From: MATTHEW PAUL KUNDERT (mpkundert@students.wisc.edu)
Date: Wed Nov 19 2003 - 02:18:51 GMT
Hey Paul,
Paul said:
Correct me if I'm wrong, but I think pragmatists then go on to say that as nothing in this (assumed) external, independent world will come out in favour of one belief over another, "common sense" (or intersubjective agreement) is *entirely* a *product of* society.
...
"Evaluation" and "approval" is, to Pirsig, the fundamental process of reality, not society or the common sense that "evaluation" produces. This metaphysical claim flips over the pragmatist claim that a society alone decides which beliefs are valuable and says that it is value that creates both society and its beliefs. In other words, the MOQ says that value precedes culture.
Matt:
You performed a little sleight of hand there. You say pragmatists think, '"common sense" (or intersubjective agreement) is *entirely* a *product of* society"' and then say 'to Pirsig, the fundamental process of reality, not society or the common sense that "evaluation" produces.' Your fairly accurate description of pragmatism says nothing about a "fundamental process," so it doesn't really contradict the pragmatist point. In fact, I would suggest that when reading the popular Pirsig quote, we read him as agreeing with pragmatism that "common sense" is bred out of society. He goes on from there to say something about a "fundamental process of reality," which I think you correctly identify as a metphysical claim. Two separate points, I think, though.
I don't see why, though, we need this claim to a "fundamental process of reality." What's lost if we nix it and simply say, with the pragmatist, that common sense is bred out of society, which is bred of the biological species homo sapien, which is bred out of carbon atoms? I don't see the point in saying "value precedes culture". How do you know if the only thing that tells you that value precedes culture is your culture? That leads to epistemology, and I think that bad news. When I read "Quality is Reality" I read a Jamesian claim that we cannot pull the human off the inhuman, I don't read a metaphysical claim about the procession of ontological categories.
Paul said:
Furthermore, it is not that nature does or does not value this or that belief, but that actually our set of beliefs called "nature" are a product of the process of evaluation (i.e. Quality) itself. It is also in this sense that I think pragmatism is wrong to say that "nature" or "the world" causes us to have beliefs as I think this puts the cart before the horse.
...
This quote [from ZMM] also restates my earlier point when he says that, not the physical world, but "Quality is the continuing stimulus which our environment puts upon us to create the world in which we live" and "We invent earth and heavens, trees, stones and oceans, gods, music, arts, language, philosophy, engineering, civilization and science". The pragmatist is stuck in the loop of saying that, instead of Quality, it is trees, stones and oceans that cause us to believe in trees, stones and oceans.
Matt:
I don't see a different loop from the same loop that Pirsig has. If Quality is Reality, what's the problem with saying this bit of Quality over here (let's call it a "tree") causes us to have this belief and this other bit of Quality over here (let's call it a "tiger") causes us to have this other belief. Quality _is_ our environment. We _do_ invent all of that stuff, and we invent it to cope. I see no contradiction with this and Pirsig.
Pirsig said:
"Now, to take that which has caused us to create the world, and include it within the world we have created, is clearly impossible. That is why Quality cannot be defined. If we do define it we are defining something less than Quality itself." [ZMM Ch20 p.251]
Paul said:
I think the last paragraph explains why Pirsig says that the term "MOQ" is a contradiction. In Lila, Pirsig expands the philosophical utility of the word quality by including the definable "something less than..." (subjects and objects, redescribed as static quality) and keeps the undefinable Quality from ZMM as Dynamic Quality.
Matt:
Yeah, it does explain why Pirsig does it and it shows Pirsig taking a metaphysical question seriously. This type of self-referential paradox is something that pragmatists don't take seriously because its a function of our language. Its only if you think language gets at Reality in some fashion, if it _reflects_ Reality, would you get your panties in a bunch about a definition being less than what it is. You already have the "what it is" before definition, but pragmatists have no idea "what it is" outside of definition. That's kinda' why I take "undefined Quality" to be an anti-essence: a caution that we will never have "what it is."
I would say that Pirsig would agree with this last statement, but the way Pirsig reaches something like it shows Pirsig making a lot of other claims, claims that for pragmatists are superfluous. Pirsig does this, on my reading, because he takes superfluous questions (i.e. metaphysical questions) seriously and tries to answer them seriously, rather than thinking the whole thing pretty funny and absurd. Pirsig answers the metaphysician's questions with absolutely absurd answers. The metaphysician asks, "What is reality," and Pirsig answers "You can't know that." When the metaphysician exclaims, "That's not an answer!" Pirsig, rather than breaking into a smile and saying, "Yeah, you right. My absurd answer is supposed to punch up how absurd the questions are," as the pragmatist would, keeps a straight face and says, "Yes it is." Lila is his defense of why his absurd answers are, in fact, legitimate answers. The pragmatist, though, sees all the questions the metaphysician
asks as part of SOM. I think Pirsig, in his better moments, does, too. Thing is, I think Pirsig thinks that answering the questions absurdly is good enough to get rid of the problems of SOM. The pragmatist doesn't think so. Just as the idealists make an absurd answer to an absurd Cartesian question, and Nietzsche makes an absurd answer to an absurd Platonic question, taking these questions seriously still leaves the problems, it simply inverts them.
Paul said:
I think you are on the right track when you say "So, words are for expression, but they aren't up for the task of Quality" but make an error when you assume that "expression" starts and ends with words.
Matt:
That expression starts and ends with words is exactly what the pragmatist won't back off of. And by "expression starts and ends with words," the pragmatist is saying "cognitive expression." There are other avenues of expression, such as painting. But painting, on the pragmatist reading, doesn't offer knowledge. That doesn't make it bad, mind you. Much like the distinction between neural psychology and folk psychology, art has a different purpose than science and morality and we need not reduce any of them to the others, or hold one up on a pedestal over the others.
Matt said:
So, anyways, when I come to your use of metaphysics, I have to make a choice: which way are you using it? I chose the old, representational way because you also said, "primary empirical reality." Pragmatists like myself go, "Primary to what?"
Paul said:
Words, concepts, beliefs.
Matt:
Eww, gross. Quine and his student Davidson helps us think that the distinction between language and nature, scheme and content is untenable. BUT, without going into those arguments, I would try to dissuade you from this bit of Pirsig with another bit of Pirsig: the description of Quality as an event, in ZMM. I think this is great pragmatist stuff. Saying "Quality is the primary empirical reality" makes it sound like a noun, which is what he says it is at the end of Lila. Not so in ZMM, my favored book. If Quality is an event, then there is no point in trying to say that Quality exists before subjects and objects or reality and concepts. Quality occurs when the two come together. Put the other way around, since Quality is reality, subjects and objects or reality and concepts only exist when they come together.
Matt said:
Sure, you can hijack my analogy, but I won't follow you in it.
Paul said:
Because it turns out to be a bad analogy?
Matt:
;-) No, because I still think it a good analogy. You haven't convinced me its a bad analogy.
Paul said:
Whereas some people of the world successfully place this flimsy "immediately apprehended aesthetic reality" at the heart of their cultural lives.
Matt:
Clearly people place it at the heart, though I'm not so sure about "successfully". Pragmatism in this century has, to my mind, successfully shown that Northrop's "things which can be known only by being experienced" hasn't yet panned out to mean anything philosophically, and that we should probably just give up on it.
Paul said:
If "tinted glasses" is an analogy of language and "The human serpent coils around everything" is a slogan that means, no, we can't peel off language from our perceptions" then you cannot toss in your glasses.
Matt:
Very funny. We can toss analogies wherever we want to. Its language we can't toss away.
Matt said:
What I was trying to say is that both analogies agree on one issue: that depending on what kind of glasses/utensil you use, you will see/do something different. Now, your stumble ("knives and forks don't seem to me to mediate perception") punches up the fact that you are still thinking of perception (and language) on the analogy of _sight_.
Paul said:
Not really, I'm just not sure that the pragmatist analogy between language and tools is a good one, for reasons already stated, although I agree that language as a representational hook isn't great either. More importantly, I'm not sure that the "language as a tool" analogy solves the "language as a hook" problems.
Matt:
Well, though I don't think your reasons good (do you eat steak differently with a fork then you do with a sponge?, that's all the mediation pragmatists are talking about), I'm listening for alternatives to language-as-sight.
Matt
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