From: Paul Turner (paul@turnerbc.co.uk)
Date: Mon Jan 10 2005 - 20:38:23 GMT
Hi Matt, Sam
Continued from Part 1
Matt said:
Pirsig says that the MoQ identifies the undefined "betterness" inherent
in evolution's description of "survival of the fittest" with DQ. DQ is
"better" than static patterns. DQ is "more moral" than static patterns.
It might be replied that Pirsig's metaphysical apparatus is simply
supplying us with interpretive categories, a set of glasses to see the
world or a set of boxes within which we can stick stuff to make sense of
the world. But again, this won't work as a rejoinder because Pirsig
isn't simply supplying us with a set of neutral glasses to see stuff or
boxes to stick stuff. Pirsig uses his metaphysical apparatus to
_justify_ certain normative decisions. For instance, his claim that it
is moral to kill germs because we are further along the evolutionary
track. In other words, our static patterns are more evolved, closer to
Dynamic Quality, i.e., we are better than the germs.
Paul:
The MOQ is just an intellectual pattern which tries to derive a system
of ethics from intellectual principles rather than from customs and
traditions. It is a postulation of ethics that is consistent with his
metaphysical apparatus. What is wrong with that?
Matt:
This claim that some things (like ideas, human rights, capitalism) are
closer to Dynamic Quality, or more Dynamic, than other things _and
therefore
better_ is the exact claim of the appearance/reality distinction. Some
things are closer to reality than other things, which are mere
apperances.
Paul:
He doesn't say that some patterns are "closer to reality" than others.
You are sneaking SOM ideas of correspondence and so on back into his
statements.
Matt said:
This claim draws us into epistemology because when you say that, e.g.,
capitalism is more Dynamic than communism, the skeptic raises his hand
and
says, "How do you know?" The traditional Pirsigian answer has been
"Because
it's better" which amounts to "Because it is, because you just know it
when
you experience it." But this isn't an answer, it is a refusal to answer
because the skeptic can keep asking, "How? How? Why? Why?"
Paul:
Good for him, let this hypothetical skeptic keep asking, for that is one
of the ways in which we progress. Or better, ask him what it is that
makes him keep on asking why (Dynamic Quality?), or more importantly,
what would make him stop (high intellectual quality?). Or tell him that
science is no stranger to uncertainty but it continues to provide
explanations and make progress and generally improve our world despite
this. We could also ask him why we shouldn't operate on the basis that
some things are better than others because we have defined them as being
more evolved, despite a lack of certainty.
Matt said:
To draw the
connection between appearance/reality and static/Dynamic even tighter, I
would point out two things. First, unmediated, pure experience is
consistently aligned with _both_ Dynamic Quality, one half of the first
cut
of reality, and Quality, the monistic reality that sits behind the first
distinction.
Paul:
I don't think it "sits behind" anymore. Dynamic Quality is the Quality
of ZMM, in which no mention was made of static patterns. The MOQ set out
in LILA consists of this unpatterned Quality and also patterned Quality
which become Dynamic and static aspects of the monism.
Matt said:
And second, that mysticism in general identifies the mediation
between us and reality as language. In Pirsigian philosophy, language
is a
static pattern (of some sort) and Dynamic Quality is the
"pre-intellectual
edge of experience."
Paul:
I wouldn't say "between us and reality" because this suggests that there
is a basic division which needs mediating whereas I think that kind of
erroneous division only occurs through the use of language. So the MOQ
is not saying that language somehow mediates the "things" that are
"really there," for the reasons that I've tried to explain above.
Furthermore, I don't think mysticism in general says that there is a
fundamental distinction between "us and reality" that needs mediating;
in fact I would think it states the opposite.
Or are you simply saying that mysticism in general thinks that language
divides what is not divided?
Matt said:
This is why I think there is an appearance/reality distinction at work
in
Pirsig, the distinction that Sam is pointing to when he draws his
parrallels
between Pirsig and Kant's phenomena/noumena distinction, and why I agree
with Sam that Pirsig doesn't seem to escape the Kantian, SOMic
problematic.
So this is the bulk of my argument: To deny the need to do
epistemology,
and maintain an appearance/reality distinction, is to regress to a
pre-Cartesian "metaphysical dogmatism" where we simply assert our
correct
interpretations of the True Reality without any criteria for success.
Paul:
Well, regression avoided, because I am arguing that the MOQ does not
deny the need to do epistemology (e.g. read the section on Poincare in
ZMM) and does not maintain an appearance/reality distinction, as noted
above.
Matt said:
We
need to realize that even if, for instance, Eastern mysticism developed
independently its own notion of "pure experience," that if the work
demanded
of a concept parrallels the work demanded of it elsewhere (or the work
demanded of a concept is the same work demanded of another concept) that
the
one tradition has relevant questions and innovations for the other
tradition.
Paul:
Agreed, and that works both ways. Pirsig, following Northrop in the
"Meeting of East and West", uses the eastern tradition to question the
western pre-occupation with pure experience as necessarily being of
inferred "things-in-themselves" and, in my opinion at least, solves
western philosophical problems in the process.
Matt said:
And we need to realize that, whatever their faults, Descartes
and Kant were steps _forward_ on the dialectical path that Plato
began--if
only because they brought it that much closer to its demise.
Epistemology
is the grown up version of Plato's dialectic, his method for
ascertaining
Truth.
Paul:
Well, that's your rather restrictive definition. I think epistemology is
just what it says in the dictionary:
"The branch of philosophy that studies the nature of knowledge, its
presuppositions and foundations, and its extent and validity."
Notice that absolute "Truth" is not mentioned and hence the Platonic
baggage that goes with it. Remember that --
"Unlike subject-object metaphysics the MOQ does not insist on a single
exclusive truth...one doesn't seek the absolute "Truth." One seeks the
highest quality explanation of things with the knowledge that if the
past is any guide to the future this explanation must be taken
provisionally; as useful until something better comes along." [LILA
p.114]
So your argument is -- Plato and/or Kant did metaphysics/epistemology,
Pirsig does metaphysics/epistemology, therefore Pirsig is a Kantian
and/or a Platonist. Newton and Einstein both used the methods of science
and used the same terms but created two completely different theories of
something as "basic" as space and time. Is Einstein therefore a
Newtonian?
Matt said:
Descartes realized that if epistemology did not come first, all we
have is dogmatic, assertive speculation. After tunneling our way from
Descartes to Hume, Kant heroically "woke from his dogmatic slumbers" and
realized the same thing. If you are going to do metaphysics, you must
do
epistemology.
If the denial of epistemology is _not_ a regress, you need to explain
why we
need a mediated/unmediated distinction at all. What part does it play,
what
work does it do?
Paul:
It describes two aspects of experience.
Matt said:
Sam's attempt to redescribe mysticism without reference to
"experience" and my past attempts to redescribe the notion of Dynamic
Quality as "metaphor" and "compliment" are attempts at rehabilitating
Pirsig's conceptual machinery without the mediated/unmediated
distinction.
Because if the distinction plays the part _Pirsig_ wants it to play, an
_explanatory_/_justificatory_ role, then you've blundered into having to
answer the skeptic, and so epistemology, and so the Subject-Object
Metaphysics.
Paul:
Oh come on, epistemology does not belong to SOM any more than
metaphysics belongs to SOM, or any more than writing war epics belongs
to Homer. As our discussions in the past should demonstrate, I have
great respect for your eloquence and for the breadth of your knowledge
of philosophy but, to me at least, this continual effort to show that
Robert Pirsig is a thinly disguised Immanuel Kant seems to be moving you
further away from any understanding of what the MOQ is talking about.
Regards
Paul
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