Hi Platt,
>Perhaps Matt or Scott can show me the error of my ways by listing the
>points of agreement between Pirsig and Rorty, or where my summaries
>of Rorty's views are way off.
Don't mind if I do.
Your summary of Rorty isn't too far off the mark. I'll go into more of that in
a moment. Your interpretation of Pirsig is, however, what I find
disagreeable. Your interpret Pirsig as a systematic philosopher, one who
indulges in universal truths. There is much in Pirsig that would support such
an interpretation. My own interpretation of Pirsig, the historicist,
pragmatist Pirsig also has textual support (as I've been attempting to put
forth). My use of Rorty is an attempt to underscore why I think it would be
best to interpret Pirsig in this manner, rather than in the systematic,
universal manner.
>First, Rorty completely rejects all universals, absolutes and self-evident
>truths. (That his total rejection is itself an absolute doesn't phase him.
>Logic in his view is "contingent" like everything else.) By contrast,
>Pirsig's explanation of reality is based on an universal absolute he
>identifies as "Quality."
Your right about Rorty (though, as usual, you're attempt to catch him in a
language-trap fails). However, I don't find anything absolute or universal
about Quality. To say that Quality is Reality is simply to redescribe
reality. There's nothing universal or absolute about it. Its just simply
everywhere and everything we experience.
>Second, in Rorty's view, reality can only be known by words which are
>infinitely flexible. Therefore, reality is also flexible, or as he might put
>it, "corrigible." Truth cannot be established without recourse to language
>and "intersubjective" agreement. By contrast, Pirsig posits that truth
>can be established by a self-evident, nonverbal reaction to the moment's
>Quality. like viewing paintings in a gallery.
It is true, "truth" is something that only arises through the use of language.
Without languange, truth doesn't even make sense. (If you remember, though,
there are two routes to formulating truths: one private and the other public.)
The Pirsig that says that truth is self-evident and a nonverbal reaction is a
Pirsig that hasn't taken the linguistic turn and one that I think needs to.
Truth isn't a nonverbal reaction to Quality. When you look at a sunrise,
there's nothing truthful about it. Its not until one says, "Ah, that's nice."
That, according to the person, would be a truthful statement.
>Third, Rorty's moral philosophy is circumstantial. His moral guide is
>"contextualism" whereby moral decisions can only be made when all
>the factors involved in a unique situation can be weighed by those
>involved in the problem. By contrast, Pirsig establishes universal moral
>levels in ascending order of rightness whereby, for example, it's "more
>moral for a doctor to kill a germ than a patient" and "for an idea to kill a
>society than for a society to kill an idea."
I would never say "all the factors involved can be weighed" because there are
potentially an infinite set of factors. The use of recontextualization is to
see the context with recourse to as many factors as one sees as important. The
more efforts at recontextualization, the more we may be able to see other
factors that might be important.
That Pirsig "establishes universal moral levels" I deny outright. There is
nothing universal about Quality or the levels. The levels are contingent, they
are as we find them and recontextualize them. What the MoQ is best seen as is
an effort to recontextualize old problems, to see new factors. When we use the
MoQ to contextualize the 60's, for instance. When we say that it is more moral
for doctor to kill a germ, it is within a context that says "It's okay 'cuz the
doctor is more evolved," not because its always been more moral for doctors to
kill germs.
>Fourth, Rorty adheres to the cause/effect principle, i.e., the assumption
>that nothing happens without prior cause and that the cause and effect
>principle applies universally. (That this contradicts his anti-universal
>stance doesn't phase him, as noted in No. 1 above). In Rorty's world,
>everything including human behavior, is "contingent." In contrast, Pirsig
>advocates free will where "To the extent that one follows Dynamic
>Quality, which is indefinable, one's behavior is free."
That Rorty adheres to an environment that causes us to have beliefs, I
certainly won't deny. Once again, though, this isn't somewhere you can catch
him in a word-trap. Its just something that happens. There's nothing
universal about putting your hand on a stove and saying "Damn that's hot"
(outside of the fact that almost anybody you'll meet will say that). Rorty
would say that the environment causes you to have that belief. Once you have
that belief, however, you can alter it be reference to other beliefs in an
unending cycle.
Pirsig's dissolution of the problem of free will and determinism I've actually
found to be faulty. As I've spelled out elsewhere, I think the locus of free
will (and consciousness, for that matter) in Pirsig's setup has to be placed in
any particular thing that values something else (which is everything).
Otherwise, how would a thing be able to "choose" between static and Dynamic
Quality?
But aside from all this, I don't think Pirsig has so much to disagree about
with Rorty. You can translate causation into preconditional valuation
(Pirsig's solution) easily enough. And Pirsig would never deny the contingency
of things. That's what static patterns are: the contingent nature of things.
>Finally, Rorty believes that whatever can't be defined doesn't exist. His
>world totally consists of "narratives" and "texts." It's maps on maps on
>maps all the way down. In contrast, Dynamic Quality, which cannot be
>defined, being prior to all concepts, is an essential part of existence in
>Pirsig's MOQ.
Think of it this way: you are defining Dynamic Quality by labeling it. You are
constricting it. Insofar as Dynamic Quality has to be a metaphor, an unfamilar
sound, Rorty has nothing wrong with it. Metaphors, in this way, are undefined
because people gradually understand their usage and meaning by context. As
soon as a metaphor becomes defined, in a strict sense, it becomes literal.
This is the dynamic that occurs between DQ and static Quality.
>
> If my comparison of Rorty and Pirsig is anywhere near accurate, it
> appears the two are miles apart. In fact, Rorty's philosophy far from
> being original like Pirsig's seems to be a throwback to medieval thought.
> When I looked up the word "nominalism" in my unabridged Random
> House dictionary, the only entry was as follows"
>
> "(in medieval philosophy) the doctrine that general or abstract words do
> not stand for objective existing entities and that universals are no more
> than names assigned to them"
>
> When you get through the thickets of verbiage, isn't this what Rorty is
> saying?
I'm not going to enter into a debate about who's being the most original. I
think such debates are pointless and they certainly don't clue you into who's
better or more useful as a thinker. Plato was innovative and he gave us the
entire misconceived tradition of Western Philosopy.
But yes, the definition of nominalism you've given is one of Rorty's
philosophical platforms. It being first conceived in the Middle Ages, of
course, matters little. Consider, afterall, that the Pirsig you're touting
fits snuggly in a Greek tradition of metaphysics. I don't see how the
timeframe in which some of the tools and labels Rorty and Pirsig use were
created shines good or bad light on either.
The two things that I think have become apparent from this post and past ones
in our exchange is that you want Pirsig to be a foundationalist and a believer
in truth as correspondence to reality. This is why I prefer ZMM to Lila:
Pirsig talks like a foundationalist all the time in Lila. This is something I
think needs to be overcome and circumvented. The correspondence to reality
bits are those where you find Pirsig talking like the Truth is out there,
waiting to be discovered. In contrast to this, I would point out sections like
the one on Poincare in ZMM. Here he talks like theories are conventions i.e.
made out of convenience. Created, not found.
What Lila is to ZMM is Pirsig's attempt to couch some of his insights into an
overarching theory. Rorty denies that we need to do this. The only thing
theories can do is perhaps give us a nice summary of how we already behave at
this point in time or of what we believe at this point in time. That is how I
predominantly view the MoQ: a summary of Pirsig's views. Places he attempts to
ground things out in a systematic metaphysics, I ignore. And I don't think any
of the good, edifying narratives and insights are adversely affected by this
kind of reading.
Matt
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