From: Sam Norton (elizaphanian@tiscali.co.uk)
Date: Mon Aug 11 2003 - 10:37:27 BST
Hi Matt,
You called it a 'Wittgensteinian reading of the structure of the MoQ' but I'm not sure it qualifies
for such a grand title. In truth I haven't fully worked through the implications of the one 'system'
for the other in my own mind - there has been no 'colligation' to use your term. Wittgenstein didn't
feel that metaphysics did what they claimed to do - in some ways, he felt they were more akin to
poetry - so his overall outlook, I would say, radically undercuts much of the sort of discussion
that we have here in the forum. Which isn't to say that what we do here is wrong - I think Witt. was
sometimes too harsh - just that, despite a number of intriguing similarities, the basic perspective
is really quite different. If we can talk about the 'later Pirsig' as much as a 'later
Wittgenstein', then I would say that the two thinkers have travelled in somewhat opposing
directions - Witt from an intellectualist, ultra-Platonist position, to the later rejection of
Platonic style systems in toto; Pirsig almost the reverse journey (to my mind). One of the
commonalities, though, is seeing the pursuit of metaphysics as a 'degenerate activity' - and on that
note, a few comments.
> Matt:
> I've struggled a long time with Pirsig's description of the levels, dating all the way back to my
"priest" days....
> Since Sam's proposal for a 4th level as eudaimonia and his reassertion of Wittgenstein's view of
language, it makes perfect sense to make language a social type level. However, as long as we're
making a mess of Pirsig's MoQ (or, rather, cleaning it up), why are we keeping to 4 levels? Because
its symmetrical? Pooey, I say. We're not engaged in a dialectical, phenomenological, or
transcendental deduction, we're engaged in a historical analysis. I say, let there be five levels.
(And no, the MoQ doesn't count as a fifth level.) I say, let there be an inorganic level (including
rocks), a biological level (including cells, trees, and amoeba), a social level (including monkeys
and lions), an intellectual level (including primitive humans and babies), and an eudamonic level
(including the rich North Atlantic countries). The distinguising mark of the inorganic level is
non-replicating persistence, the biological level replicating persistence, the social level
prelinguistic s
> ocial behavior (non-solipsistic awareness), the intellectual level linguistic social behavior, and
the eudamonic level autonomous human flourishing. To my mind, the Enlightenment marked the movement
into a new level (despite my use of Sam's title of "eudamonia," which is anachronistic).
Sam says:
I'm quite happy with moving away from four to five levels (or more - as is Pirsig), but I think
there needs to be some system or rationale behind how the levels are described or structured. As I
see it, the key question is how to describe the observable behaviour (that isn't to presume SOM) -
in other words, what static levels are necessary, with the addition of DQ, to provide a full
explanation. So, the laws of physics plus DQ account for all observable inorganic phenomena, at
least in theory, and the laws of biology (ie genetics), plus physics and DQ, account for all the
organic behaviour. I see no fundamental distinction between the behaviour of an amoeba and the
behaviour of the gorilla here - both can be fully described by the two static levels. I think there
is room for exploring the complexity of the biological level, as there does seem to be a step change
from plants to animals, but as they can be fully described through DNA/physics/DQ I see no reason
why there should be a separate pattern. However, I'm aware of making some possibly unjustified
assumptions there. It could be that the higher primates DO display social level behaviours - I would
follow the advice of the relevant zoology professors on that score. (I don't know if Jonathan has
any comment on that). What are you proposing as the distinction between your biological and social
levels? (In other words, what are the values, and what are the 'units', the stable patterns of
value, on which those scale values operate, or through which they are expressed?
Matt:
> As a side point about the Wittgensteinian view of language, Sam said, "Hence: 'If a lion could
talk, we could not understand him' - because we do not have a shared society with the lion, whereas
we do with our fellow human beings, more or less." This is misleading after Quine and Davidson.
Quine and then Davidson trace out the consequences of Wittgenstein's later views of language and say
that, theoretically, all langauges are translatable because translation is simply a matter of
predicting which marks, noises, or movements a langauge-user will make next.
Sam:
But why should we agree with Quine and Davidson here? (not a subject to be pursued on-list!). There
are Wittgenstein scholars who think that what Quine is doing to Wittgenstein is akin to using SOM to
interpret the MoQ - and you know how much of a heinous sin that is ;-) Seems to me that Quine and
Davidson are trying to intellectualise and formalise Wittgenstein's method - when that is precisely
the last thing that he would have wanted. Witt wanted you to change how you looked at a problem, ie
gain the 'perspicuous representation', and that essentially involved letting go of obsessive
intellectualisation and becoming more at home in the human body. Do you actually agree that
"translation is simply a matter of predicting which marks, noises, or movements a langauge-user will
make next"?!? Pushing a bit more deeply, the whole notion of 'translatability' is what Witt was
trying to get away from - it perpetuates the mentalist picture that we are opaque to one another,
and if there was one image that Wittgenstein wanted to abolish, it was that one.
Matt:
If a lion already was making noises predictable enough that we would say he was talking, then we
are already on are way to understanding him. Because societies are open, because languages are not
closed, they are always interpenetrated by other languages and societies. Part of translating the
lion's language would include the introduction to his society. Its possible that his society is so
foreign from ours that we w
> ould understand very little, but given certain similarities of biological and social evolution, I
doubt we couldn't make a few rudimentary translations. And as we continued our efforts at
translation, we would continue to be immersed in their society and culture.
>
> The only way a "language" wouldn't be translatable is if it weren't made up of marks, noises, or
movements. The only one I can think of is something like the telepathy used by the buggers in
Ender's Game (by Orson Scott Card). But even then, some form of translation was made possible
(after excrutiating attempts) because differences weren't that astronomical based on our
similiarities as biological creatures.
Sam:
I would agree that between ourselves and a lion there is a shared mammalian heritage that might make
communication possible. After all, we can go to a zoo and see behaviour that is comprehensible
(boredom, hunger, sexual appetite etc). I think Witt's point was a little more rhetorical than
literal - that we do not know what it is like to live as a lion (reminiscent of Nagel and the bat,
perhaps), and that this is crucial to our communication. Wittgenstein was flagging up how far we beg
the question for communication when we see it as a matter of 'translation' - just the error that
Quine seems to perpetuate.
Matt:
> But this has nothing (immediate) to do with Pirsig, and Sam probably already readily agrees with
this.
Hope I haven't disappointed!!!
Sam
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