[MD] Julian Baggini Interview with Pirsig

[Matt Kundert]

David, Kevin,

Matt said earlier:
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.

David said:
Not sure what you mean by interaction.  I think that the actual being open 
to the possible is an interaction of great significance, otherwise there 
would be no opening only eternal recurrence of the same. The unfolding or 
manifesting of the possible is a form of border crossing or extending, and 
where value manifests too.  We have the opportunity to select what we will 
manifest, all too clearly, a heaven or a hell

Kevin said:
I'd like to learn more about "this boundary between the actual and the 
possible, static patterns and DQ."  Why do you say there is no interaction 
between the actual or static and the possible or dynamic?

Matt:
I'm suggesting we shouldn't think of there being interaction between 
actual/static/ontic/beings and possible/Dynamic/ontological/Being solely 
because I'm trying to avoid the appearance/reality distinction.  I think we 
can do so and still not have an "eternal recurrence" type situation.  As I 
see it, saying the two "areas" interact is analogous to saying you hear the 
voice of God.  We'd like to know a couple things about it, like how do you 
know its the voice of God?

Now, it wouldn't appear that there is anything we should be afraid of by 
saying the actual interacts with the possible.  There're no claims about 
moral superiority at stake or more real or anything like that (naturally I'm 
putting aside Pirsig's terms for the moment to center on these morally 
neutral terms).  So, say they do.  The actual, when it expands itself, 
interacts with the possible.  When the actual simply interacts with itself, 
it doesn't expand.  Now, how do we figure out _when_ the actual is 
expanding, when its interacting with the possible?  What are the signs?  
When something new occurs, right?  But how do we determine if this something 
is new or not?  Do we compare it to the possible?  No, we can't do that 
because there's nothing there to compare it to.  If there were something 
there, it would be actual.  We determine newness by comparing it to other 
actuals.  If the comparison fails, we say the interaction must have only 
been between actuals.  If it succeeds, we say the interaction must have been 
between the actual and the possible.  But if its only after comparing an 
actual to other actuals that we figure out whether or not it is new, and we 
post facto call it an interaction with the possible, rather than an 
interaction between actuals, what role is this interaction between possible 
and actual playing?  It can't be an explanatory role.  So what role is it 
playing in our descriptions?  What does it give us?  Why is it not a wheel 
spinning by itself, not doing any work?

Well, first off, if it is a disconnected wheel, it seems to be a harmless 
wheel.  But second, David's suggesting that if we didn't have this wheel, we 
wouldn't have newness, that the wheel does connect up somewhere.  I can 
agree there, the wheel does connect up somewhere.  But I don't think it 
helps anything to say that it connects up at that spot, by saying the actual 
interacts with the possible.  I don't see that as adding anything.  I do, 
however, see the danger when we start pumping up the possible with other 
descriptions, like "all other things being equal, the possible is more moral 
than the actual" (which is the DQ translation).  Then it becomes a lot more 
important to be able to tell if we are interacting with the possible or not.

As I see it, the connection between actual and possible is simply that of 
life living.  What is here, right now, is actual and what is in the future 
is possible.  I'm not sure what more connection we need (after disposing of 
the free will/determinism debate).  And this is kinda' like the image Pirsig 
offers in ZMM of the train and the Quality track, which is then transformed 
into his SODV picture of static patterns swimming in DQ.  If this is all 
that is meant by "interaction" then that seems fine to me.  When I think 
"interaction," I think of discernible relationships between two somethings.  
But we can't have a relationship with the possible, DQ, or Being because all 
three, under this reading, are synonymous with the Buddhist's Nothingness.  
They are no-thing, not a "something" at all, and so we shouldn't think of 
having relationships to them, at least not relationships or interactions 
that are at all analogous to the kinds of relationships we normally 
understand.  Because all those relationships and interactions are something, 
actual, static, beings, ontic, etc. (as we proliferate terminology, 
extending indefinitely the amount of hook up we can establish between Pirsig 
and others).

Matt

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