[MD] Language Games (was Theatre and Definitions)

[Ant McWatt]

Matt K asked April 13th 2006:

I think, in its own way, Pirsig's advice about philosophy, and his talk of 
static patterns, is kind of like Socrates' philosophical imperative "Know 
Thyself" and Rorty's talk about contingency and ethnocentrism: by getting to 
know yourself, you'll get to know what you want (and, in some way, what your 
culture wants because you are an instantiation of it), and you can begin the 
dialectic of changing yourself, and thereby your culture, for the better by 
ironing what you want, employing practices to get it, having your desires 
and purposes changed by those practices, then employing different practices, 
then changing purposes, changing practices, purposes, practices--it keeps 
going.  I think that's the dynamic between Dynamic and static.  I think all 
of that---but it still leaves me in the same place I was, not really knowing 
whether I'll read the Daodejing or Hamlet next.


Matt,

The brief answer is that Northrop was suggesting – especially in an 
increasingly smaller world where mutual understanding is more important than 
ever – that we should read both the “Tao Te Ching” and “Hamlet”.   Moreover, 
in his better moments, Northrop recognised that the East Asian and Western 
traditions were both equally as valuable as each other and, as such, he was 
concerned with balancing the Dynamic (emphasised by the East Asian tradition 
and the fine arts) with the static (emphasised by the West and science) on 
an equal basis.  The intuition/postulation distinction of Northrop’s also 
has value because it clarifies the relationship between the two primary 
components of reality (i.e. the indeterminate Dynamic/ aesthetic and the 
determinate static/ theoretical) under a single conceptual framework.

As you rightly implied, as pragmatists we have to decide our priorities as 
“there isn't enough time in the world to try every” activity out there that 
promises “to enrich my life and change me for the better”.  The central 
concern of Northrop’s of achieving world peace and understanding in a world 
full of nuclear weapons and a diminishing oil supply seems an important 
pragmatic priority to me as there is no use in there being first class 
universities or libraries containing the best works of Wittgenstein, 
Davidson or Dennett etc if they are destroyed in an act of war or there is 
no-one around to use them!

Matt K also asked:

“But DQ/reality as something that's obvious (no distance) and yet ‘obscured 
by
all differentiation’ (lots of distance)?  Why the paradox?”

Matt,

I’d ignore David M’s phrase “obscured by all differentiation” in the context 
of Dynamic Quality as there’s “no distance” with DQ or the static 
differentiations.  I think it would be more accurate (but still a 
_generalisation_) to say that from the _static_ point of the MOQ, Dynamic 
Quality is the undifferentiated creative field in which the static patterns 
manifest themselves.  As Northrop confirms in Chapter 13 of “The Logic of 
the Sciences & Humanities”:

“To understand the sources of these differences between the East and the 
West, we may best begin by noting the part of our knowledge which is given 
by intuition and immediate apprehension with all inference and theory 
neglected as far as this is humanly possible. Can we not say that it is a 
continuum differentiated by the colors, sounds, odors, pains and pleasures 
which our senses convey to us?”

“To distinguish this immediately apprehended continuum, given in intuition, 
from the unseen space-time continuum of mathematical physics, given by the 
scientific method of postulation, let us term the immediately apprehended 
continuum "the differentiated aesthetic continuum". Within, this 
differentiated aesthetic continuum, two immediately apprehended factors can 
be distinguished [or abstracted].”

“One of these factors is the aggregate of differentiations, i.e., the 
specific immediately sensed colors, sounds, odors, pains and pleasures with 
their finite temporal duration and spatial extension. The other factor is 
the immediately apprehended continuum apart from these differentiations. The 
latter can be appropriately termed ‘the undifferentiated aesthetic 
continuum’. Since the Oriental sages tell us that the divine is to be found 
by intuition or immediate apprehension, it must be identified with one of 
these two factors. Since they tell us also that the divine is not 
determinate in character, it becomes evident that it is the indeterminate 
aesthetic continuum to which the terms Nirvana, Tao, Jen, and Brahman must 
refer.”  (Northrop, 1947, p.375-76)

Importantly, note above that I stated “from the _static_ point of view of 
the MOQ”.  From the Dynamic point of view in the MOQ, Dynamic Quality is the 
whole show which is where Pirsig departs from Northrop:

“The first statement [i.e. the above quote from Northrop] is made from a 
static, ‘mountains are mountains and rivers are rivers’ view, and the second 
[i.e. my comment that “from the Dynamic point of view in the MOQ, Dynamic 
Quality is the whole show”] is made from a Dynamic, ‘mountains are rivers 
and rivers are mountains’ view.  This ‘mountains-and-rivers’ analogy is used 
in Zen to explain the contradiction between statements made in the context 
of the everyday world and statements made in the context of ‘the world of 
the Buddhas.’  From an everyday world Dynamic Quality is like an undefined 
perfume which attaches in different ways to the objects of the world.  In 
the world of the Buddhas the perfume is the whole thing and objects are 
merely transitory patterns of the perfume.  In the Buddhas world Dynamic 
Quality is the dharma, the only order there is.”  (Pirsig to McWatt, 
December 1994)

You can, of course, take this dual static-Dynamic “viewpoint” of Pirsig’s 
further on with the tetralemma.   As you probably know Paul Turner has been 
working on this at his “Twelve Links” blog at www.twelvelinks.blogspot.com.  
(In the meantime, I think the tetralemma can be summarised as a roundabout 
pragmatic warning i.e. “don’t take (static) statements about reality too 
literally” but that’s another story.)

Best wishes,

Anthony


www.robertpirsig.org

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