From: Paul Turner (paulj.turner@ntlworld.com)
Date: Wed Nov 19 2003 - 11:49:06 GMT
Hi Matt
Matt:
I would suggest that when reading the popular Pirsig quote, we read him
as agreeing with pragmatism that "common sense" is bred out of society.
Paul:
Yes, but not in the usual way of understanding it. In Lila, Pirsig makes
the point that the MOQ allows one to say that the levels are dependent
but not continuous. Common sense is primarily a set of ideas
(intellectual patterns) which are dependent on society (social patterns
of shared meanings, learning, institutions and authority) as social
patterns are dependent on biology and biology on carbon. However, just
as carbon does not possess or guide biology and biology does not possess
or guide society, society does not possess or guide intellect. In the
MOQ, value guides intellect, which is what he means when he says - "What
will decide which belief prevails is, of course, its quality."
Matt:
I don't see why, though, we need this claim to a "fundamental process of
reality." What's lost if we nix it and simply say, with the pragmatist,
that common sense is bred out of society, which is bred of the
biological species homo sapien, which is bred out of carbon atoms? I
don't see the point in saying "value precedes culture".
Paul:
Because it gives us a new way to look at our history, our pre-history,
our present situation and a possible future. Because it may be better
than trying to reduce language and culture to biological survival now
that tigers aren't a threat to us anymore. Because it is a new metaphor
for evolution which is compelling enough for a few people to want to see
where it goes. Because it redefines "the point" that you don't see.
Matt:
How do you know if the only thing that tells you that value precedes
culture is your culture?
Paul:
We are not born with cultural beliefs or common sense; we *are* born
liking and disliking, my baby daughter proves this to me every day.
Paul said:
Furthermore, it is not that nature does or does not value this or that
belief, but that actually our set of beliefs called "nature" are a
product of the process of evaluation (i.e. Quality) itself. It is also
in this sense that I think pragmatism is wrong to say that "nature" or
"the world" causes us to have beliefs as I think this puts the cart
before the horse.
This quote [from ZMM] also restates my earlier point when he says that,
not the physical world, but "Quality is the continuing stimulus which
our environment puts upon us to create the world in which we live" and
"We invent earth and heavens, trees, stones and oceans, gods, music,
arts, language, philosophy, engineering, civilization and science". The
pragmatist is stuck in the loop of saying that, instead of Quality, it
is trees, stones and oceans that cause us to believe in trees, stones
and oceans.
Matt:
I don't see a different loop from the same loop that Pirsig has. If
Quality is Reality, what's the problem with saying this bit of Quality
over here (let's call it a "tree") causes us to have this belief and
this other bit of Quality over here (let's call it a "tiger") causes us
to have this other belief.
Paul:
It's different because it redescribes reality as a process, as something
with no pre-existing properties such as "this bit of Quality is a tree."
For example, primitive tribes have been reported to pay relatively
little attention to the difference we would make between animate and
inanimate objects or make no distinction between the sun and a white
cockatoo but distinguish sharply between both the sun and white
cockatoos and black cockatoos. Different values, different reality.
Pirsig is saying that a sense of value creates the distinction between a
tree and its surroundings and "carves out" a tree from the rest of our
environment. The idea of a pre-existing physical tiger is a high quality
idea that comes after the evaluation.
What causes you to believe in the existence of cruelty?
Matt:
Quality _is_ our environment. We _do_ invent all of that stuff, and we
invent it to cope. I see no contradiction with this and Pirsig.
Paul:
By "environment" Pirsig does not mean something already laid out in
physical space and time, which seems to be what pragmatists are saying.
Matt:
The pragmatist, though, sees all the questions the metaphysician asks as
part of SOM.
Paul:
And this is where he goes wrong. The appearance/reality distinction is
dissolved when everything is real. Debate about reality then becomes a
debate about high and low quality.
Matt:
I think Pirsig, in his better moments, does, too. Thing is, I think
Pirsig thinks that answering the questions absurdly is good enough to
get rid of the problems of SOM. The pragmatist doesn't think so. Just
as the idealists make an absurd answer to an absurd Cartesian question,
and Nietzsche makes an absurd answer to an absurd Platonic question,
taking these questions seriously still leaves the problems, it simply
inverts them.
Paul:
Absurdity is often the beginning of a progression which ends in a
platitude.
Matt said:
So, anyways, when I come to your use of metaphysics, I have to make a
choice: which way are you using it? I chose the old, representational
way because you also said, "primary empirical reality." Pragmatists
like myself go, "Primary to what?"
Paul said:
Words, concepts, beliefs.
Matt:
Eww, gross. Quine and his student Davidson helps us think that the
distinction between language and nature, scheme and content is
untenable.
Paul:
Where did scheme and content come into what I said?
Also, are you suggesting, like Kant, that we are born with innate
concepts about the world? All I'm saying is that I agree with Pirsig
that evaluation happens without words, concepts or beliefs and is the
cause of words, concepts and beliefs. You are also saying that beliefs
are caused by something other than beliefs, so you are making a
distinction even if it is "a pragmatic one." My distinction is between
static and Dynamic Quality.
(Regarding Quine, I've only read his "Two Dogmas of Empiricism" and I
have to say I think it is a terribly written, condescending,
unconvincing example of the worst kind of philosophy. A couple of good
points buried in an avalanche of jargon and italicised latin :-))
Matt:
BUT, without going into those arguments, I would try to dissuade you
from this bit of Pirsig with another bit of Pirsig: the description of
Quality as an event, in ZMM. I think this is great pragmatist stuff.
Saying "Quality is the primary empirical reality" makes it sound like a
noun, which is what he says it is at the end of Lila. Not so in ZMM, my
favored book. If Quality is an event, then there is no point in trying
to say that Quality exists before subjects and objects or reality and
concepts. Quality occurs when the two come together. Put the other way
around, since Quality is reality, subjects and objects or reality and
concepts only exist when they come together.
Paul:
"Empirical reality" is synonymous with experience and as such is still
an event, an ongoing process. I think Pirsig is saying that good is a
noun rather than an adjective, rather than an incidental property of
nouns; the "good dog" in Lila is a pattern of values, not just a member
of the canine species with a nice temperament.
Paul said:
Whereas some people of the world successfully place this flimsy
"immediately apprehended aesthetic reality" at the heart of their
cultural lives.
Matt:
Clearly people place it at the heart, though I'm not so sure about
"successfully". Pragmatism in this century has, to my mind,
successfully shown that Northrop's "things which can be known only by
being experienced" hasn't yet panned out to mean anything
philosophically, and that we should probably just give up on it.
Paul:
I find that a hugely disappointing attitude for anyone to take. Most of
what I value in my life can be known only by being experienced. I am
reminded of the epigraph in ZMM - "And what is good, Phaedrus, and what
is not good - need we ask anyone to tell us these things?"
Matt:
Well, though I don't think your reasons good (do you eat steak
differently with a fork then you do with a sponge?, that's all the
mediation pragmatists are talking about), I'm listening for alternatives
to language-as-sight.
Paul:
I'm not offering one. Taking a leaf out of the pragmatist book, I'm just
sweeping up your conceptual debris ;-) I think analogising language with
any biological pattern is probably the wrong direction.
Paul
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