From: Matt Kundert (pirsigaffliction@hotmail.com)
Date: Tue May 17 2005 - 21:23:30 BST
Mark,
This description of battle lines may seem a bit dramatic, and I've been
accused of overdramatizing a situation. But I'm not claiming the world is
going to end, or that this is a mortal conflict between good and evil. I'm
simply trying to describe what kind of rhetorical and contextual space
everybody's conversations take place in. It may sound a bit dramatic when
you spell it out, but I don't think people have to take it dramatically (and
if I knew how to dial down the drama inherent in the above description, I
would). I think people do need to recognize what kind of room they're
talking in, so to speak. This is a long way to it, but our, Mark and I's,
conversation occured in an old battle line that's roughly arrayed (from,
again, my point of view) like the one I described above, one that you sensed
in my reply to you after DMB weighed in. This isn't to say that two people
can't have a conversation where they think specifically about the other
person, as opposed to, say, just lumping everyone in together in one big
group: MY ENEMIES. People new here often get pissed when people start
talking to both them _and_ to everyone else, to friends and enemies, to the
old, previously developed and ever-changing battle lines because new people
want _their_ views to be heard on _their_ grounds, not some previously
developed ground.
There is a certain, good point to be taken from this anger. But the fact of
the matter is that the ground is there whether people acknowledge it or not,
and in a debate forum like this, people are going to be paying attention to
it. In fact, this "ground," these "battle lines," are, to a certain, large
extent, the point of a forum like this, because the point of this forum
isn't just to talk about Pirsig or this or that topic, but to _develop_
understanding of Pirsig and this or that topic. _Development_ is what the
"ground," the "battle lines," registers. So the point I think we need to
take from a newbie's anger is that old-timers (whoever they are) need to
remember to try and pay due attention to a particular person's particular
comments/post/arguments/interpretations/etc. But I think its imperative to
a forum like this that long-standing conversations continue, and are
remarked upon, developed, and relayed to newcomers. Writing with both an
ear to particular people and to the general, battle line drawn audience, I
think, is demanded of us if we are to make this forum more than just
talky-time-for-Pirsig-fans. And I think it already is more than that, so
its not like I fear a devolution. But I also think people sometimes get
pissed for the wrong reasons.
Now, I'm not saying you were getting pissed for the wrong reasons, Mark, or
even getting pissed. But I want to emphasize that there is a ground at work
here, a ground we, you're interlocuters, have to place you in. This isn't
any kind of "shunting people into a box" kind of apoplectic reaction by
people who have to have people in boxes. No, this is the same kind of
map-making that Pirsig says cognition is, which the MoQ is an example of, in
other words, something everybody does unconsciously and has to do to make
sense of anything. For better or for worse, sometimes we get stuck on the
wrong side of the fence at first, but the longer people stay, the more often
they eventually filter into the most appropriate side. And sometimes new
"sides" are created to accomodate incredibly idiosyncratic views. The
longer people stay, the easier it is for other longer-staying-people to get
a bead on their ideas, their posts, the correct interpretation of their
arguments.
I'll admit, I haven't read a lot of your posts in general. Only recently
have I skimmed a few, but then only recently have you come across a topic I
have views about and care to talk about. And I imagine the same could be
said for you. We've just never crossed paths. But I have to say, that
despite what you say about your "pragmatic interpretation of the MOQ," I
would deny you the title of pure-bred pragmatist and still criticize you on
the points I'd arrayed earlier. Based on your interpretations given to me,
the things of your's I've read, I detect what I call "Platonism." And this
puts you on DMB's side of the fence (which should explain the "messianic"
feel of the last post). The reason it appears I start to cry about the
"massive forces of evil against me," as it appears in the last post when I
start talking about being "laughed off the stage," is because of the number
of philosophical assumptions I hold differently than other people. For
instance, you say you want to continue this conversation:
Mark said:
Still, you may very well be right about my bad reasoning. But just telling
me my reasoning is faulty isn't helping me to understand why. So, let's do
some philosophy (not philosophology) and try to find out where my reasoning
heads south.
Matt:
But from my point of view, I haven't "just" told you your reasoning is
faulty. In fact, I don't think you exactly have faulty reasoning. Its your
assumptions (as I have perceived them) that I find most faulty. At any
rate, though, I found completely unpersuasive your rejoinders to my
arguments about your reasoning. So completely, in fact, that it appears,
from my point of view, that you've completely dismissed my arguments, partly
because it appears like you're talking about something completely different
from me. It looked like there was so much space that needed to be repaired,
I really didn't know what I was supposed to say. For (in a
large-indication-of-our-disagreements) instance, you say, "Just about
everything you say in this post, regarding my method of debate, derives from
the false premise I've discussed above, that is, that I use the
static-dynamic distinction as the KO punch in the argument, rather than as
the initial white glove slap to the face." I couldn't believe you would
describe my argument that way. From my point of view, it was almost
entirely dismissive because I see a lot more going on than that, and in fact
very of little of it having to do with using the distinction as a "KO
punch." From my point of view, it was about using the distinction at _all_
as a functional piece of argumentation. (This should explain why I focused
on that part.) The only way for me to make sense of such a statement was to
start solidifying some of the assumptions I was attributing to you as an
"Enlightenment philosopher," because to my mind only an Enlightenment
philosopher would have misdescribed and then dismissed them that easily.
Now, clearly, that doesn't mean you _are_ an Enlightenment philosopher, as
you seem to want to disagree to that title by claiming some form of
pragmatism, yet you also say your position is "Enlightenment plus Pirsig,"
which makes you a lot like DMB, et al. But moving the conversation forward
means having to understand what your interlocuter thinks he is doing. The
only thing I could come up with was a total end to the conversation because
it appeared that my whole argument had already been rebutted (as I perceived
your point of view, based on what you said, how you said it, and how little
time it took you to say it). But to move ahead with the evidence I saw for
my attributions to your point of view: you describe our remarks revolving
around the "white glove slap to the face" as being about your style. Not at
all from my point of view, and saying so to me says to me a lot about the
assumptions that would need to be at work for that to be so. I don't think
its "just" about style. We can create a continuum between style and
substance. But what I don't think we can do is create a sharp dichotomy
between them. The language we use in argumentation is very important, as
its only through the change in our vocabularies that we can mark any kind of
intellectual progress. For instance, not using the term "God" anymore. You
would mark that as being important. Some people (like Sam) want to say
something analogous to "God = Quality (or DQ)". You would inveigh against
them because you think something important has happened when we change our
language from "God" to "Quality." So that change was a substantive change,
not a stylistic one. Differing philosophers will view different vocable
changes as being substantive or stylistic based on their philosophical
views. So, when you remarked it was "style," to me that tipped your hand
again.
Another remark you made that furthered my suspicion that you'd dismissed my
arguments based on radically different assumptions is that when Sam said,
during his first insertion about Mill and Augustine, "In saying 'No one
needs to be told that freedom is better than being buried alive' you [Mark]
are comparing an idea to a biological state, not one idea to another. That
seems to beg the question," you replied, "O, c'mon. Would it help if I
dropped the metaphor and said 'The idea of being free is more appealing than
the idea of being restricted?'" The problems for Sam and I are exactly
_about_ the metaphors we use in describing certain ideas, because these
metaphors come to represent certain assumptions in our thinking--we think
the metaphors we use are the linguistic foundations for our thinking. So,
it would help if you dropped the metaphor, _but_ it doesn't matter for in
this case to say so because your next reply, "The idea of being free is more
appealing than the idea of being restricted," still begs the question
because it still rests on the idea that there is an _obvious_ sense in which
_your_ interpretation of freedom is better than _your_ interpretation of
being restricted, which is what your metaphor was intended to elicit by
putting something clearly horrible (though from the wrong conceptual
category) on the other side of "freedom."
The third remark(s) that slides me further down the pipe of thinking that
you've dismissed my remarks based on radically different assumptions are
your remarks about philosophology. And this is the most important issue for
me presently in our conversation. You remarked that you consider
"philosophology" to be an "academic diversion," apparently from the real
issues. That is profoundly at odds with the way I view philosophy. You're
arguments against me, I think because of this, show a profound divergence of
attention.
...continued in Part III
_________________________________________________________________
Don’t just search. Find. Check out the new MSN Search!
http://search.msn.click-url.com/go/onm00200636ave/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 : Tue May 17 2005 - 21:27:34 BST