From: MATTHEW PAUL KUNDERT (mpkundert@students.wisc.edu)
Date: Fri Jun 06 2003 - 17:43:30 BST
Johnny, Paul,
Paul said:
Yes, Nobel prizes and sounding good in a discussion group are examples of the high quality that social patterns give to status. The "approval" of ideas is of higher value than the "truth" of them to a society or community.
Johnny said:
Now, Paul does put quotes around 'truth', so maybe he's not being ahistorical, but he's certainly implying a privileged position in the assumption that society doesn't do an accurate job of approving or not approving.
Paul said:
Accuracy doesn't come into it, that would be like asking - which is the most accurate poem? The point I was making was that social quality is about what will keep the society together, it is opposed to any intellectual patterns of value that threatens to break its patterns up and supportive of ideas that keep the society together, such ideas may be rewarded with prizes and social authority. Socially, that's moral, intellectually it's degenerate. Intellectual patterns of value are also opposed to each other if they conflict and seem generally opposed to Dynamic Quality.
Matt:
I think I would've criticized Paul for the same thing that Johnny did on reading the first quote. Pragmatists don't make a distinction between the truth of an idea and a real community's approval of an idea. It's what we mean by the slogan "solidarity, not objectivity." We replace objective truth with intersubjective agreement.
But Paul unpacks his statement with a good bit about accuracy not having any importance. Pragmatists are certainly sympathetic to this. However, Paul still makes a distinction between social and intellectual patterns that I'm not quite sure I understand. I'm not sure if it is still infected with a kind of ahistoricity. Possibly not. If the distinction is simply about "ideas that that directly work for society" and "ideas that do not work directly for society" then there doesn't seem to be anything directly wrong with that, other than, because we are still dealing with the MoQ, it does privelege ideas that don't work directly for society. That I'm not so kosher about. A distinction between these two types of ideas mirrors the Davidsonian distinction between the literal and the metaphorical, between the pramatic impulse and the romantic impulse. The pragmatic impulse is to create literal tools to help the workings of society. The romantic impulse is to create metaphor
s and literary tropes for self-creation and self-perfection. Rorty's practical public/private split attempts to keep them seperate and to keep from privelging one over the other. If we make the social and intellectual distinction that between the romantic and pragamatic impulse, eudaimonia, or human flourishing, something Sam has been playing with in relation to the MoQ, would demand both the social and intellectual levels to sit side by side. Liberals from Benjamin Constant down to Rorty have recognized that we must keep a space cleared for the type of self-perfection that modern's desire and to do that we musn't neglect the pragmatic and become too preoccupied with the romantic, the public in favor of the private.
But I don't think this is what Paul has in mind. I'm not sure what he has in mind, but if it has something to do with vulgar status-mongering versus cosmopolitan consciousness raising, then I'm sympathetic. I suspect that it isn't this, though, either. But I can't be sure. I think Paul's idea is a distinction between society and ideas, something pragmatists aren't sympathetic to. Paul says that social patterns are "supportive of ideas that keep the society together [and] such ideas may be rewarded with prizes and social authority. Socially, that's moral, intellectually it's degenerate." I don't see the point in saying that an idea that could destroy society. I was going to add "is more moral" before the period, but I don't I need to. I don't think an idea can destroy society. People destroy societies. People with ideas, but pragmatists don't give a lot of credence to the idea of ideas that are seperate from their social patterns. I realize this is very un-MoQian,
but that's the way it goes. I think Pirsig develops a picture in ZMM that is more commensurate to the pragmatic picture I just drew and its not until his dive into systematic metaphysics that he begins to turn away from the pragmatic picture.
So, on the ahistoricity charge, possibly not on first appearances, but I think making a gulf between society and ideas will lead to some strange consequences like the idea of "anarchy" being moral. It just doesn't make any sense to me and I don't quite see the point or utility.
Paul said:
In Zen Buddhism a favoured symbol / character to describe the nature of zen is called ?enso?. It is a circle brushed slightly differently every time it is drawn, but most importantly it is never joined up to form a closed circle. This, the sages say, is because if the circle is closed, it closes itself off from the ultimate nature of reality, change. I think that is a good analogy to the MOQ.
Matt:
That is a good, pragmatic insight. Except that, pace Scott, pragmatists would excise "ultimate nature of reality" because we don't think it adds anything important to the description.
Matt
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