[MD] "RMP: Ignoramous or fraud?

Fri Nov 4 11:48:23 PDT 2016

John states, (apparently believing i actually said or tought this)

"So you agree with Auxier that Pirsig derived his MoQ entirely from
Whitehead?  To tell you the truth, I don't mind at all, it's just a shock
to find out after all these years."

and,
"So, he beachcombed Whitehead's ideas and presented them in novel form,
that's your claim Adrie?  I'm not trying to pin you down or "nail" you in
any way.  But it's just such a revelation to me."

------------------------------------------------------------
No , this is in no way what i say said or believe.Nobody who is sane will
derive
this from the earlier statements i made.
The beachcombing alinea was not aimed at you or your contextual situation.
Apparently  you and Auxier have a lot of venom towards Pirsig,Ant,and
Phaedrus.
If Auxier has difficulties deciding when Pirsig or Phaedrus is speaking in
the first  or second; etc...person,It is Auxier that should clean his foggy
glasses.

I took some fast , very fast, diagonal snapshots of the work Whitehead
presented.I do not find any , ANY, model that is presented and could make
or fake or diguise a sort of pre-moq or proto-moq.......none, nothing....
But i found interesting points of interest,similarities , background
radiation so to speak of,new ways of understanding big parts of reality.
Yes i should think you probably have a case to present.A defendable case.

If this case needs to contain crappy venom towards Ant, Pirsig,or Phaedrus
I will declare your case "moot" and drop it.
Do not try to shelter in Auxier's interlechcual armpits.
Build your case yourself. leave the path of  words that are taken to big,
like stealing, completely derived etcetera.

--------------------------
I can admit that i used the beachcombing metafoor deliberatly.
Yes Phaedrus and Pirsig were beachcombing, like Plato was beachcombing
Socrates work.
This did not make him a fool , or a thief.He did not hide the fact that he
took lessons. Whitehead and William James are obligatory in philosophy....,
a child can do the laundry , John.
The list of examples is endless, and even Einstein took another man's work
as a starting point, to sharpen reality.

You will have your tap on the back if you can stop twisting my words,and
only read what is written.nothing else.
make it solid,it will make you an autodidakt philosophologist.

(I can see a new posting of David came in, nice written,correct insights.)

Ok , let this sedate a bit.start reformatting yourself.
Adrie

2016-11-04 18:17 GMT+01:00 John Carl <ridgecoyote at gmail.com>:

> PS:  If there is some antipathy toward Pirsig on Auxier's part, you can
> certainly see why in that passage I quoted from Lila!  It just about NAILs
> the academic know-it-all attitude to the wall, which admittedly, Auxier
> generates from his pores.  But I still like the guy a lot and appreciate
> y'all's help in reconciling two men whom I appreciate.
>
>
>
> On Fri, Nov 4, 2016 at 10:14 AM, John Carl <ridgecoyote at gmail.com> wrote:
>
> > Adrie,
> >
> >
> > On Thu, Nov 3, 2016 at 10:49 AM, Adrie Kintziger <parser666 at gmail.com>
> > wrote:
> >
> >
> > But this aside, and adopting the term for metaforical purposes ,Pirsig
> >> is a beachcomber in the intellectual landscape ,beachcombing the giant,
> >> and the world in wich we live, to show wat was laid bare by the storm so
> >> to
> >> speak.
> >>
> >
> >
> > So you agree with Auxier that Pirsig derived his MoQ entirely from
> > Whitehead?  To tell you the truth, I don't mind at all, it's just a shock
> > to find out after all these years.
> >
> > Here is our conversation (mine and Auxier's) up to date.
> >
> > ----------- my email to Auxier:
> >
> > Randy,
> >
> > On Wed, Nov 2, 2016 at 12:15 PM, Randall Auxier <personalist61 at gmail.com
> >
> >  wrote:
> >
> >> Zero. Chicago wasn't analytical at that time, and McKeon despised
> >> analytical philosophy. That day and age at U Chicago was 100% process
> >> philosophy, both in the Phil. dept and in every committee, including the
> >> Divinity School. The list of process-professors is endless. Zero.
> >>
> >> RA
> >>
> >
> >
> > There are some pertinent biographical facts you're ignoring, Randy.
> > You're thinking "he'd have to be crazy to be in Chicago and not have
> heard
> > of Whitehead"  What you're forgetting is that he was crazy, and got so
> > crazy he had to be locked up and given electroshock therapy where he had
> to
> > reconstruct his earlier work by looking at notes he'd kept.    His story
> > isn't  made up although his story isn't so much a biography as it is a
> > novel - it's a novel about a man trying to reconstruct himself, which is
> > hard to wrap your mind around (is this first person or third?)   Paranoid
> > schizophrenics can't be judged on the basis of what a normal person or
> > student would do.  Pirsig passed over American Theistic philosophers (or
> > inasmuch as he'd heard) like Whitehead and James.  His goal was blending
> > eastern philosophy with western, as the title of his best selling book
> > illustrates.   THAT was the direction at which the old zen archer aimed
> his
> > intellect.
> >
> > But whatever he was aiming at,  he completely forgot in the aftermath of
> > electro-convulsive therapy.
> >
> > I offer a few pertinent comments from Pirsig, to illustrate my point that
> > he wasn't much of a philosophy student.
> >
> > Taken from  Robert Pirsig's commentary on Frederick Copleston's 'History
> > of Philosophy', in a personal note to Anthony McWatt, who has a Ph.D in
> the
> > MoQ, from Oxford (although ant isn't much of a philosophologist either -
> he
> > was an art major)
> >
> > January 2000
> >
> > *Dear Anthony McWatt,*
> >
> > *You asked in one of your letters how the MOQ compares with late 19th
> > Century idealism. The answer that follows copies part of Frederick
> > Copleston’s summary of that group in Volume 8 of his “History of
> > Philosophy” and inserts comparisons the MOQ. As I’ve said before,
> > philosophology isn’t my field, and I assume that Copleston’s
> understanding
> > of the positions of the various idealists is correct. Certainly it’s
> better
> > than mine, and using it and trusting it filters out a lot of red
> herring.*
> >
> > Ok, right there.  The only thing he knows about British Idealism is what
> > he reads by another man.  How could this happen? Furthermore, he
> expresses
> > absolute surprise at what Coppleston describes of Bradley,  but then, how
> > many philosophers read Bradley?  So understandable to an extent.  But in
> > Lila he discovers William James(!)  Like, for the first time?  Sort of.
> > LIke with his blinders taken off by his own intellectual evolution.
> Which
> > makes it more interesting to me.
> >
> > he explains his overall attitude in Lila, describing  a boat trip, via
> the
> > old Eerie Lackawanna canal system to the Hudson and New York City:
> >
> > "One of the disadvantages of this boat life is you don't get to use
> public
> > libraries.
> > But he had found a bookstore with an old two-volume biography of William
> > James that should hold him for a while. Nothing like some good old
> > "philosophology" to put someone to sleep. He took the top volume out of
> the
> > canvas bag, climbed into the sleeping bag and looked at the book's cover
> > for a while.
> >
> > -26-
> >
> > He liked that word "philosophology." It was just right. It had a nice
> > dull, cumbersome, superfluous appearance that exactly fitted its subject
> > matter, and he'd been using it for some time now.
> >
> > Philosophology is to philosophy as musicology is to music, or as art
> > history and art
> > appreciation are to art, or as literary criticism is to creative writing.
> > It's a derivative, secondary field, a sometimes parasitic growth that
> likes
> > to think it controls its host by analyzing and intellectualizing its
> > host's behavior.
> >
> > Literature people are sometimes puzzled by the hatred many creative
> > writers have for them. Art historians can't understand the venom either.
> He
> > supposed the same was true with musicologists but he didn't know enough
> > about them. But philosophologists don't have this problem at all because
> > the philosophers who would normally condemn them are a null-class. They
> > don't exist. Philosophologists, calling themselves philosophers, are just
> > about all there are.
> >
> > You can imagine the ridiculousness of an art historian taking his
> students
> > to museums, having them write a thesis on some historical or technical
> > aspect of what they see there, and after a few years of this giving them
> > degrees that say they are accomplished artists. They've never held a
> brush
> > or a mallet and chisel in their hands. All they know is art history.
> > Yet, ridiculous as it sounds, this is exactly what happens in the
> > philosophology that calls itself philosophy. Students aren't expected to
> > philosophize. Their instructors would hardly know what to say if they
> did.
> > They'd probably compare the student's writing to Mill or Kant or somebody
> > like that, find the student's work grossly inferior, and tell him to
> > abandon it.
> >
> > As a student Phædrus had been warned that he would "come a cropper" if he
> > got too attached to any philosophical ideas of his own. Literature,
> > musicology, art history and philosophology thrive in academic
> institutions
> > because they are easy to teach. You just Xerox something some philosopher
> > has said and make the students discuss it, make them memorize it, and
> then
> > flunk them at the end of the quarter if they forget it.
> >
> > Actual painting, music composition and creative writing are almost
> > impossible to teach and so they barely get in the academic door.  True
> > philosophy doesn't get in at all. Philosophologists often have an
> interest
> > in creating philosophy but, as philosophologists, they subordinate it,
> much
> > as a literary scholar might subordinate his own interest in creative
> > writing. Unless they are exceptional they don't consider the creation of
> > philosophy their real line of work.
> > As an author, Phædrus had been putting off the philosophology, partly
> > because he didn't like it, and partly to avoid putting a
> philosophological
> > cart before the philosophical horse. Philosophologists not only start by
> > putting the cart first; they usually forget the horse entirely. They say
> > first you should read what all the great philosophers of history have
> said
> > and then you should decide what you want to say.
> >
> > The catch here is that by the time you've read what all the great
> > philosophers of history have said you'll be at least two hundred years
> old.
> > A second catch is that these great philosophers are very persuasive
> people
> > and if you read them innocently you may be carried away by what they say
> > and never see what they missed."
> >
> > Lila - page 26
> >
> >
> > jc:
> >
> > So Professor, are you still sure there is a ZERO chance that Pirsig
> didn't
> > understand or read Whitehead?  If he did, then he's perpetrating one of
> the
> > most elaborate frauds I've ever known.
> >
> > I don't know if this subject greatly interests you, but it sure does me.
> >
> > --------Auxier's reply:
> >
> > Zero. You don't understand what actually happens in graduate seminars in
> > philosophy, such as McKeon's. I have spent a lifetime both doing this and
> > listening to it. You don't understand how students talk on their way into
> > and out of class, or what they discuss on the days between. The entire
> > heady scene of graduate school, which Pirsig describes quite nicely in
> Zen,
> > includes all kinds of things that won't show up in books and letters. I
> > assure you, he knew and heard about and probably read Whitehead while at
> > Chicago. If his memory was wiped out, that is hardly evidence against
> what
> > I'm saying. It helps my case. He relieved these ideas from the recesses
> of
> > a damaged cerebral cortex. Nothing unusual about that.
> >
> > --------
> >
> > So, he beachcombed Whitehead's ideas and presented them in novel form,
> > that's your claim Adrie?  I'm not trying to pin you down or "nail" you in
> > any way.  But it's just such a revelation to me.
> >
> > thanks,
> >
> > John C.
> >
> >
> >
> >
>
>
>
> --
> "finite players
> play within boundaries.
> Infinite players
> play *with* boundaries."
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