From: Paul Turner (paul@turnerbc.co.uk)
Date: Fri Jan 21 2005 - 09:11:31 GMT
Hi Matt
Matt said:
I'm not sure that everyone is on the same page. I'm not sure that it's
quite understood what the full force and significance of the skeptic is
and I'm pretty sure that I don't have the power to do that much
backgrounding.
The discouraging thing for me is that, people here constantly claim that
the MoQ is the best philosophy they've seen, or that it dissolves all of
philosophy's problems. I can't see that such claims hold much water if
people aren't actually attuned to the problems and vicissitudes of
philosophy, outside of such claims being simply references to what
Pirsig's claimed in his books. Inattention to the history of philosophy
is a common problem here, which wouldn't be a problem if people were
willing to reign in their claims about what they know. I would never
claim that people have to do or understand mainstream philosophy. But
if you are going to claim Pirsig's superiority to mainstream philosophy,
it would be nice if it were backed up somehow. My interest in Pirsig is
in his intersection with the history of philosophy, how Pirsig joins in
that conversation. But I don't know how to express those thoughts if
there isn't a general understanding of how the history of philosophy has
played itself out. (I'm certainly not claiming to be an expert, but I
am claiming to have a general knowledge of it.) I'm certainly not ending
the dialogue, I simply want to note my discouragement and frustration.
I'll keep trying to figure out ways of saying what I want to say, but I
feel like I'm playing with a handicap.
Paul:
I'm going to take the unusual step of replying to the same post twice
because two kinds of answer came to mind. The other reply is more the
usual 'point by point' answer, and that will come in a short while. This
one is more of a response to your posts in general.
Some time ago it became clear to me that, for some people, the first
important thing to do with anything - e.g. art, music, people,
literature, philosophy - was to categorise it or identify it with
something else. In the case of philosophy I noticed that this was mainly
done so that the arguments against any "new" ideas would then be
available off-the-shelf. As a result, ideas could sometimes be promptly
and easily discredited. There are several methods for doing this. One is
as simple as homing in on one or two words which other philosophers have
used to enable you to establish identity from resemblance. Another one
is to slightly change the words of a philosopher to match another's and,
again, make a statement of identity. Sam has recently gone down the
oblique route of "conceptual inheritance" to suggest identity, or at
least profound similarity between Pirsig and, ultimately, Immanuel Kant.
Explicitly provoked by Pirsig's similar observation of this process in
LILA, your "Philosophologology" essay on the Forum Home Page is, I think
in part, a justification for this (common) method of doing philosophy.
This justification is achieved by collapsing one side of Pirsig's
philosophy/philosophology distinction into the other, i.e., one can't
properly do philosophy without 'philosophology', thus denying the title
of philosophy to non-academic contemplation and effectively setting up a
false dichotomy between sophisticated academic philosophers and armchair
dilettantes, leaving us in no doubt about on which side of this fence
you reside.
Now, I think the source of your frustration may not be just that you are
being prevented from following a line of inquiry by the varying levels
of knowledge on this forum but could also be that you are trying to
identify the MOQ with this or that system, for the reason I've stated
above, and your attempts to do it are, thus far, being resisted. It
would be as frustrating as buying a whole selection of tools and gizmos
to take something apart but not being able to find the right fit to
remove the most important nut with any one of them. You have said that
"[w]hat I (and Sam) am concerned with is not the particular _words_ or
_concepts_ Pirsig uses, but the _work_ being done with them. The work
done by our words and concepts is how we determine how we translate
words from one language to another, from one philosopher's jargon to
another's." So, as I see it, you, or "we," (which I presume means proper
philosophers) are most concerned with looking to translate e.g. 'Dynamic
Quality' and 'static quality' into the lexicon of some other system, to
fit it into a dialogue that has already occurred, in preparation for
wheeling out one refutation or another.
The vindication for doing this seems to be based on your argument that,
whether it likes it or not, any philosophy cannot help but exist in a
relationship to the history of philosophy and that, in fact, the MOQ is
only what it is because of the entire history of philosophy. Therefore,
one cannot properly understand, study, nor claim success for Pirsig's
philosophy without placing it in the context of the entire history of
western philosophy. Either accept that or don't make any claims about
what philosophical problems it is supposed to solve, right? This is
supported by your proposition that the history of philosophy is a series
of explicitly and implicitly connected conversations i.e., assertions of
one's own position and denials of another's. If we are going to do this
philosophy thing properly, the thing to do is to find out who Pirsig is
in conversation with, implicitly or otherwise, and see how the
conversation ends.
Firstly, if this is indeed your position, I reservedly agree with this
characterisation of philosophical history but add that these historic
conversations are not necessarily over. Sure, they are paths that have
been well trodden but there is absolutely nothing stopping anyone taking
a stroll down them once in a while and maybe seeing some new trails to
blaze in the process. Sellars has not ended the conversation on "the
given." Quine has not ended the conversation on the analytic/synthetic
distinction. And of course, Pirsig has not ended the conversation on the
subject/object distinction. No matter how convincing they are, these
arguments do not preclude the use of the propositions and terms that
they have refuted, as if they were pieces of legislation, particularly
because this direct translation between philosophers you want to perform
is not always possible. So with respect to your frustration about this
Forum's lack of reference to the history of philosophy, what you
describe as an absence of attention may be more positively described as
an absence of acquiescence. You seem to treat some ideas like an old
currency that is just no longer accepted anywhere whereas, whilst this
would no doubt be convenient to your project, I just see them as
changing worth.
Secondly, if we are looking to understand the MOQ in its inescapable,
albeit implicit, historic context then let us not exclude the history of
eastern philosophy nor indeed accounts of Native American mysticism.
Finally, whether or not implicit connections with the great dialogues
are unavoidable, I think creditable philosophy can occur without
explicit reference or intellectual debt to the history of philosophy. In
fact, I have just spent a week away on business and, over a few drinks,
have discussed (what a "philosopher" would describe as) epistemology and
appearance and reality (amongst other topics) with clients who (at least
claimed to) have not completed any study of philosophy but have
nonetheless contemplated their own experiences and lives in a
sophisticated way. One of these guys is from New Zealand, one is from
India and one from the UK. What seemed wonderful to me was that we could
all talk about certain experiences and thoughts which were common to us
all without exception. So, albeit based on my own limited experiences
and community of acquaintances, I just think it is an over-eager
generalisation to suggest that one cannot properly contemplate
philosophical questions unless you have studied its history. To suggest,
as you do in your essay, that one would not even be aware of central
philosophical questions unless you had directly studied them seems a
little supercilious. Philosophical contemplation is embedded in
literature, art, plays, film and so on. Did philosophy invent the
contemplation of experience or did the contemplation of experience
invent philosophy?
I guess the question remains: Do we get a better philosophy if we have
studied the works of others? If the answer is yes, then the MOQ would
say that one should study the history of philosophy. But I think it
would also say that too much emphasis on static patterns may restrict
the ability of ideas to grow towards Dynamic Quality. It provides two
answers.
Regards
Paul
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