From: Paul Turner (paul@turnerbc.co.uk)
Date: Mon Jan 10 2005 - 13:48:50 GMT
Hi Matt, Sam
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. That wasn't my argument at all. I am simply
saying that 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 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...
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, pure 'undifferentiated' experience is not at all the same
proposition as pure experience of an 'already presumed to exist'
thing-in-itself.
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.
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. Or ask him what
it is that makes him keep on asking why. 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. 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:
Agreed. But it's not saying that language somehow mediates the things
that are "really there." As stated above.
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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