From: MATTHEW PAUL KUNDERT (mpkundert@students.wisc.edu)
Date: Wed Feb 18 2004 - 21:54:07 GMT
DMB said:
I think Pirsig's epistemology is significantly different from Rorty's.
Matt:
Simply put, I never disagreed with this statement. The feeling I have is that Pirsig does "accidently" fall into some of the stuff pragmatism decries, stuff I feel Pirsig does decry--about half the time. Reading Rorty focused my growing discomfort with Pirsig. Making the switch from "experience" to "language" helps me make sense of where I think Pirsig falls into the "bad stuff." DMB puts what I dislike perfectly: "[Pirsig] makes a distinction between reality and our intellectual descriptions of it, between the data and the language we use to talk about it." I don't like statements like this because I can see it being read in two different ways: metaphysically or pragmatically. A metaphysician would read this as saying that our intellectual descriptions attempt to correspond to the reality hidden underneath (and this is exactly what I fear when I read "you are using a term that is more appropriate to actual observation" from Pirsig). A pragmatist would read it as sayi
ng that there is a difference between "rocks" and "words about rocks." If all Pirsig means is the latter, as opposed to the former, then this is not a place where Pirsig differs with Rorty. When Pirsig follows Dewey in saying that experience is reality, they are both saying the same thing as James, that the serpent of humanity coils over all. And all three are saying the same thing as Sellars ("all awareness is a linguistic affair"), just in a different idiom. Trainwreck is certainly too strong, but I think square peg/round hole is still too strong, too. As long as the pages in Lila where Pirsig hooks his train up to pragmatism don't disappear, there will always be a prima facie connection between Pirsig and contemporary pragmatists, one I will continue to try and make some good of.
Matt
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