From: Robin Brouwer (rsbrouwer@hotmail.com)
Date: Wed Apr 13 2005 - 10:56:12 BST
Hi Matt and everyone.
I feel your last post has cleared a lot of things up, I especially liked the
following quote:
"Because of the peculiar thing philosophy is, gathering wisdom and seeing
how things hang together, there is no way to pin down philosophy except for
parochial reasons of expediency because there is so much wisdom to be had
because there are so many _things_ to be hung together."
So perhaps we can do is pin down the word is use our own subjective value
perception toward the word.
I think we have all consciously or unconsciously valued both the
philosophologer and philospopher, and having done so we have actually been
talking about our individual perceived quality in a philosophologer and
philosopher.
The people that have a great static knowledge of historical philosophy see a
philosopher as someone that uses all his static knowledge to form dynamic
links and new creative ideas.
The people that have read less historical philosophy will probably say that
a philosopher is someone that uses its own dynamic ability and creativity to
form ideas.
Since Pirsig gave the word philosophologer a certain negative static value,
each of us will try and see themselves as a philosopher.
Another quote:
"But should we really expect the baby to make significant
innovations in philosophy?"
I don't think we should, however if there was a way to have an infant
understand what Pirsig ment in his distinction between philosophologer and
philosopher, then the child would probably say that you don't need any books
to be a philosopher.
I think we can only make a distinction between good and bad philosophers
using our own subjective values.
However we can make a distinction between good and bad philosophologers
based on "science" or "history" or even "method".
Robin
p.s. as a last quote:
" Robin said she noticed the contradiction here. "
Robin is actually a boy :)
>From: "Matt Kundert" <pirsigaffliction@hotmail.com>
>Reply-To: moq_discuss@moq.org
>To: moq_discuss@moq.org
>Subject: MD Creativity and Philosophology, 2
>Date: Tue, 12 Apr 2005 12:56:51 -0500
>
>The second part,
>
>Robin and David suggest more or less the same reading of the
>philosophy/philosophology distinction as Steve. Robin initially said that
>a philosopher is anyone “that does not blindly follow the ‘truths’ found by
>someone before him.” Robin has since capitulated on that view for reasons
>similar to those I offered above. Robin said that a philosophologist is
>someone who uses static patterns to combat static patterns, while a
>philosopher is someone who “uses his own dynamic/creative beliefs and
>experiences to create a new philosophy or to identify with an existing
>one.” Robin said she noticed the contradiction here. The problem, I
>think, is the same one I pointed out with Steve and the exultation of the
>“internal struggle that creates Quality.” Beliefs are static patterns, and
>so the apparent contradiction in Robin’s formulation. But if we accept
>that our beliefs are static patterns, and that most of our lives are
>static, but it is the interplay of warring static patterns that breeds
>Dynamic creativeness (as in my description of how new arguments are born),
>I think we can see how creativeness should be praised. I think this
>formulation also pays better homage to Pirsig’s description of static
>latching, where Dynamic innovations move us to a higher plateau of Quality,
>but then become crusted over as they become old, and eventually become
>thrown away as new Dynamic innovations are created on the shoulders of the
>old ones. As Dewey would say, the bad is simply a discarded good.
>
>But if we accept these views of creativity, I think we’ve left the
>philosopher/philosophologist distinction behind. As Erin has said, the
>application to cases makes the whole thing very blurry. The reason is
>because the distinction is supposed to be for deciding who is and isn’t a
>philosopher and it isn’t completely clear how creativity plays into it. If
>the distinction just breaks down into a distinction between originality and
>unoriginality, why have the philosopher/philosophologist distinction when
>we already have the originality/unoriginality distinction? The reason for
>the confusion is because Pirsig builds the distinction around two
>descriptors, not one. “Creative” is on the “philosopher” side of the
>distinction, but so is “inattentive to history.” The second descriptor
>gives us an easy basis for applying the distinction (“Does he pay attention
>to the history of philosophy?”), but the first descriptor is the term of
>approbation. Pirsig conflates “creativity” with “inattention to history”
>to create an easy way to apply the distinction and a reason to. Without
>the creativity descriptor, people would begin to wonder what’s wrong with
>reading history. But with the creativity descriptor, we have our reason:
>because you’re not being creative or original.
>
>However, my argument has been (among others) that the original/unoriginal
>distinction cuts _across_ the historical/unhistorical distinction. But
>this equivocation in our description of the philosophy/philosophology
>distinction is what leads David to first say, “philosophology is when the
>writing is very static and offers nothing original,” but then to add, “but
>that's not to say there is zero creativity in philosophologists.” This
>equivocation is bred because of the way Pirsig constructs the distinction.
>So when Robin asks, “Would you say either role (philosophologer or
>philosopher) is morally better than the other, and on which basis?” the
>only reason we may scratch our head a little and wonder is because of
>Pirsig’s conflation. If you want to emphasize creativity, you’ll say that
>philosophers are better. If you want to emphasize the fun and bonuses of
>reading history, you’ll deny that one is better than the other. What we
>have to remember, though, is that for Pirsig, the distinction was created
>to distinguish real from fake philosophers. And real philosophers are
>creative and inattentive to history, though it is unclear how Pirsig sees
>the two descriptors being related. The only thing I can figure is that he
>thinks people who know less about history are more likely to be creative,
>much like the baby who smiles in wonder at everything because she’s
>experiencing everything for the first time. But should we really expect
>the baby to make significant innovations in philosophy?
>
>I’d like to leave this for the moment to rephrase my argument to perhaps
>make it more clear. I think people are confused about my argument because
>they think I’m arguing that historically-conscious philosophers
>(specifically philosophers steeped in the history of philosophy) are the
>real philosophers. This isn’t true. My argument is that Pirsig’s
>distinction _forces_ us to decide who the real philosophers are, when the
>spirit of his philosophy tells us that we _shouldn’t_ decide. Because of
>the peculiar thing philosophy is, gathering wisdom and seeing how things
>hang together, there is no way to pin down philosophy except for parochial
>reasons of expediency because there is so much wisdom to be had because
>there are so many _things_ to be hung together. You can’t cut a
>distinction between history and substance because there is no substance
>outside of our mostly unconscious, educative reception of the history of
>humankind. If you do pin down a substance (as you’ll have to), it will be
>for parochial, expedient reasons, i.e. personal reasons, based on the type
>of wisdom you want to generate, the types of things you want to hang
>together. My focus (or “substance”) has been on the history of Western
>philosophy because those are the things I want to hang together. What I’m
>not doing is saying that what I do makes me a real philosopher. We are all
>real philosophers.
>
>Pirsig’s emphasis on personal creativity comes from Pirsig’s love of
>genius. He wants us all to try and overcome ourselves, i.e. overcome our
>inherited static patterns, our inherited “train of collective
>consciousness.” This is the theme that resonates so strongly with the
>existentialist theme of “authenticity.” To become authentic is to engage
>in a Nietzschean project of self-overcoming in which we, in Nietzsche’s
>words, “become who we are.” But I don’t think this love of genius is
>motivated simply by the personal need to be authentic. Throughout Pirsig’s
>works he’s trying to help us out of the spiritual crisis of our age. I
>think Pirsig’s emphasis on creativity, genius, _Dynamic Quality_ stems from
>his recognition that humanity’s geniuses are the ones who have created who
>we all are, that, following Shelley, poets are the unacknowledged
>legislators of the world. Pirsig wants us all to reach for this creative
>genius, reach for Dynamic Quality, and he wants us to do so, not simply to
>be unlike anybody else who has ever been, but because it will raise
>humanity to a higher plateau. This is where I think Pirsig’s claim that we
>_need_ both static and Dynamic Quality is important. Humanity’s train is
>static patterns of Quality and we need brujos to expand the train, to help
>us all become better. But, contrary to the way Pirsig sometimes writes, I
>do not think there is any point in saying that it is better to be a brujo
>than an underlaborer. We need both to move the train along.
>
>Matt
>
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