[MD] Julian Baggini Interview with Pirsig

[David M]

Hi

Does look like a missed opportunity.
Did JB even read the books?
As for using Spinoza for comparison,
hard to think of a less relevant choice,
not even well known to the general reader
of a phil mag. A discussion about empiricism,
experience and William James may have got
somewhere. To my mind there is much to say
about Pirsig and the approach of Heidegger
and phenomenology (which tries to describe
experience without assuming SOM). Also
Roy Bhaskar (interviewed by TPM awhile
ago) also has connections to Pirsig regarding
levels, causality and ontological pluralism.
Even Rorty is anti-essentialist like Pirsig and
this is the very reason Pirsig could not describe
what substance underpinned MOQ, that's the whole
point of it being a very funny sort of metaphysics with
DQ as a part of it, a source of creativity, also can be
called Nothing, and SQ only being patterns identified
(creatively, eg S/O is a created conception) in experience
and with no underlyting substance (only Nothing)!
JB was entirely asking the wrong
questions, shame Bob could not find a better way to
get him onto relevant ones. In a way Bob should have
made more of a splash in Continental Phil as Chris
Norris suuggested in his Deconstruction book,
but he is known mainly in Ang-US circles and Ang-US
philosophy is mainly bothered about language phil
and that can be discussed in MOQ terms but has not
been discussed much by Bob or us. Of course pragmatism
and Qualia could be entry points. Spinoza! That looks like
an ambush or a very unfortunate accident, like being run over!

DM


----- Original Message ----- 
From: "Michael Hamilton" <thethemichael at gmail.com>
To: <moq_discuss at moqtalk.org>
Sent: Thursday, January 12, 2006 4:43 PM
Subject: Re: [MD] Julian Baggini Interview with Pirsig


> Hi Ian
>
> Thanks very much for bringing this to everybody's attention. It's
> always good to have more Pirsig to read, although in this case my
> enjoyment was laced with a heavy dose of frustration. I think he
> really shoots himself in the foot on two occasions.
>
> Firstly: his response to the question about evolution, which is rather
> short and dismissive, basically giving credence to Baggini's
> accusation that "LILA ... often ... dismisses or solves ideas rather
> brusquely". The one argument Pirsig gives, about "fittest" being a
> subjective term, looks extremely dodgy, and I agree with Baggini's
> response. This was a bad waste of an opportunity to demonstrate the
> explanatory power of the MOQ.
>
> Secondly: his response to the query about Spinoza. I think Pirsig
> should have either looked into Spinoza's philosophy (perhaps with
> Ant's help) in order to give some kind of satisfying response, or just
> refrained from making any judgement about Spinoza at all. His
> dismissive response again gives credence to Baggini's accusation of
> brusqueness, and just leads to embarrassment and withdrawal anyway. He
> then asserts the pointlessness of classifying metaphysics into monisms
> and dualisms, which was never going to get him anywhere in a
> discussion like this.
>
> The especially frustrating thing is that, at the end of the interview,
> it's clear that Baggini still doesn't have much of a clue what the MOQ
> is about. This is especially clear from his bemusement that Quality is
> the fundamental constituent of the universe and yet not a substance,
> and his bemusement about literal and metaphorical truth. I agree with
> Pirsig that Baggini didn't ask any of the right questions, but perhaps
> the most damaging thing was the prickly way in which Pirsig responded
> to these questions. On balance, his responses were more negative than
> positive.
>
> Damn.
>
> Regards,
> Mike
>
> On 1/12/06, ian glendinning <psybertron at gmail.com> wrote:
>> Hi MoQ'ers,
>>
>> You should be aware of this if you are not already.
>> http://www.philosophersnet.com/magazine/article.php?id=980
>>
>> As Julian Baggini's title "Zen and the Art of Dialogue" alludes -
>> there was really a breakdown in communication and they were talking
>> past each other (via e-mail)
>>
>> However Julian summarises
>> "I think both books reveal an author of exceptional intelligence and
>> insight," I wrote. "However, I do feel that in seeking to build an
>> all-encompassing system to connect all these insights, we end up with
>> a whole which is less than the sum of its parts. Perhaps this does
>> little more than reflect the extent to which my own thinking has been
>> affected (or infected) with the anti-metaphysical bias of recent
>> Anglo-American philosophy. But I don't think it is just that. I think
>> rather that it connects to the above point about philosophology. You
>> have not allowed yourself to be constrained by other philosophers,
>> which has given you the benefit of more freedom and more originality.
>> But constraints also provide checks and balances, and without them, I
>> fear you've constructed a system on foundations that are not up to the
>> job of supporting it."
>>
>> "The foundations are okay, in fact they are rock-solid, but we never
>> got to discuss them," Bob replied.
>>
>> Interesting reading (the entire transcript notice as well as the 
>> article).
>> Ian
>> moq_discuss mailing list
>> Listinfo, Unsubscribing etc.
>> http://lists.moqtalk.org/listinfo.cgi/moq_discuss-moqtalk.org
>> Archives:
>> http://lists.moqtalk.org/pipermail/moq_discuss-moqtalk.org/
>> http://moq.org.uk/pipermail/moq_discuss_archive/
>>
> moq_discuss mailing list
> Listinfo, Unsubscribing etc.
> http://lists.moqtalk.org/listinfo.cgi/moq_discuss-moqtalk.org
> Archives:
> http://lists.moqtalk.org/pipermail/moq_discuss-moqtalk.org/
> http://moq.org.uk/pipermail/moq_discuss_archive/
>