From: David Buchanan (DBuchanan@ClassicalRadio.org)
Date: Sun Mar 09 2003 - 22:08:54 GMT
Andy, Matt theEE, Squonk and y'all:
These comments from Andy prompted me to try to read Matt's essay:
It is hard to believe any fruitful results can be expected from
discussions between Squank and Matt, but the recent convert of DMB to the
pragmatist view is a testament that one can eventually be persuaded to take
off their blinders and begin to see something in a new light and through a
new vocabulary. David's crediting of Rick for his direction toward Dewey
is commendable, but slights Matt's contributions toward softening himself
up to the pragmatist view (although, I don't think David will ever admit
this.)
DMB says:
I have no problem giving credit where credit is due. Its just that I can't
credit Matt with anything but confusion. Besides, I only said that "my
distaste for pragmatism has all but evaporated" not that I've become a
convert to pragmatism. My problem with Matt's approach was expressed by Matt
himself in his essay. Here the author he's talking about is Rorty, but I
think it also applies Matt.
Matt wrote:
The author kept using a lot of Greek, Latin, and German and kept referring
to people I'd never heard of and things like "technical realism" and
"intuitive realism" and "verificationism" and "psychological nominalism."
All in all, I didn't understand a damn word he was saying.
DMB continues:
And this is my problem. I don't "understand a damn word" he is saying, for
example...
Matt wrote:
He's here echoing Kant when Kant suggested that he was performing a
Copernican inversion.6 The problem as Rorty sees it is that an inversion, be
it Pirsig's inversion of SOM, Kant's inversion of Cartesian epistemology,
Nietzsche's inversion of Platonism, or de Man's inversion of the
"metaphysics of presence," still plays by the same rules as what was
inverted.
DMB continues:
To understand just these two sentences one would have to know quite alot
about Kant, Copernicus, Rorty, Descartes, Nietzche, Plato and de Man. One
would have to know what a Copernican inversion is, what SOM is, what
Cartesian epistemology is, how Nietzche inverted Plato, how de Man inverted
the 'metaphysics of presence is and what sort of 'rules' he refering to. Not
to mention that fact that all of this is a description of 'the problem' as
Rorty sees it. Whew! And that's just a single assertion! Its just two
sentences. I find this to be pretty much incomprehensible. I'd love to
discuss the substance of the issues rather than just the style of
presentation, but I can't because I have no idea what the substance is. I
have no idea what the problem is. Maybe its all my fault. Maybe I'm just too
stupid or ignorant. Maybe. But I doubt it.
Matt begins his criticism with the premise that the MOQ is like religion.
This happens right away, in the second sentence. I almost never agree with
Squonk and in fact find him only slightly more comprehensible than Matt, but
on this point we agree. I think the MOQ is like religion only in the same
way that cars are like horses. Both can be used to go somewhere. On the
other hand, machines and animals have far more differences than similarities
and so such an analogy strikes me as extremely misleading. And besides that,
Pirsig devotes huge chunks of Lila describing how and why religion is UNLIKE
philosophy. In other words, I think Matt gets off on the wrong foot at the
very begining of the race and so hasn't a prayer of crossing the finish
line. (This is one of the main reasons I dislike the essays in general.
There's no chance to discuss the very first premise, which effects
everything that follows. For this reason, I found it difficult to remain
interested beyond the second sentence.) And then there are the flat out
contradictions....
PIRSIG (LILA ch8, p120)
Since the quantum bundles are not substance and since it is a
usual scientific assumption that these subatomic particles compose
everything there is, then it follows that THERE IS NO SUBSTANCE IN THE WORLD
NOR HAS THERE EVER BEEN (emphasis added). The whole concept is a grand
metaphysical illusion. In his first book, Phaedrus had railed against the
conjuror, Aristotle, who invented the term and started it all."
DMB continues:
This quote seems to make it pretty clear that Aristotle is the conjuror of
substance, and that SOM begins there, but Matt contradicts this....
From Matt's essay:
Pirsig follows Rorty in fingering Plato for causing many of the apparent
problems of philosophy.8 However, as soon as he finishes condemning Plato
for creating SOM, he suggests that what's really real is Quality.
DMB continues:
I'd love to sit down with you someday, Matt. I'd love to press you to answer
some basic questions and then work from there. We have lots of similar
interests and we're both passionate and energetic about those interests. But
at this point I honestly and sincerely have no idea what you're talking
about. And sometimes I suspect that you don't either. Sometimes I think you
are hiding behind lots of technical jargon that you barely understand
yourself. Why not speak simply and plainly? Since Rorty is basically hostile
to metaphysics and is light years away from mysticism, how in the world can
he shed any light on Pirsig's mystical metaphysics? It just seems, like your
essay, doomed from the start.
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