It's pop philosophy that I'm suspicious of because it is (1) not in conversation with the philosophical tradition (though it borrows many terms in a way that seems suspicious) and (2) seems specious in its presentation. For this particular case see:

https://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/Pirsig%27s_metaphysics_of_Quality

I am myself familiar with Zen, but I'm not at all sure what is to be gained though the buddhists in terms of metaphysics. They certainly are better than post-enlightenment popular scientism, but this is hardly and accomplishment. That we conclude that we must go outside the Western tradition to recover the non-material shows the extent to which scientism has prevailed in the last century, but the buddhist position is nearly always so unclear or stated in terms of an alien tradition to such an extent that little is to be gained. 

Well, I readily know what's trying to come to words in this position. He's meaning to overcome the peculiar modern dualism between the human world of thought, society, ethics, culture, and etc and the extra-human natural world. This is why his lack of philosophical conversation bothers me. The last two centuries have had massive attempts to articulate that issue and to solve or dissolve it. Even Kant has his thumb on it, but gigantic philosophical names like Hegel, Shelling, Nietzsche, Kierkegaard, Heidegger, etc but also whole religious, artistic, political, and social/ethical efforts have been and continue to be directed at that problem. This is as clumsy as Ayn Rand in trying to approach the problem in that it acts like if you just call all of reality moral/value them everyone will both see what that means and neither fall into habits of thought that think that the "moral" is really just human/illusion/fantasy/unscientific etc nor lack sufficient perspective to uphold a view that tries to say that against all the scientistic dismissals it will face.

In other words, this is mere dogma, not logos, not self-supporting.

Last edited by iwpoe (12/19/2015 10:06 pm)

Dennis wrote:

I asked him, if I was in a conversation with someone about the status of Universals, and if they asked me, "What did you have for lunch, and why did you have it?" I'd consider that question irrelevant to whether or not Universals exist. Unfortunately, he thinks it's mightily relevant and that everything I do is because 'quality' comes first, even if he can never define it and make distinct from objects of perception. So, thus. . .everything has quality. 

Everything has quality, but it's not so obvious that mere stating it would suffice. "What did you have for lunch and why did you have it?" is related to Universals if you are currently under the spell of your latest revelation concerning Universals, but otherwise the relationship has to be demonstrated step by step.

Yeah, that's Zen 'attend to the immediate' kind of stuff. Zen and Eastern thinkers in general prefer practical examples like "your lunch" whereas I might want to talk about theoretical concepts, but it's not an unheard of tactic.

It's perfectly serviceable as a direction to go in when you're refuting a gross reductionist view of the world. For instance, If I was talking to an eliminativist, one of the strategies I would employ would be to point out all the conscious phenomena around him that he's operating with and would have to give up if he really committed to his position.

But that would merely be preparatory. I would also do my best to understand the arguments my opposition is employing and other related schools of thought and employ them in a counter-argument. After all, the eliminativist is going to deny that the mental phenomena I'm pointing out ultimately are what I say they are. At the very least I'm going to have to show him that they aren't eliminable and/or I'm going to have to show that the arguments that motivate his position are invalid, frivolous, &etc. 

I mean, you're on a Thomist website. I highly doubt that you have a core disagreement with him. It's not as if you think that "values" are merely human illusions and all that is is the non-value physical reality described to us by the natural sciences. His problem is likely that he thinks he's arguing against a real opponent, when the problem is that his vocabulary is too simplistic to encorperate sympathetic points of view.

Last edited by iwpoe (12/21/2015 9:30 am)

You should let him know, in as nice a way as possible, that since he's a live opponent it's incredibly frustrating to have to translate all his intentions into something that makes sense without any help. He seems to have a position I agree with, but if I have to deal both with him saying incredibly vague things with words I already understand in a very different sense *and* him actively telling me that I'm opposed to him on differences of vocabulary alone then we're not going to get anywhere. And it's not like I *have* to do nothing but figure him out. Heidegger has the advantage of being in Germany and dead. He's right here with you and quite alive.

Force him to make distinctions, and if he can't there's no discussion. You can read Zen and the Art of Motorcycle Maintenance just as well as he can (if not better, since you don't insist on ossifying it into a rigid and simplistic metaphysical lexicon).

Last edited by iwpoe (12/21/2015 10:09 am)