Hullo Nishant (or is it Taneja?)
I would be surprised if many of the foci believe science to be 'irrefutable', and that certainly
would not apply to Pirsig. I think one of Pirsig's strengths has been his even handed
approach to science - he neither worships it nor denigrates it, though he attacks what he
sees as the SOM side of science's ancestry with a passion. I can't recollect Pirsig saying that
science differs from religion only in that it has an eraser, (which is not to say you are wrong),
but it is a very astute comment. Magic and religion are similar in that ultimately nothing they
assert is subject to disproof. If the rainmaker does his tricks and no rain falls, its because he
omitted something, or made a mistake, or the stronger magician over the hill opposed him, or
whatever. Science oscillates between theorising and experimentation, which are really two
different worlds, but in this oscillation those theories which fail to accord with experiment may
be erased. Indeed the whole point of experiment is to invalidate theory. One of the almost
unconscious consequences of this is that what becomes accepted as valid in the theoretical
realm is only what is testable (though there may be unresolved practical problems in
producing an experiment to test the theory). That is why in this century pseudo-scientific
theories overwhelmed such disciplines as psychology and anthropology. Because emotions
and so on could not be dissected, or measured, ipso facto they do not exist!
Your arguments, "in order to investigate the self, one must be a third party that is separate
from the self", and "objectivity in a subjective sense" rather lose me. You say, "The actual
notion of objectivity is subjective since it has to be contained within a subjective vessel", and
go on to state that each of us will have a different 'idea' of the 'objective'. While I am sure that
is true, it is no different to any word we use - each of us creates a vocabulary and a universe
as our minds evolve. What is interesting, and worthy of comment, is that on the whole we
tend to be able to understand each other pretty well, despite the obvious misunderstandings
that also occur. The words we share, derived from our culture, do seem to be attached to
discriminable experiences, and the sheer number of words we acquire, especially as
children, make it hard to escape the conclusion that our minds are exceptionally good at
marking off newly identified aspects of experience and labelling these with signs (words)
which we take from our surrounding culture. With Helen Keller, born blind and deaf, it was
her teacher's tapping on her skin the sign for water that allowed her to develop into a human
being. Being human might well equate with having the ability to be able to access this shared
world of speech (or equivalent signage). What Krishnamurti explores in his discussion with
David Bohm is what he calls 'intelligence', the ability to read between the lines, to
discriminate even more finely, yet in so doing to build not a unique universe, but
fundamentally a shared universe. Brains building meaning seem to utilise categories that are
far from random, and the ability of language to communicate depends upon a high degree of
shared meaning. Whether this intelligence derives from brain structures, or structures within
some external world, or both, (speaking objectively, here), the outcome is the emerging 'self'
develops very much in parallel with other selves; 'intelligence' then points to those deep
structures which allow communication to occur. Perhaps better, 'intelligence' is the
underlying continuity which makes pointing meaningful. Without 'intelligence' we would be
autistic and isolated.
You say that science and explanatory religions both appeal because they offer an
appearance of grasping the ungraspable, but the cost is that we come to live in a world of
categorisation, systematisation, and so on, and lose the experience of pure, undiluted,
dynamic existence. I largely agree, but this is not new, and Pirsig was not the first to
approach this problem. The Gestalt therapists in the late 50s were already constructing a
sophisticated theory of neurosis and its treatment built upon awareness and contact with
dynamic existence. Had Pirsig been treated by a Gestalt therapist I would venture to suggest
we would not have had the whole horror of the mutilation of his self by ECT. It is intriguing to
speculate what Phaedrus might have become. But he was treated in the dominant pseudo-
scientific therapeutic mode which you rightly criticise, which still operates by 'classifying'
clients using DSM4 or whatever it now is, then treating a supposed disease 'entity'.
What interests me is how to enjoy both aspects of the world I 'create': the immediacy of lived
experience with its vitality and quality and dialogue, which are encountered, and the realm of
ideas and systems, constructed out of language, with which I can construct better theories of
the way things are. Both are real and valid, as Pirsig acknowledges, though to him one is
dynamic and the other is static. I suspect the latter realm, which in my view includes an
aspect of what we mean by the 'self', is not as derivatory as might be expected. In other
words, there is a real component of the dynamic within these static pursuits. Equally, the idea
of 'intelligence' as developed by Krishnamurti and Bohm points to something 'static' within
the very dynamic flux of experience. While it is hard to pin down these overlaps, if they exist
then it is likely that the first slice Pirsig took in his polarising view of metaphysics was
misleading. His reliance upon 'either - or' logic at this stage becomes a fatal flaw, inasmuch
as it forces a dichotomisation that is not true to experience. In other words, Pirsig assumes
that quality must divide into two mutually exclusive categories, the dynamic and the static.
His whole metaphysics then becomes an outworking of this thesis. I suspect this division is
not as clear cut as he believes. I also challenge the need for a bipolar metaphysics. 'Reality'
may well be multivariant. In my most recent article on the forum (coming up soon) I propose a
metaphor (walking on water) for an alternative metaphysics, that would draw on a variety of
realms of understanding, where the spread of these, and the mutual interactions between
them, are more important than dissecting experience into mutually exclusive categories. In a
sense, Pirsig is stuck with an archaic approach to constructing a metaphysics, which has the
potential to create the same sort of platypi that he rejects in SOM logic. Binary trees have
their place in science, but so do webs or nets.
I hope this has been of interest.
John B
MOQ.org - http://www.moq.org
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