[MD] Julian Baggini Interview with Pirsig

[Matt Kundert]

Hey David,

David said:
Well I think these distinctions are harder to establish than you seem to be 
saying. Yes we have to accept with Kant that to understand our experience we 
need concepts right at the start so goodbye naive empiricism. And yes since 
Kant we know that even the most familiar of concepts may be subject to 
revision and have no a priori indubitability.

But I am not happy with this disembodied observing knower. With Heidegger I 
think that we are typically a doing or coping being and that the observing 
being is a secondary form of existence. This doing being includes what we 
might call qualities of care and significance.
...
But we should not overlook what seems to be making these interpretations of 
impacts (externals to our bodies that change our bodies) possible. Rorty 
just talks about creativity as if it is a natural quality of language. For 
me Heidegger's exploration of the way experience seems to be structured has 
great ontological value. For Heidegger the pragmatic take on Being is just 
one amongst many that can be taken and whilst it has its uses it also has 
its dangers.

Matt:
I'm not really sure where you are spotting differences between us here.  If 
I implied a "disembodied observing knower," it was surely a mistake as 
that's clearly antithetical to what I called the "Hegelian mold" of reacting 
to Kant.  I like pretty much everything you wrote about Heidegger's 
reaction, which is in that Hegelian strain (I follow Rorty in thinking that 
its more important to know about Nietzsche than Husserl when reading 
Heidegger).  I think you did a seamless blending of Heidegger and Pirsig in 
the middle passage.

To try and make some hay out of something, the part where I think you see a 
difference between us is that you seem to be saying, in "we should not 
overlook what seems to be making these interpretations of impacts ... 
possible," that the world, as opposed to language, makes creativity 
possible, as opposed to Rorty who thinks that creativity is a "natural 
quality of language."  Or, maybe you'd say Being as opposed to language.  Is 
that right?

I think you're right, in this sense, that Rorty would be opposed to that 
reading of Heidegger and that that reading sounds more in line with Pirsig 
and the idea of Dynamic Quality.  I would still move to reinterpret both 
Heidegger and Pirsig.  I would suggest that Being (or experience) and 
language can't be separated like that, that creativity is a natural quality 
of, maybe not language, but people, language users (though in Heideggerese, 
there's no difference).  Saying these things is what will prompt 
philosophers to call neopragmatists linguistic idealists.  That strain of 
pragmatism suggests that ontology is coextensive with linguistic use, that 
we do in fact extend our ontology, create new Being (or would it be new 
beings?), by the creative use of language, which is what I would call DQ.

If I'm using Heidegger's language correctly, Being and DQ are the 
ontological and beings and static patterns are the ontic.  If I'm reading 
you right, you're suggesting that the ontic, beings/static patterns, 
sometimes instead of staying within themselves, react to the ontological, 
Being/DQ, and in that way expand the range of the ontic.  What I don't like 
is reading Being as being reacted to by beings, DQ by static patterns.  I'd 
prefer to say that beings react to each other, and in their expansion, in 
their creativity, they acheive Being.  Being and DQ represent creativity and 
openness, but I don't think they represent another--and here's where the 
concepts we're using to start to muddy up--kind of being.

I guess that's a good way of putting the way Heidegger and Pirsig sometimes 
look to me (or at least Pirsig does).  It sometimes looks as if they create 
two different ontological categories, being and Being, static patterns and 
Dynamic Quality.  I'm not sure what that's supposed to suggest other than an 
appearance/reality type situation.  That being said, I can assume you'd 
respond that Heidegger creates the being/Being, ontic/ontological 
distinctions to try and evade that situation (and Pirsig himself, too, for 
that matter).  And I can appreciate that point.  But part of what I would 
take that point to be is that beings, ontic reality, static patterns don't 
_react_ to Being, ontological reality, DQ.  Reaction is something internal 
to ontic reality, static patterns, to that kind of being/reality.  It is 
intimating that these two kinds of reality interact to each other is what I 
think creates a bad philosophical situation.

And it looks as if they create two ontological categories probably only 
because they have to put their point into ontic reality---language is ontic. 
  (Which is what I take Pirsig to mean when he says a Metaphysics of Quality 
is a contradiction in terms.)  But if their only point is that ontic reality 
is open, that it can expand, that it is forever metaphysically incomplete, 
then I think their point could be expressed as I did above--that reaction is 
internal to the ontic and that creativity sometimes arises from those 
reactions.  If there is something mysterious about "creativity sometimes 
arises," something that makes one react, "Yeah, but _when_ does it arise?", 
I would suggest that the desire to answer that question (for instance, with 
"it arises when beings react to Being" or "it arises when static patterns 
react to Dynamic Quality") is the exact desire to close off the openness 
that you were to trying leave there--it is the resurgent (bad) metaphysical 
impulse that Heidegger (and Pirsig) was desperately trying to still (when 
metaphysics is understood as Heidegger understood it--as Platonism).

Matt

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