[MD] Language, SOM, and the MoQ

[david buchanan]

Matt, DM and all subscribers to the pragmatic theory of truth:

dmb says:
I had one of those "ah-ha" moments the other day when I was thinking about 
this long-running debate with Matt. DM, I'm hopnig you will add some 
thoughts about Fichte or any other philosopher who might be relevant here. 
First, a brief recap....

Matt said:
...I said earlier that both the idea that language can span the gap between 
us and reality and the idea that it _can't_ take part in the pathos of 
distance.  Both have as a common presupposition the idea that there is a 
_gap_ between us and reality and both have suggestions about how to span
that gap (through language on the one hand and direct mystical experience on 
the other).  When Pirsig says that, since both logical positivism and 
mysticism eschew metaphysics, metaphysics might be the place to mend the two 
together, to split the difference between the two, I think Pirsig takes on 
as conceptual baggage that common assumption: there is a distance.

dmb says:
I keep trying to show that Pirsig asserts no such gap, apparently to no 
effect. You may recall recent posts in which I quote ZAMM where it says, 
"the world has no existence whatsoever outside the human imagination". 
Wilber has been enlisted in this cause too and he points out that Kant's 
insights lead not to the end of metaphysics but rather to the beginning of a 
genuine metaphysics, one based on experiential data instead of abstract 
speculations about unknowable realities. And last week I tried to illustrate 
this same point by way of Wilber's description of Fichte....

"The first thing Fichte did was attempt to break the hold of formal 
rationality by demolishing Kant's 'thing-in-itself'. If, as Kant had said, 
the thing-in-itself can never in any way be known, then, said Fichte, it 
doesn't exist. In its place he substituted the power of the productive 
imagination of the infinite and supra-individual Self, which in essence 
meant; it is not that there is some forever unknowable thing-in-itself, 
quite different from consciousness, that impinges on consciousness and 
'causes' perception; it is rather that there is only one dynamic Life 
process that knows itself in various degrees and from various angles. The 
world knows itself in various ways, and in order to do so it cuts itself up, 
so to speak, into finite subject and finite object - but both subject and 
object issue from that same ground, so their apparent incompatibility is 
never ultimate, and the ground can be recovered in pure nondual perception."

dmb continues:
I was thinking about this gap and wondering how Matt could persist in 
criticizing the MOQ on this point despite Pirsig's explicit statements to 
the contrary. I was wondering how it could be that we both claim to reject 
the representational theory of truth and adopt a pragmatic theory of truth 
and yet still disagree so much. That's when I decided to open the Oxford 
Companion to Philosophy and take another look at some basics. I read the 
entry for the "pragmatic theory of truth" and it seemed unremarkable until I 
came to the last sentence, where it said...

"...today the debate still rages over whether the relativity to practice in 
this theory of truth entails a type of idealism or scepticism."

It was one of those "kha-ching!" moments. That's it, I thought. That's the 
difference between Matt and I or rather, if I understand it rightly, that's 
the difference between Matt and Pirsig. Matt has adopted a pragmatic theory 
of truth that entails skepticism and Pirsig'sversion entails mysticism, 
which makes him much more like an idealist. (See the Copleston annotations.) 
I suspect there are differences between our debate and the debate that 
"still rages" in academic circles, but it still explains quite a lot. 
Looking back at Matt's repeated concerns about absolute and eternal truths, 
about words "capturing" reality, about finding the criteria for truth within 
contexts and vocabularies, his repeated request to answer "the skeptic" and 
repeated how-do-you-knowisms all point to skepticism. And when Matt's 
rejection of philosophy in general and metaphysics in particular is added to 
these concerns, it becomes pretty clear that Matt's position entails a 
pretty hefty dose of skepticism. (Tellingly, Rorty left the philosophy 
department and signed up with the humanities instead.) I would even go so 
far as to say that the motive for adopting a pragmatic theory of truth comes 
out of a kind of resignation, a sense of futility and represents a kind of 
fall back position or a strategic retreat. That's why he's always shrugging 
and seems to be conducting an entirely negative project.

Pirsig, by contrast, has attempted to expand rationality rather than give up 
on it. Paul Turner recently posted some Pirsig quotes that show this 
intention...

"What's emerging from the pattern of my own life is the belief that the 
crisis is being caused by the inadequacy of existing forms of thought to 
cope with the situation.  It can't be solved by rational
means because the rationality itself is the source of the problem.  ...So I 
guess what I'm trying to
say is that the solution to the problem isn't that you abandon rationality 
but that you expand the nature of rationality so that it's capable of coming 
up with a solution." [ZMM, p171]

Maybe we could say that Matt's skeptical postion and the resignation that 
follows from it would be a perfectly acceptable postion FROM WITHIN THIS 
LIMITED RATIONALITY. If you're stuck in the SOM box it makes sense to take 
sides with subjectivity when rejecting objective truth, representational 
truth. But Pirsig isn't just rejecting objectivity, he's rejecting both 
sides of that duality in his expansion. If Quality is subjective, then it 
can be dismissed as "a fancy name for whatever you like". And if he tries to 
claim that Quality is objective, he'll come across as "a nut or a fool or 
both." Quality, he says, is neither physical or psychical, neither objective 
nor subjective, because it logically preceeds both and is the parent of 
both. Quality is the preintellectual reality from which such concepts are 
derived. Subjects and objects are not metaphysical realities with which we 
are forever stuck, they are just imaginative creations, just ghosts, like 
every other concept. This gets us out of the SOM box so that we don't have 
to give up on philosophy or metaphysics, we just have to expand the limited 
rationality that got us stuck in the first place, see?

In the MOQ intellectual truth is provisional and is only one species of the 
good. Intellectual truth takes on a far less grandiose style. focus on "the 
ever changing reality". Like the Sophists, for whom the "object was not any 
single absolute truth, but the improvment of men". The idea here is not that 
language is a tool we use to cope with reality, but that we language users 
are "creative participants", that truth and the whole world is an 
imaginative work of art and we are the artists.

Skepticism vs. Idealism. Whadya think, Matt? Anyone? Is this the crux of the 
difference, or what?

"[Phaedrus] did nothing for Quality or the Tao.  What benefited was reason.  
He showed a way by which reason may be expanded to include elements that 
have previously been unassimilable and thus have been considered 
irrational." [ZMM, p264]

"I want to show that that classic pattern of rationality can be tremendously 
improved, expanded and made far more effective through the formal 
recognition of Quality in its operation." [ZMM, p286]

"Quality is not going to go away and if our system of thought cannot 
comprehend what quality is and lay it out in a rational, orderly form then 
we must modify our whole system of thought to accommodate this existence of 
quality or value in our lives.  The MOQ is that attempt to completely up-end 
and change the entire theory of the universe from a subject-object theory of 
the universe, which has existed in the past, to a value-centered universe in 
which suddenly you have a system of
thought in which "quality" is a real, usable, rational term and in which no 
destruction is made to subjects and objects as they are conceived in our 
present metaphysics." [Pirsig, AHP Lecture, 1993]

Thanks.
dmb

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