This is also quite appropriate because James, Pirsig and Dewey are all pragmatists and radical empiricists. No conflict there. McWatt's dissertation on the MOQ, the world's first, expands upon the Buddhist elements of the MOQ, among other things. This is not in conflict with the James connection either, of course, because the original Buddha was himself a pragmatist and a radical empiricists and it's no coincidence that James has many fans among the more serious Buddhist scholars. So using James as a basis of comparison is not only explicitly endorsed by Pirsig, it also fits quite neatly with what the other scholarly MOQers have done. Nobody is saying that the MOQ can ONLY be compared to Buddhism or that it's just a recapitulation of process philosophy or that James is the only one who ever resembled Pirsig. These various comparisons are not at all mutually exclusive. None of them are intended to reduce the MOQ to something somebody had already said. None of these scholars are making comparisons in order to show that Pirsig's work is derivative or unoriginal. These comparisons are simply meant to shed light on Pirsig's work. Frankly, I think it's just plain stupid to suggest that their work is anything but helpful. This work has put the MOQ on the academic map and Pirsig wants that to happen. He was thrilled when Anthony graduated in 2005. He was not only willing to write a letter of recommendation to my grad school so that I might try to help as well, the substance of that was a very flattering and encouraging. Pirsig's endorsement of Ant and myself on the eve of the MOQ Study Day at Oxford could not have been more flattering and encouraging. He and wife sent candy and kudos to us when we went to speak at the recent Chautauqua at Montana State University in Bozeman. I mean, it's pretty clear to me that Pirsig wants to be taken seriously by the community of professional academic philosophers. And comparing one idea to another, one philosopher to another is just what they do. That's how the game is played. 
> 
> Why does Marsha constantly condemn intellectuals, academic philosopher and William James and then act like this is Pirsig's attitude too. It's obviously not. That's just a reflection of Marsha's anti-intellectualism, resentment, jealous and the like. It's pure bullshit. And it's merely personal too. She just can't stand the idea that I could correct her misunderstanding. It's empty, irrational, ego-driven nonsense. She turned it into a trivial contest of wills wherein she thinks she can win the argument through sheer repetition, as if posting her contradictory drivel over and over again will somehow make it coherent. It won't. Static patterns are static and they're patterned no matter how many times she uses the phrase "ever-changing static patterns". In a hundred years, that will still be a stupid thing to say. 
> 
> 
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