From: Matt Kundert (pirsigaffliction@hotmail.com)
Date: Tue Jun 07 2005 - 21:17:53 BST
Paul, Bo, Ham,
The annotations:
A: "Within the MOQ the IDEA that static patterns of value start with the
inorganic level is considered to be a good idea, but the MOQ itself does not
start before sentience. The MOQ - like science - starts with the human
experience. Remember the early talk in ZMM about Newton's law of gravity.
Scientific laws without people to write them are a scientific impossibility"
B: "It is important for an understanding of the MOQ to see that although
'common sense' dictates that inorganic nature comes first, actually common
sense which is a set of ideas has to come first. This common sense is
arrived at through a huge web of socially approved evaluations of various
alternatives. The key term here is evaluation, i.e. quality descisions. The
fundamental reality is not the common sense or the objects and the laws
approved of by common sense, but the approval itself and the quality that
leads to it."
Bo, after quoting these great LC annotations, said:
[Those quotes were] intensely discussed in a thread called "What comes
first" and the excellent thinker/writer David M. Buchanan who at that time
had not discarded his "common sense" protested this, but for some strange
reason he was convinced by Paul and has since shied these things like the
proverbial plague.
But what is Pirsigs motives for these impossible utterings that has done so
much damage to the MOQ? He refers to ZMM and the argument that Newton's
theory of gravity were nowhere before Newton, but this argument does not
deny that there were apples and an earth to which they fell before Newton so
this does not come close to the shocking annotation which says that the
notion of the static inorganic level (being Quality's first manifestation)
is a good idea. How does he manage to avoid seeing that by this logic the
biological, social and intellectual levels also are good ideas. And where
does ideas reside? Yes, how does the MOQ itself avoid falling prey to this
idea logic?
Matt:
This all has to do with whether or not we should interpret Pirsig as an
idealist, which almost everybody (rightly, though sans Scott) thinks is a
bad idea. I agree, this is a bad idea. This is what I said about the issue
when it first touched off debate, right before it was titled "What comes
first?" (in a thread titled "myths and symbols"):
"I do love the quote [B], which as far as I can tell has Pirsig interpreting
objectivity as intersubjectivity, but I wish Pirsig hadn't said, 'It is
important for an understanding of the MOQ to see that although 'common
sense' dictates that inorganic nature came first, actually 'common sense'
which is A SET OF IDEAS, has to come first.' The whole 'come first' part I
think leads to pointless chicken and egg squables. We will never get to the
bottom of which came first. Our linguistic activity is completely tied up
with the world as we experience it. Our common sense does say that inorganic
nature came first, but the moral Pirsig should've drawn is that we can't
pull common sense off of inorganic nature (i.e. we can't pull our linguistic
activity off of nature). He can still then move to his point about socially
approved evaluations. Which is a point about intersubjectivity."
Bo seems to want to reject those annotations entirely, but I think Pirsig's
point is simply poorly put, rather than the section being rubbish. Pirsig's
point is that we can't pull our descriptions off of rocks to get at the way
they really are. Our descriptions, our "common sense," our _intellectual
static patterns_, are bound up with the way we deal with rocks and this
"common sense" is the build up of intersubjective agreement on how to deal
with rocks. Bo mentioned what I call Pirsig's "discourse on Western ghosts"
from ZMM, which I take to be one of the finest pragmatist passages in
Pirsig. I take that passage to mean that Pirsig wants us to discard the
distinction between invention and discovery (see my discussion of this
passage halfway down section 2 of my "Confessions" on the Forum), and if we
hand in that distinction, between an invented language and a discovered
rock, we are that much closer to seeing that its pointless to try and pull
our invented descriptions off the discovered rock.
So I want to emphasize: I'm arguing that it is true to say that, by Pirsig's
lights, the "notion of the static inorganic level is a good idea." Saying
that does not commit you to the idea that language was around at the same
time as the big bang, before humans. What it says is that the belief that
rocks are real and physical and that when you see one and kick it with your
bare foot you'll regret it---that's a good belief to have to thwart stubbed
toes. Intellectual patterns, common sense, ideas, language are things we
use to deal with our experience. Saying that a rock is a physical thing
(and by that meaning it was around before me and will still be here after
me) is a good belief to have to deal with that experience, just as saying
that the distinction between subjects and objects is a bad way to begin a
metaphysics is a good belief to have to deal with the experience of a person
uttering the noises that make up, "The distinction between subjects and
objects is a good way to begin a metaphysics."
The last thing I want to say is that, while I haven't been following this
thread at all, I did pick it up at Paul's last reply to Ham. And that, I
think, was a first-rate piece of pragmatist philosophy doing full justice to
Pirsig.
Matt
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