[MD] Transhumanism

[Matt Kundert]

Hi Arlo,

Arlo said:
Certainly, there will always be camps of dissent, and always 
those who reformulate what any given author has said. But 
while many argue over what these authors said that was 
"right" or "wrong", very few can actually argue what they 
"said". 
...
Join the Peirce discuss group and you'll see many people 
arguing for dropping this and altering that and expanding 
this and including that and excluding this and... etc. But 
very few argue what Peirce "meant".

Matt:
Really?  I have to confess that I'm not on the inside of 
Peirce interpretation, but people these days agree with 
what he meant by "Thirdness"?  I guess, I wouldn't be 
skeptical if you told me there was a consolidated opinion, 
but--given the visionary opacity of his writings--I can't 
imagine it will always _stay_ consolidated.

I guess what I mean to say is that, if a philosopher is 
saying something that really is new, it will be slightly 
incomprehensible.  Which means, if they stay "alive," if they 
are in James' words for a related province, "living, forced, 
and momentous," then I would imagine that _lack_ of 
fighting would be a sign of death.

I don't know: my sense of how we know what people 
"mean" supposes that the visionary philosophers are like 
poets, and that if you tell me that there's consolidation 
over what Stevens meant by "The bird's fire-fangled 
feathers dangle down" in Of Mere Being, then I have a 
new crop of English Ph.D's to introduce you to.  Because 
poets that go on living are poets that evade our 
explanatory vocabularies, yet still give off that aura that 
demand that we give it another go (rather than the 
merely incomprehensible, which evade without the aura).  
If it's too easy and comprehensible, then it's not 
visionary--possibly quite useful, but not visionary and it 
will be easy to understand what they "meant."  But my 
sense is that somebody with vision usually continues on 
being an object of controversy for some time.

Now, this "theory of interpretation/intellectual progress" 
swings free from an actual judgement about where Pirsig 
fits in.  But I wonder what you think about what I've said 
about how vision, newness, and comprehensibility fit 
together.  Because it seems to me that most Big Name 
Philosophers, like Peirce, do still have significant 
controversy surrounding their proper interpretation (at 
least, significant enough), what they "meant," and that 
there's a connnection between the two.  Knowing how 
you feel about that might help me understand what 
you...mean (as in, whether some of the things that don't 
ring true to my ears are a function of situational 
emphasis, or are real substantive differences).

With regards to Pirsig and his silence, I think some of it is 
regrettable.  I offered this interpretation of his "papal bull" 
comment, reading in line with his "philosophology" epithet:
----------
I earlier called antiprofessionalism irresponsible and it is ... 
because, in particular instances, it ends the conversation ... 
and because it causes the profession to feel bad about what 
it does.  The consequence of antiprofessionalism is not only 
a bad attitude towards the others in your field, but because 
you are also in the field, a bad image of yourself: it breeds 
self-flagellation and bad self-esteem.  Antiprofessionalism 
“urges impossible goals (the breaking free or bypassing of the 
professional network) and therefore has the consequence of 
making people ashamed of what they are doing.”  In the MD, 
this causes a curious event in which people are engaged in a 
conversation of exploration, but seem forced to add (implicitly 
and invisibly or explicitly as salutation or closing) the addenda 
“but that’s just my opinion” which conveys the sentiment 
that participants don’t really even want to be having the 
conversation.  Of course they are your opinions, whose else 
would they be?  The conversation is there to explore those 
opinions, to weed out the bad ones.  But in stating “that’s 
just my opinion,” you’ve excluded exploration because 
you’ve basically just asserted them as the bald truth of you 
and exited the room: “Hey, here’s my opinion, see you 
later.”  The reason this half-foot-in-half-foot-out approach 
exists is because participants feel bad about saying 
anything at all because they feel they are intruding into an 
area where they have no jurisdiction.  This is the feeling of 
shame that emerges from Pirsig’s impossible 
antiprofessionalism.  No one has authority over anyone else, 
so you should feel bad for making an assertion of truth over 
someone else’s.

These explicit or implicit “just my opinions” are not only 
suggested by all the pieces of Pirsig’s antiprofessionalism, 
but given explicit proof of validation by the man himself:  
“Perhaps you can pass all this along to the Lila Squad with 
the caveat that this is not a Papal Bull, as some would have 
it, or just plain bull, as others will see it, but merely another 
opinion on the subject that it is hoped will help.”  Pirsig is 
here talking about a recent letter of his about the 
intellectual level.  In trying to dodge both his sometimes 
treatment as a prophet or lunatic, Pirsig not only authorizes 
the “just my opinion” approach, but nearly necessitates its 
backgrounding manifestation.  Part of what my arguments 
above were trying to make conspicuous is the role of 
authority in the professional community.  Authority is 
granted based on extended persuasiveness of arguments 
and interpretations.  For a number of mainly obvious 
reasons, Pirsig is at the top of the authority list in the MD.  
This isn’t because we worship him as a cult figure, but 
because we’ve been persuaded by the arguments and 
philosophical vision offered in his books.  That means we will 
take much more seriously the things he says because, in 
other words, we trust his opinion.  An authority relationship 
in intellectual discourse is pretty much identical to a trust 
relationship.  People don’t take a trusted opinion as 
established truth, but they’ll take much more time 
considering it then one that isn’t trusted.  Say somebody 
on the street says to you, “That girl is no good for you.”  
You’d keep walking, a little bit quicker this time, thinking to 
yourself, “How’d he even know I was dating Maureen?”  
But what if your best friend, whom you’d known for ten 
years, said to you, “I don’t think Maureen is any good for 
you.”  You’d sit back and think about it.  “Wow.  Bob’s 
been my best friend for a long time.  He’s been with me 
through thick and thin, through many, many—many girls.  
He knows me better than my own mother.  If he says 
that—phew!  I need to think about this.”

Pirsig doesn’t just hold any old opinion, he holds the most 
respected opinion (particularly when it comes to 
interpreting his philosophy).  If Pirsig wrote that “Quality is 
a load of crap” and picked apart a couple of his own 
arguments, people who’d been persuaded by those 
arguments would not only be stunned, but they’d begin to 
rethink those arguments themselves.  By saying that his, 
the most respected opinion, is “merely another opinion,” 
Pirsig’s attempting to (impossibly) deflate his own authority 
(impossible because authority is conferred by others, not 
something that can be controlled by the one with it), 
which simply has the effect of both making everybody view 
every other opinion suspiciously, as “merely another 
opinion” (except Pirsig’s because his authority is assured, 
particularly because, after playing to the crowd’s sense of 
antiprofessionalism, Pirsig himself has at least owned up to 
his own “mere” existence, making him brighter in every 
antiprofessionalist’s eyes), and makes the asserting of their 
own opinion an awkward, painful, eyes downcast experience.
----------

from "Pirsig Institutionalized: More Thoughts on Pirsig and 
Philosophology"

So when you say, Arlo, that "Here I think Pirsig does more 
of a disservice than a service," I think you are probably 
right.  I don't care much that Pirsig doesn't feel that 
talkative about his philosophy--that's a personal choice, 
and that's the way things go (I think I agree with Marsha 
that Pirsig did write elliptical koans, and I'm less sure 
about the sense I get from you that Pirsig abdicated a 
certain responsibility he had, though there's no sense I 
get that you want IKEA answers--we all know they're 
pieces of shit that lean to the right).  But, in a certain 
sense, he tried to theorize that silence.  There's a certain 
sense in which his philosophy does try to theorize silence, 
a good sense in which we need to be more articulate 
about (i.e., we need to be more articulate about the 
inarticulable), but while his papal bull comment and others 
about the public, shared nature of the MoQ try to 
assimilate to that theory, I don't think it should try.  It 
just creates the mess I tried to put my finger on above.  
I don't think the conversation stalls _because_ of 
Pirsig--that's all on us--but he certainly didn't help some 
of the time.

But when you say, from the standpoint you think silly, "if 
we ignore this part of what Pirsig wrote, we can claim that 
this is what he really meant, and claim that those who 
disagree don't understand him," I wonder if you have me in 
view there.  Perhaps you wouldn't think of me in the "don't 
understand him" bit, but I would be inclined to say the 
first bit (if I were feeling a little outlandishly controversial).  
I think the visionaries have to work partly in the old 
vocabulary of their predecessors to be understood at 
least somewhat (as, for instance, working on the same 
problems), but they also are working out pieces of a new 
vocabulary.  In a sense, working them out themself, as 
they go along (dialectical, in Hegel's sense).  And if that's 
the case, the visionary aspects--to be fully appreciated 
for what they "mean"--need to have the old vocabulary 
casings shucked off.  We need wine bottles to hold the 
wine, but for the most part it is up to the later 
generations to build the new wine bottle for the new 
wine.  Just as in the law, the spirit/letter distinction is 
not only important, but I think there's a real sense in 
which only later generations know what a visionary "really 
meant."

Matt
 		 	   		  
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