From: Paul Turner (paul@turnerbc.co.uk)
Date: Mon Jan 10 2005 - 20:31:30 GMT
Hi Matt, Sam
I've chopped up the reply I posted earlier, because I think it was too
big for the list server, and I have made a couple of changes. So even if
the original post turns up, please read these two instead.
---------------------------------------------------
A Kundert post! An unexpected pleasure. I'd better get my textbooks out.
Matt said:
Paul's dismissive denials of Pirsig's involvement with Kantian problems
I think hinge on calling Sam out on a largely misplaced genetic fallacy.
Paul:
Sam's argument, as I understand it, is --
1. Schleiermacher reacted to and retained the Kantian distinction
between noumena (things-in-themselves) and phenomena (things as they
appear).
"[The Kantian problematic] immediately brought forth a response, which,
whilst retaining the Kantian epistemology, argued that in certain
circumstances it was possible to have a 'pure' experience, i.e. to
experience the 'noumena'. This was the Romantic movement..."
"In the development of the Romantic understanding, a key thinker is the
theologian Friedrich Schleiermacher..."
2. James derived his mysticism from Schleiermacher, and therefore
retained the Kantian epistemology.
"It is William James' version of mysticism, derived from Schleiermacher,
which has dominated the 20th century investigations....let us call it
the "Modern synthesis""
3. Pirsig is conceptually shaped by Schleiermacher via James and has
therefore retained the "modern synthesis," and therefore Kant's
epistemology.
"For the links between the MoQ and Schleiermacher's project seem
profound, even down to some of the language used. Is it accurate to
describe the MoQ as simply a redescription of Schleiermacher's scheme,
that is, is not Dynamic Quality merely a Kantian 'pure experience', and
the levels of Static Quality merely a redescription of phenomena? If
not, why not? This is not to suggest a direct borrowing, only to point
out that Pirsig's work - probably via William James - has inherited a
conceptual shape from Schleiermacher..."
My counter-argument is that (3) is not true (and I'm not so sure about
(2) but that is irrelevant). What is misplaced about that argument? I
thought Sam's argument and my counter were pretty straight-forward.
Perhaps Sam can point out where I should have read between the lines or
where I have missed something glaringly obvious here.
Matt continues:
As I've said, I think Paul's reply consisted mainly in denials of
Pirsig's
involvement in Kantian problems. To me, this all reminds me of a far
off
debate I was engaged in with DMB. DMB suggested that my critiques of
Pirsigian mysticism (which parrallel Sam's) completely missed the boat
because mysticism has nothing to do with epistemology. I read Paul's
reply
as amounting to the same thing.
Paul:
Well you got that wrong. Saying that mysticism is nothing to do with
epistemology wasn't my argument at all. I am saying that:
a) Pirsig rejects the basic propositions of *Kantian* epistemology.
b) Pirsig was influenced by Northrop and Oriental philosophy as much as,
if not more than, Kant and hardly at all by James. So to ignore this
when you are making a case for profound conceptual inheritance is a big
mistake.
Matt said:
Mysticism has nothing to do with
epistemology, so it has nothing to do with Descartes or Kant or anything
else like it in the West. At the time of my debate with DMB, Sam
rejoined
to DMB that, though mysticism may not be epistemology, it may have
epistemological consequences, i.e., the _claims_ made on behalf of
mysticism
may have epistemological status. I think this is right and I see the
continued denials that Pirsigian philosophy runs into the problems of
the
West as denials that Pirsig has to do epistemology, as denying that he
has
to answer the skeptic.
Paul:
I have not denied, in the response to Sam or at any time, that Pirsig
has to do epistemology. Neither have I denied that mystical claims have
epistemological status. Nor does Pirsig, who, if you recall, states that
the MOQ subscribes to empiricism:
"Most empiricists deny the validity of any knowledge gained through
imagination, authority, tradition or purely theoretical reasoning. They
regard fields such as art, morality, religion, and metaphysics as
unverifiable. The MOQ varies from this by saying that the values of art
and morality and even religious mysticism are verifiable, and that in
the past they have been excluded for metaphysical reasons, not empirical
reasons." [LILA p.113]
Furthermore, as Northrop points out, pure empiricism and mysticism start
from the same point with respect to knowledge.
"Pure fact may be defined as that which is known by immediate
apprehension alone. It is that portion of knowledge which remains when
everything depending upon inference from the immediately apprehended is
rejected.
Strictly speaking, as has been previously noted, we can say nothing
about pure fact, since the moment we put in words what it is, we have
*described fact* rather than merely observed fact. Nevertheless, we can
use words to denote it, providing we realize that these words are
concepts which require us to find in the immediacy of our undescribed
experience, what the words mean.
But to recognize this is to learn a great deal about the character of
pure fact. Words point it out; by themselves they do not convey it. This
means that pure fact must be immediately experienced to be known. At
least its elementary constituents cannot be conveyed by symbols to
anyone who has not experienced them. But to say this is to affirm that
pure fact is ineffable in character. For the ineffable is that which
cannot be said, but can only be shown, and even then only to one who
immediately experiences it.
Furthermore, since ineffability is the defining property of the
mystical, it follows that the purely factual, purely empirical,
positivistic component in knowledge is the mystical factor in knowledge.
The pure empiricists are the mystics of the world, as the Orientals, who
have tended to restrict knowledge to the immediately experienced,
clearly illustrate." [Northrop, The Logic of the Sciences and the
Humanities, p.39-40]
I can almost see you reaching for your Sellars and Quine quotes...but
before you do, Northrop is not saying that 'pure facts' are objects and
that words point to them. He is talking about the largely indeterminate
immediacy of sensation which is constantly there. Tying this back to
Pirsig, a pure fact would be the negative aesthetic value in the hot
stove example. Feel free to argue with that statement but I just wanted
to clarify my use of this quote by Northrop without you having the
context of the whole book.
Matt said:
But as long as Pirsig's philosophy maintains a
traditional metaphysical dichotomy, that between appearance and reality,
he
has to answer the skeptic, and so is forced into the Kantian
problematic. Naturally, the denial of having to answer the skeptic,
though, is only the
first step of denial. The second step is to then deny that Pirsig
maintains
an appearance/reality distinction. It is these twin denials that I
think
facile and for which I will run through my long standing argument.
As Sam said, this all revolves around the notion of "pure experience."
"Pure experience," or "unmediated experience," is unintelligible without
its
counterpart "unpure experience," or "mediated experience." The
distinction
between unmediated and mediated experience is Pirsig's distinction
between
Dynamic and static Quality and it is also the distinction that has
traditionally been used to describe the appearance/reality distinction.
Paul:
I think this is a gross simplification and also incorrect. As I pointed
out to Sam, pure 'undifferentiated' experience is not at all the same
proposition as pure experience of an 'already presumed to exist'
thing-in-itself. That Kant and Pirsig mean the same thing by 'pure
experience' is, I believe, a flawed premise.
Matt said:
I have been told time and time again that this distinction is
_descriptive_
and not normative, unlike the appearance/reality distinction, and so
does
not need an epistemology. This line of defense is essentially what all
the
other particular ones boil down to, but it will not work because Pirsig
himself dissolves the distinction between descriptive and normative uses
by
saying that "values are reality." He is in effect saying that all
descriptions are normative.
Paul:
This, taken from the Copleston annotations, is what Pirsig says about
appearances and reality:
---------------------------------------------------------
Copleston: Reality for Bradley is one. The splintering of reality into
finite things connected by relations belongs to the sphere of
appearance.
Pirsig: Which the MOQ calls "static patterns of value." The word
"appearance" seems to suggest these static patterns are unreal. The MOQ
does not make this suggestion.
Copleston: But to say of something that it is appearance is not to deny
that it exists. 'What appears, for that sole reason, most indubitably
is; and there is no possibility of conjuring its being away from it.'
Further, inasmuch as they exist, appearances must be comprised within
reality; they are real appearances.
Pirsig: Here he comes close to an oxymoron. "Appearance" is a poor word
for reality.
----------------------------------------------------------
You see, something can only "appear" to be something which it is "really
not" when it is "really something else". But the whole idea of "really
being something else" is based on the (Ancient Greek) presumption that
there is a world of real independent things to which perceptions are
merely apparent. The something else, in the case of the MOQ, is no
"thing" at all. Therefore, any "thing" that you experience is precisely
and no more or less than whatever you experience it as. There is no
'deep' reality.
Continued in part 2
MOQ.ORG - http://www.moq.org
Mail Archives:
Aug '98 - Oct '02 - http://alt.venus.co.uk/hypermail/moq_discuss/
Nov '02 Onward - http://www.venus.co.uk/hypermail/moq_discuss/summary.html
MD Queries - horse@darkstar.uk.net
To unsubscribe from moq_discuss follow the instructions at:
http://www.moq.org/md/subscribe.html
This archive was generated by hypermail 2.1.5 : Mon Jan 10 2005 - 20:34:35 GMT