From: Dan Glover (daneglover@hotmail.com)
Date: Tue Mar 22 2005 - 18:50:42 GMT
Hello everyone
>From: "Valence" <valence10@hotmail.com>
>Reply-To: moq_discuss@moq.org
>To: <moq_discuss@moq.org>
>Subject: Re: MD Politics of MOQ Discuss
>Date: Mon, 21 Mar 2005 21:23:16 -0500
>
>Hi all:
>
>Anthony said to Matt:
>" Moreover, the fact that you had an essay titled "Philosophologology: An
>Inquiry into the Study of the Love of Wisdom" ...rather undermine your
>claim
>that you are not "doing this to annoy everyone here."
>
>RICK
>Sorry Ant, I know you're working your rhetorical arse off trying to cast
>Matt in a negative light, but I can assure you that the title of that essay
>had nothing to do with "annoying everyone here." I suggested it. It
>perfectly reflected the theme of the essay and I thought it was just kind
>of
>fun and frankly, I resent the implication that it was intended to annoy
>(although I take a bit of satisfaction in the fact that you've now
>incontrovertibly exposed your anti-Matt bias). I'm not sure if you
>actually
>read the essay (you should, it's great), but if you did, you'd know why it
>has that title. Anyway, I highly recommend it (along with Matt's
>Confessions essay) to everyone in this forum.
Hi Rick
I agree that Matt's "Philosophologology" essay is very good; I've read it
several times and made notes as well. Even though I think the essay is good
I tend to disagree with quite a number of the points he makes, including
this snippet which I've copied and pasted from my notes:
Matt:
What I'm driving at is the common empiricist claim that Pirsig holds: we are
born tabula rasa. Despite tacit agreement with Kant on certain kinds of a
priori knowledge, Pirsig would largely agree that humans are born with no
innate ideas, they learn them. Pirsig says, “One can imagine how an infant
in the womb acquires awareness of simple distinctions such as pressure and
sound, and then at birth acquires more complex ones of light and warmth and
hunger.”7 The operative word is “acquire.” Babies aren't born knowing
anything. They acquire patterns of behavior through time. So my question
would be, “How does a baby grow up to be Jimmy Page or Monet or Verdi? Or
even Brittany Spears?” They have to emulate them. If our little baby doesn't
want to be any of these people, let's say she just wants to sing or paint,
how is she usually taught? By belting out sound? By taking a brush and
spilling paint everywhere? If a baby spilled paint all over a table, would
we say she was painting? The answer: depends.
Dan:
Of course it doesn't depend. In the cited passage, Robert Pirsig is talking
about the reality of value, but whether or not we are born tabula rasa
doesn't seem at issue unless the quote is taken out of context. If a person
continues reading Mr. Pirsig goes on to say: "...if he [the baby] is
normally attentive to Dynamic Quality he will soon begin to notice
differences..." (Lila, page 137)
So we can no longer imagine the MOQ siding with the empiricists and saying
that the baby is born with a "blank slate" after all, not if we consider
that the baby "has" normal attentiveness to Dynamic Quality, and where such
attentiveness leads, i.e., Jimmy Page, Monet, Verdi, Brittany Spears, you,
me, etc.
A baby doesn't paint, of course, nor do they sing unless a person considers
wailing a song. We all go through a period of development during our lives
in which we are constantly exposed to the cultural patterns of value within
we're immersed. So when we talk about "knowing" we use the term in at least
two ways. In Lila's Child Robert Pirsig had this to say:
"In German there are two words for 'know,' kennen and wissen. The Zen
approach reduces Wissenschaft (scholarly knowledge) and thereby improves
Kenntnis (recognition without intellectual interposition)." (Robert Pirsig,
Lila's Child)
Therefore your assumption that the MOQ "would largely agree that humans are
born with no innate ideas" is correct as long as we agree attention to
Dynamic Quality is not an idea. However, the idea that we are born tabula
rasa is not part of the MOQ, instead being an artifact perhaps left over
from the SOM and should be relegated to the trash heap from which it comes.
>
>As someone who's been hanging around these parts lurking and contributing
>for many years I can honestly say that I believe Matt's essays are best
>Forum materials I've ever read. Nothing else has ever made me think as
>much
>or as hard or as deeply about where Pirsig is coming from, what he's
>driving
>at, and what it is that Pirsig really does, and doesn't, have to
>contribute.
That may well be although I think your tone is a bit dismissive of all the
other forum contributors. We all have our opinions though.
>For anyone who's really ready to get beyond the Pirsig defenders,
>worshippers, students, protégés, compilers, editors, and quoters and start
>asking some deeper, more cutting and important questions about Pirsig's
>work, those essays are just sitting out there waiting to point you in the
>best direction. And don't worry that Matt may be the whipping boy of the
>week around here, as Pirsig tells us, his type always bothers the bishops.
As long as Matt's essays are based upon misunderstandings concerning RMP's
work I don't see how they'll help anyone "get beyond the Pirsig defenders,"
etc. But that's just my opinion -- since I'm evidently part of that group
you're ranting about, please feel free to ignore me on your way to getting
beyond it. With the attitude you seem to be cultivating, you may as well
ignore Robert Pirsig's work as well.
Thank you for your comments,
Dan
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