From: Matt Kundert (pirsigaffliction@hotmail.com)
Date: Mon Mar 21 2005 - 21:25:03 GMT
David,
I appreciate you're interjection.
The pieces of quotes from Pirsig you offer showing Pirsig eshewing
representationalism and foundationalism are the same ones I read when I need
to be reassured that Pirsig is trying to be a pragmatist. Those are not the
ones at issue. Its other quotes that sound representational and
foundational, and then when you combine them with the ones you've provided,
it doesn't make a lot of sense.
When you go on to the second part about the moral hierarchy and the primary
empirical reality, that's where I think Pirsig attempts something
_philosophically_ that can only be done practically. When you say that "By
introducing the levels, pragmatism is no longer easy pickings for the Nazis
and such. As to how we keep the Nazis from claiming theirs was an
intellectual good and not just a narrowly viewed social good, we can't,"
this is where I would claim that Pirsig's distinction between levels doesn't
do us any good at the philosophical level. It only has a use at more down
to earth levels, like in politics. This is why, in that long ago series of
posts "Begging the Question, Moral Intuition(s), and Answering the Nazi," I
claimed that looking for an answer to the Nazi at the philosophical level is
a mistake, because it can't be done, which I see you as willing to go along
with at this point. Its why I claimed that looking for a response to Nazis
in James' _pragmatism_ was a mistake, moreorless analogous to the category
distinction Pirsig makes between the social and intellectual level. I'm
claiming that its like trying to answer an ethical dilemma by opening a
physics book. James' _politics_ is what held his response to the Nazis
because pragmatism only makes a negative philosophical point about things
like representationalism and foundationalism. When Pirsig tries to tie it
together with something else, like a moral hierarchy, I think it will get
bogged down in old problems if he tries to put it to use.
If philosophy is a practical endeavor in which we try and see how the world
hangs together and move the conversation foward to better and better
descriptions of how it hangs together, then I think the attempt to include a
moral hierarchy that helps us in our relations to others (including Nazis)
founders when it is put to use. Because either you have to go
transcendental (and look for a traditional foundational pivot point) or you
beg the question. The first will go nowhere (as Pirsig's pragmatism shows
us) and the second shoots us to another conversation: like a political one.
And this is already how we deal with the Nazi, so I'm not sure what the MoQ
adds to our revulsion of the Nazi. You talk about "moral paralysis" the
same way Pirsig does, which is what wet liberals get when they're trying to
not be ethnocentric, but I'm not sure that a "moral hierarchy" is the salve
that will eliminate it. At the level of generality we're working at, it
just sounds like something we'd need an epistemology to hold up. I don't
see how moral problems and ethical dilemmas have suddenly become
"scientific," which is what Pirsig, and Anthony after him, claim. How have
they become scientific except in such a wide sense of "science" that
includes every inquiry and debate ever held?
And "speculation" in my usuage isn't frivolous. Its what all the great
poets and philosophers and physicists and all have done by creating the
intellectual patterns with which we know the world. Speculation, as I'm
using it, is that stab in the dark towards Whitehead's "dim apprehension."
You say Pirsig is doing something more that redescribing lots and lots of
stuff, more than speculation, but I'm not sure what you mean by that.
Redescribing lots and lots of stuff is what philosophers do when they
construct a system or a theory or a metaphysics or a new intellectual map,
or whatever else you want to call it. Sometimes they think they are doing
something else, like discovering the hidden reality behind appearances, but
I know you don't think that's what Pirsig's doing. So what else is there?
Matt
_________________________________________________________________
Express yourself instantly with MSN Messenger! Download today - it's FREE!
http://messenger.msn.click-url.com/go/onm00200471ave/direct/01/
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 Mar 21 2005 - 21:55:09 GMT