[MD] Julian Baggini Interview with Pirsig

[David M]

> Matt said:
> > 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?

DM: Yes I think we have to prominently recognise that there is more to life 
and
experience than just language, unless you vastly extend what we mean by 
language.

Matt> 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.

DM: Why, do you want to support Rorty or say something different from all 3?

Matt: I would suggest that Being (or experience) and
> language can't be separated like that, that creativity is a natural
> qualty 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.

DM: I am not sure what we gain or oppose by saying creativity is natural.
In fact there is something incomprehensible about creativity (see George
Steiner's Grammars of Creation). I am assuming that there is some
form of experience before language, as with babies, animals. As for
myself when my mind is quiet yet I may be active, even playing a sport,
of hammering with Heidegger's hammer. Yes I am trying to avoid being
a linguistic idealist. Merleau Ponty's Phenomenology of Perception is
well worth a read on this andhis ideas about embodiment. In a way I
am almost making a gesture towards physicalism here. There a a whole
range of levels with their patterns before/below the introduction of human
language. But yes I agree that new language equals extra beings, it is all
endless embellishment. That's what DQ means to me. There is no set of
eternal Platonic forms, rather Being is the exploration of an infinite realm
of possibility, the story so far is the finite realm of beings that have 
been
tried out, passed away, or still remain.


Matt:> If I'm using Heidegger's language correctly, Being and DQ are the
> ontological and beings and static patterns are the ontic.

DM: Yes. But you know the patterns are less static, than simple repeats.
I think the cosmos is dominated by unrepeated forms, one offs, disorder,
creativity, chance, contingency. Then there is a little order, some patterns
repeat alot say electrons, protons, some a bit more hydrogen, some very
little DNA, some almost not at all like Matt K. Science has taken a certain
formso as to focus on the limited order and make as much sense of it as
possible. But more and more it is recognising contingency, history, 
disorder,
etc.

 Matt: 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.

DM: Yes DQ is a finger pointer at openness as Pirsig does recognise.
I have two thought here. In some way human beings are DQ, they are able
to explore infinite possibility, unrealised and hard to see as being SQ.
They do this in imagination, in mathematic exploration, in having an
unrealised future. My other thought is what is SQ? If the cosmos begins
with Nothing, is utterly contingent, is a free form poem, a freeform 
exploration
of the possible, then what is SQ? At every moment of patttern formation, of
collapse (think quantum physics) of the possible into the happening of
the finite actual there is a loss. The dice in motion has six possible 
futures,
the dice at rest has lost five of these for the moment. What is SQ? Is SQ
the absenseof DQ/potentia? Is SQ the withdrawal of the vastness of the
possible adopting the finite? Or perhaps we can look at the actual as a
journey through the infinite, but the journey has a pathway and is therefore
always finite in relation to the infinite pathways it does not take up.

Matt:> 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.

DM: I think what was bad about this distinction in the past was the 
undervaluing
of the ontic reality, calling it a illusion in regeard to the eternal 
reality.But this
was a fixed reality,the higher values, the true forms. DQ understood as 
being
infinitely abundant cannot be taken in this way. Experience has to be 
accepted
as fully real, both in its ontic present and in its ontological openness and 
freedom.


Matt>
> 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.

DM: Language is ontic but also ontologically open & changing.

Matt>  (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.

DM:I hope I have expressed why I think there is an external aspect
to openness, in that what is possible is external in the sense that it
can only become internal by becoming actual. The possible is too
rich for the actual to contain.

Matt: 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).

DM: Is not DQ the boundary of the actual. The leading edge as Pirsig says.
That on which we properly remain silent. But surely as profound silence.
That edge is not a closure, it is the horizon, the wild west, the frontier.