Members of the MD,
As you might be able to tell from the title, I am, with heavy heart,
relinquishing my place in the sanctuary. Im not sure who first compared
the MoQ to religion and, though Im sure it was meant despairingly, I find
the analogy fitting and use it as an apt description, rather than an
off-hand denunciation. Though certainly not as shocking as, say, Bo or
Platt leaving the fold, it is a tad shocking for myself, having been there
for all the thoughts and essays and misfired essays Ive had over the past
two years. Though not as vocal in the MD forum as the two aforementioned
priests, I was a staunch advocate and was in the process of carving out
my own little place in the Forum. In fact, my silence for the past year is
part of why Im writing now.
The last several posts I had written were about two things Ive been
thinking about a lot lately: Rorty and argumentation. As I had commented a
while ago during a pragmatism thread, Ive been reading a lot of Rorty
lately and Ive finally come to a realization: Pirsig was doing to me what
Plato did to Pirsig. For Pirsig, Plato created the Western philosophical
nightmare called Professional Philosophy, amongst other things. But
through Rortys eyes Im finding that Pirsig is attempting the same thing,
rather than really fundamentally changing anything. To turn Pirsigs
eloquent phrase back on him, the halo is gone from Pirsigs head. This is
not to say that Im still not an avid Pirsig supporter. But Im finding
that the better parts of Pirsig are to be found in ZMM, not Lila. What
Rorty has given me is the tools necessary to see and to enunciate what Ive
disliked about Pirsig, without throwing out the baby with the bathwater.
And though Rorty gave Pirsig the short shrift, I implore you not to do the
same to Rorty. Rorty has a lot to offer Pirsig and vice versa.
The main topic I wanted to cover in this little introduction to the new
movement of my thought is the issue of argumentation, something we know all
too well here. A lot of arguing goes on here, some of it edifying, much of
it belligerent and uninteresting (so goes my opinion). When I first signed
onto the MD I lurked for a while and then was pulled by the force of God to
respond to someones stupidity. They are making a mistake and I must set
them straight! or so went my megalomania. After a while the arguments
became tedious. My point didnt seem to be coming across, or rather, since
the point of argumentation is conversion, nobody was budging. This had
happened before in other forums, so I just took a step back. But as Ive
watched over the past year, Ive seen a lot of intense bickering with no
ground being given or gained in one direction or the other. Im not the
first to see this or say something about it, but people seem to drive their
arguments at the others and then defiantly defend their own position
without much give or leeway for new perspective. This is why antagonists in
the MD have despairingly called the MoQ a dogma and a religion.
Defenders of the faith have then, rightly, come back and called the
antagonists own positions dogma and religion. Obviously, there is an
impasse. What is this argumentation if it does not align our thoughts into
a single thread? Thats what argumentation is for, after all, right?
Reading Rorty, however, put this uneasiness I felt with argumentation into
focus. Rorty believes that the self is a centerless web of beliefs and
desires. This web includes a set of words which they employ to justify
their actions, their beliefs, and their lives. These are the words in which
we formulate praise of our friends and contempt of our enemies, our
long-term projects, our deepest self-doubts and our highest hopes. They are
the words in which we tell, sometimes prospectively and sometimes
retrospectively, the story of our lives. I shall call these words a
persons final vocabulary. (from Contingency, Irony, and Solidarity)
Rorty feels that the centerless web of beliefs and desires that we label
the self is changed, not rationally, but causally. This means that
arguments are of little practical use because a persons final vocabulary
is self-justifying. Its the end of the road and, for all practical
purposes, final. Arguments proceed by common ground, but if common ground
is not had, then logical argumentation is superfluous. If an argument does
work, it is not because it was rational or logical, but because it
was persuasive. At root, people have a fundamental incorrigibility of their
final vocabulary, so, in Rortys words, we must tempt the rising
generation with our words.
My uneasiness with argumentation stems from two things: 1) the feeling that
people need to reach their own conclusions, work through their own
problems, think it through themselves, etc. This philosophical
individualism finds voice in the incorrigibility of a persons final
vocabulary. If a person cannot be forced by Reason into a new belief, then
they must be persuaded to think it through themselves. 2) The results of
most dialectical arguments are as so: two people each defend a separate
position, they argue, one person forces the other into a position of
weakness through a series of dialectical gambits, the loser invokes her
incorrigibility (We, Im still right or Im still not convinced or
Youre a big doo-doo head), and the winner, having already supposedly
won the encounter, resorts to rhetorical measures of labeling which have no
logical, dialectical bearing (Well, youre not being rational or Youre
being dogmatic or Youre an insane freak). Either way, the rational,
logical, undistorted dialectical match is ended rhetorically. Hence, the
primacy of tempting people with your words, rather than with argumentation.
This is essentially what I see being played out on a daily basis in the MD
forum. Two or more positions come together, clash, and eventually, through
finding that arguing with a brick wall is tiresome, end the debate. The
debate is found to be exasperating rather than elucidating. The debates
that rage over the supremacy of the MoQ over some other usurper (SOM,
Wilber, etc.) or vice versa play out this type of clash, but they also
illustrate the self-justification of alternate paradigms. Two recent
examples come to mind: the Beasley/McWatt clash (and its subsequent
backlash on the MD) and a relatively minor skirmish between Platt Holden
and Glenn Bradford.
The Beasley/McWatt battle took place over John Beasleys essay
Understanding Quality. Anthony McWatt offered a MoQian critique of the
essay which, essentially, shifted the ground of the debate onto MoQian
terms and showed that Beasley, by not following this shift, had not even
begun to understand the MoQ and, ergo, cannot begin to yet critique it. The
backlash that occurred was led by Struan Hellier who (as per his pattern)
attacked the credibility of McWatt, amongst other apparent holes in
McWatts argument. What this incident illustrates is how McWatt accused
Beasley of not engaging Pirsigs MoQ (by not shifting into a MoQ paradigm),
but then himself did not engage Beasleys essay (by staying in the MoQ
paradigm). Hellier solidified the incommensurability and, ultimately,
self-justifying nature of these alternate paradigms (as he has done on so
many occasions) with rhetorical attacks in the way of ad hominem arguments,
rather than logical argumentation which is what is supposedly desired.
The recent skirmish between Holden and Bradford only receives notice
because of its timeliness, commonality to other skirmishes (this as only a
single exemplar), and its explicitness. On July 18, 2002, Holden (posted
under Re: MD Understanding Intellect) said:
"It all hangs together and, as you [Bodvar Skutvik] say, "the MOQ makes
much more sense than the SOM." When all is said and done, SOM's dogma of
"chance." [sic] is every bit as rigid and unprovable as what creationists
believe. The faith of science in chance knows no bounds."
Bradford took issue and wrote:
"You've written a number of similar criticisms of "chance" over the years
yet you've never fleshed out the issue, opting instead for the rhetorical
pot-shot.
"Would you mind expanding on your criticism of the SOM notion of "chance"
and, as an exercise in intellectual honesty, give the best defense of
"chance" that you can find, *before* positing the MOQ position?" (July 20,
2002, MD MOQ on chance)
This is a further illustration of the common shifting of perspective.
Bradford, taking issue with it, redesribes such a shift as intellectual
dishonesty. Holden, in defending himself, notes the same thing as I have:
"Asking me to defend "chance" before positing the MOQ position is like
asking you to defend creationism before positing the scientific position. I
fail to see the connection to "intellectual honesty," but I'm open to
enlightenment on the subject." (July 20, 2002, Re: MD MOQ on chance)
As a further illustration of the circular, self-justifying nature of
alternative modes of thought, I would illustrate two more positions: the
Platonic dialectical-foundation position and the Rortyan
recontextualization position. These two positions are on the nature of
intellectual engagement and so receive special notice. The Platonic
tradition argues that for intellectual discourse to occur, we must agree on
terms and then argue various positions and platforms according to these
terms. At the end of an engagement some sort of consensus will have
occurred given the singular use of terms and the rigorousness and
thoroughness of argumentation. If consensus has not occurred, it is only
because of equivocation in terminology, sloppy reasoning, or plain old
stubborness. The Platonic dialectic is the basis for logical argumentation.
The Rortyan position holds that beliefs are changed causally, not through
rational argumentation. The proper method for intellectual engagement is
recontextualization. The private position of a person is recontextualized
within a narrative of history by which the private position is shown to
have an inadequate understanding of the patterns of the past and the needs
of the present. Positions arent so much engaged as they are circumvented
by shifting the grounds of debate into ones own private vocabulary.
The engagement of these two positions is, obviously, quite problematical.
The Platonic tradition demands agreement of terms and dialectical
argumentation, while the Rortyan position demands circumvention of opposing
terms and persuasiveness of narrative. So how do these two positions
engage? If youre a Platonist, they engage like normal: logical dialectic.
If youre a Rortyan, they dont like normal: the arguments are circumvented
and then recontextualized. The Platonist would dialectically engage the
Rortyan by showing that dialectical reason is supreme and/or needed for
rational discourse to take place. The Rortyan would shift the terms and
show that dialectical reason has given us the entire misconceived tradition
of Western metaphysics. The two positions cannot do anything but find
recourse in their own methods. If either one were to alternate to another
method to enshrine the original method, then that undermines the entire
effort by showing that there is another method at work behind the original.
Both methods are necessarily self-justifying.
Now that Ive laid out some of the Rortyan tools and terminology, we can
see how they can help resolve the recent debates on the MD I pulled out
earlier. We can see how the Rortyan demand for incorrigibility of final
vocabularies and circumvention of alternate vocabularies works its magic on
the outstanding differences between MoQ priests and MoQ heretics. The
heretics demand some rational, neutral foundation for debate, while the
priests continue to shift the terms of debate onto the MoQ. Rorty helps us
realize that this is precisely what should be done. McWatt was correct in
shifting the playing field to MoQ terms (whatever the particularties of his
critique) and so was Holden. Rorty, however, continues the train of thought
and recommends that we forego argumentation completely, whether with the
heretics or with each other. But while we should forego argumentation, this
does not mean we should abandon discourse or dialogue.
Finally, I wish to elaborate briefly on why I find the MoQ-religion analogy
a pleasing description. As Ive said, all people have recourse to their own
final vocabulary. The most famous source for final vocabularies in the West
is the Judeo-Christian tradition. With the indentification of religions as
supplying final vocabularies we have the ability to compare secular
vocabularies to traditionally religious vocabularies. However,
consequently, the divide between the secular and the religious has been
blurred. Many Religious Studies academics are constructing definitions of
religion that include, for instance, Marxism and Capitalism. This has had
the effect of making the secular/religious distinction, not only blurred,
but even ubiquitous and therefore as having outlived its usefulness. Not
only that, it has also had the effect of turning the heinous charge of
being religious (as necessarily being dogmatic) into a gentle,
descriptive analogy.
Before I sign off, I wish to simply allude to the fact that there is much
that has been left out of Rortys philosophy so far (notably Bloomian
strong misreadings, Rortys use of irony, systematic vs. edifying
philosophy, post-Philosophical culture, and metaphors vs. literal words
amongst much else). I hope to submit this posting to a kind of peer review
before I commit it to essay. As such, any forthcoming engagements with
this post will almost certainly elicit the other strands of Rortys
thought. I dont wish to spring them on anyone in some sort of ambush; I
only wish to get a feel for when they would best be introduced. If you feel
like youre being ambushed, remember that this post is meant only as an
introduction to the intersections of Rorty and Pirsig and my own use of
them. As should already be apparent, I dont wish convince anyone using
Platonic, dialectical strong-arm tactics; I only wish to tempt you with the
gentle purring of Rortys edifying discourse.
Matt
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