From: David Buchanan (DBuchanan@ClassicalRadio.org)
Date: Sun Oct 19 2003 - 02:27:56 BST
Matt, Steve and all MOQers:
Matt said to Steve:
If we say that DQ is part of the language game we play, then we simply beg
the question over the Nazi. I see this as not what Pirsig is trying to do,
and DMB agrees with me when he says that "The MOQ doesn't make any sense
when its read that way. To equate DQ with ... assumptions or any other
static
thing." Now, I happen to agree with you, that we can and should call DQ an
assumption. But that doesn't get the effect that DMB wants and Pirsig, I
think, wants.
dmb says:
DQ is part of the language game? We should call DQ an assumption? We
certainly agree on one thing; that doesn't get the effect that Pirsig wants.
You also refer to DQ (redundantly) as "a new innovation by reality". In
earlier posts you've described DQ as "a compliment we pay after the fact".
And your essay seems to suggest that the problem with the Nazis is that they
reject DQ in favor of static patterns. C'mon, Matt. Admit it. Yes, DQ has
lots to do with the evolutionary process, but you're trying way too hard to
make DQ anything other than religious mysticism, because it freaks out your
atheist ass. :-)
Matt:
Its not that Pirsig is a bad pragmatist for including DQ, he's a bad
pragmatist for making a distinction between mediated experience and
unmediated experience. The pragmatist thinks this way of describing
experience creates a lot of unneeded conceptual problems, problems that the
pragmatist thinks he can clear away and still explain experience just as
well, if not better.
dmb says:
There you go again. Ignoring the idea that DQ is the mystical reality has
led you to the conclusion that "unmediated" experience only represents
"unneeded conceptual problems". But an unmediated experience is just a
descriptive name for a mystical experience. Since Lila sorta begins and ends
with that scene in the teepee, I think its clear that Pirsig does not share
the Pragmatists view. Pirsig gets at this kind of experience personally in
at least two ways: by way of insanity and peyote. Then there is all that
talk about ZEN and the pricelessness of solitude and empty space. Talking
about all that kind of stuff is talking about unmediated experience. I think
Pirsig and Rorty don't just beg questions over each other, each sees the
other as the disease to be cured. To say Pirsig is a bad pragmatist is
nearly as weird saying Rorty is a bad mystic. I'm not sure why the
pragmatist thinks we should dissolve the distinction or otherwise deny such
a thing, but Pirsig seems to be doing the very opposite and thinks that such
denials are part of the problem to be solved.
Matt wrote:
...the pragmatist is attempting to become post-metaphysical. This is the
purely negative point that pragmatism adds to the philosophical
conversation. Rorty doesn't always claim to be doing positive philosophy.
For the most part, he leaves that to others.
dmb says:
Oh. You've been making a purely negative point. Didn't know that. Thought
you had a point to make. My mistake. I'm relieved to hear it, actually. I
was worried that the relentless negativity was due to clinical depression -
or even worse - that it was brought on by something I said. Just kidding.
Matt continued:
When people accuse him of not moving on, of being as enraptured with the
philosophical problems of Platonic philosophy as the metaphysicians, he
simply shrugs his shoulders and says, "As long as people do Platonic
philosophy, you need me to try and convince them to move on and do what you
guys are doing. And I'll keep cheering you on and pointing out to everyone
else what wonderful things you guys and gals are doing."
dmb says:
As long as people do Platonic philosophy, we need Rorty? I guess the
question would be; "Is Pirsig doing Platonic philosophy?" It would propably
take thousands of words to make a case, but I've become convinced that the
rejection of mysticism enters the picture again here. I think that Plato has
been wildly misunderstood by guys like Rorty. Plato seems to be in Rorty's
sights because he's taken for a foundationalist asserting ahistorical truths
or whatever, but he was actually talking about the mystical reality. He was
talking about something beyond history and prior to intellect. Anthony
McWatt quotes THE HYMS OF THE RG-VEDA in Indian Philosophy...
"Rta (i.e. Quality) denotes the order of the world. Everything that is
ordered in the universe has Rta for its principle. It corresponds to the
universals of Plato. The world of experience is a shadow or reflection of
the Rta, the permanent reality which remains unchanged in all the welter of
mutation. The universal is prior to the particular, and so the Vedic seer
thinks that Rta exists before the maifestation of all phenomena. The
shifting series of the world are the varying expression of the constant Rta.
So Rta is called the father of all..."
Matt:
The importance of the Nazi is people's desire to see the Nazi _answered_ and
not simply outlived or converted. People want to see a knockdown argument
delivered to the Nazi. This is what I don't think can be delievered, and I
don't think Pirsig thinks there is any non-question begging way to either.
What Pirsig does seem to claim is that a proper understanding of reality
would show that the Nazi is wrong.
dmb says:
Seriously? No knockout argument can be delivered? How about this? Genocide
is evil. Murder is wrong. Coming up with arguments against the Nazis makes
shooting fish-in-a-barrel look like rocket surgery. The problem is trying to
grasp how anyone could have thought that Nazism was a good thing, as
millions certainly did. The question is why did fascism emerge in the first
place? What's the appeal? What's it all about? I've looked around some, and
nobody splits those questions open like Pirsig does. His observation that
the root cause is a conflict between two completely different levels not
only explains WW2, but the present conflicts as well.
Matt said:
As long as we think this claim is made in a vocabulary, it begs the
question. What Pirsig wants us to think is that it doesn't matter if it
begs the question of not, we've seen the Truth, the Nazi hasn't. Pirsig
seems to want to make a claim about the way Reality _really_ is which will
philosophically justify our moral convictions. Pragmatists don't think we
need philosophical justification for our moral convictions. We think that
we just need conviction.
dmb says:
Pragmatists think we just need conviction? Hmmm. The Nazis and the
fundamentalists would probably go along with you on that, but I think
unjustified convictions are just about exactly what we DON'T need. But
that's beside my point. What I object to here is the idea that Pirsig's
explanation of the Nazis rests upon "a claim about the way Reality REALLY
is". You're confusing claims about the mystical reality with foundationalist
claims about the world of experience. Pirsig's claims about the Nazis only
assert that some static values are better and more evolved than others. And
as I have tried to point out from the top, you repeatedly misunderstand and
misconstrue the MOQ by confusing DQ with all kinds of static things.
Matt said:
Again, I think people are misunderstanding what I was up to. My main
project was an explication of Pirsig's system and then what kind of
consequences it would lead to. Because I think Pirsig to be horribly
complicated, I was choosey and highlighted, lifted, and drew attention to
all the sections of Pirsig that Kantians like DMB and Platt enjoy. My
effort was to show that a Kantian Pirsig does exist. That it is in tension
with other points of his philosophy, I have no doubt. But people keep
insisting that there only exists one possible interpretation of Pirsig, and
I think Pirsig is just too rich a philosopher for that to happen.
dmb says:
I'm a Kantian? You've mistaken mysticism for something else again! The
cleveland harbour effect has surely sunk you by now. I certainly don't mean
to suggest that there is only one possible interpretation of the MOQ, but
looking at it with Rorty glasses seems to go way beyond purely negative
tomato throwing and gumption sucking, it causes you to dismiss the central
ideas, the heart and soul of the thing. You're not purifying anything here.
Quite the opposite.
More later. Thanks,
dmb
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