[MD] Julian Baggini Interview with Pirsig

[ian glendinning]

Another excellent post Matt.

I interpret Bob's quote about rhetoric slightly differently - in order
not to make it seem weird - a kind of cognitive dissonance response I
guess :-)

The key word is "supposed" - is he just saying that traditionally in
the eyes of most metaphysicists it's supposed to be (meant to be)
irrelevant ? Whereas Pirsig's position really is that rhetoric is just
as relevant as logic ?

Just guessing
Ian

On 1/17/06, Scott Roberts <jse885 at localnet.com> wrote:
> Matt K et al,
>
> Good post, and yes, I also thought that remark about rhetoric to be weird. I
> want to also raise a different issue re philosophology, and that is about
> Pirsig's dissing Plato with respect to the Sophists by saying that Plato
> tried to corral the Good by talking of the Idea of the Good. (A side note:
> in doing so, Pirsig seems to be trying to eat his cake and have it too, that
> is, he can talk about other philosophers to bolster his argument, but nobody
> else can to question them. Another inconsistency lies in his talking at one
> point about metaphysics being metaphorical, and then at the end saying the
> MOQ has rock-solid foundations). But the point I want to make here is that
> Pirsig's criticism of Plato is based on a modernist view of ideas, not on a
> Platonic understanding of them. For modernists (I'm thinking of the Lockean
> tradition), an idea is something produced in the human mind as a consequence
> of having a lot of sense impressions. Hence, an idea is a secondary reality,
> while the contents of the senses are primary. For Plato, of course, ideas
> are primary, and are primarily external to the human mind (the human only
> "knows" by participating in an independently existing idea, not by
> constructing it internally). Thus, when Plato speaks of the Idea of the
> Good, he is referring to what he takes to be the *real* Good (the permanent,
> eternal Good) as opposed to the transient goods of everyday life. The
> significance of this is that what Plato was up to is the same thing that
> mystics say to do: don't be attached to the impermanent.
>
> Thus, Pirsig is making a philosophologiical mistake, in that he is judging
> Plato anachronistically, using a modernist's idea of idea rather than
> Plato's, and thus misses Plato's basically mystical message. Plotinus, after
> all, had no problem with calling himself a Platonist.
>
> - Scott
>
> ----- Original Message -----
> From: "Matt Kundert" <pirsigaffliction at hotmail.com>
> To: <moq_discuss at moqtalk.org>
> Sent: Monday, January 16, 2006 5:03 PM
> Subject: Re: [MD] Julian Baggini Interview with Pirsig
>
>
> David,
>
> David said:
> Don't you think a chat about substance was a very bad idea by JB?
>
> Matt:
> No, not really.  Baggini was beginning an elaboration of Pirsig's philosophy
> to establish some bridges between Pirsig and other philosophers, to help
> people understand what Pirsig is up to, where he falls on the philosophical
> map.  He was using substance in a fairly wide sense, as "fundamental
> constituent of the universe."  Now, on the one hand, pragmatists should
> eschew the question of "fundamental constituents."  But on the other hand I
> think one can answer the question suitably enough from the point of view of
> the person asking the bad question.  How many substances?  One, just as
> Pirsig said, "'Quality' or 'value' is the fundamental constituent of the
> universe."  As I said a little while ago, from a metaphysical standpoint
> (the standpoint that makes deep cuts in reality, like between mind/matter,
> subject/object, God/man, etc.) pragmatism will look like a monism because
> they deny deep cuts.  Reality is smooth, not riven with cuts and slashes or
> joints (though it isn't so much smooth as it is bumpy).
>
> Pirsig didn't answer that way because he'd already gotten defensive and
> combative.  I think he was being needlessly paradoxical and unhelpful on
> this point.  Granted, I'm not sure Baggini phrased the question all that
> well, but I think Pirsig got hung up on a side issue.  For instance, the
> classification of monism, dualism, and pluralism isn't arbitrary.  It's to
> the point.  It's a tool to aid comprehension.  It didn't help that Pirsig,
> after advancing Quality as the basic substance, then promptly denied that
> there were substances.  Granted, Pirsig was right to deny the question of
> substance or "fundamental constituent of the universe" when he said there
> was no basic substance, that the Buddhist's call it no-thingness.  But
> Pirsig wasn't explicating what he thinks very well by suggesting that the
> MoQ is a monism, that the question of "Monism, dualism, or pluralism?" is a
> bad one, and that the MoQ is a monism, dualism, _and_ pluralism in
> successive breaths.  There are ways to use paradox to create bombast, the
> impression of an explosion.  But there are times when the appearance of
> paradox just breeds confusion.
>
> I know a lot of people thought the appearance of Spinoza in the discussion
> was out of left field, and it kinda' was.  On the other hand, its uncanny
> for me.  I have a bunch of files on my computer of topics and ideas about
> Pirsig to look into.  One of the earliest was "Pirsig and Spinoza."  It's on
> there almost entirely because I was taking Modern Philosophy at the same
> time that I started researching Pirsig to write a paper on him in my
> Contemporary Philosophy class.  Now if I wrote down every damn fool
> connection I thought of I'd have several zip disks full of files.  But back
> then I didn't have that much to go on and the similarities between Spinoza
> and Pirsig struck me for pretty much the exact same reason that Baggini
> brought up Spinoza: instead of thinking that God is our eternal Other (thus
> breeding metaphysical divides that are hard to reconcile), Spinoza took
> Nature and Man and made them both facets of God.  The effects, of course,
> aren't exactly as Spinoza planned them.  Like idealism, once you make a
> monism, pragmatism starts to look better and better (my paper on Spinoza
> that semester was called "God: Now 100% All-Natural").
>
> The thing that I think bogged down the conversation was both Baggini's
> understandable puzzlement over Pirsig's reticence to place himself in the
> philosophical tradition and Pirsig's then strange continued insistence on
> the revolutionary aspect of his thought.  This is the philosophology
> controversy and I think Pirsig is at least as complicit in it as Baggini.
> Obviously, I agree with Baggini that there is a problem with Pirsig's
> distinction between philosophy and philosophology.  But I also agree with
> Baggini that there are ways to use the distinction that do shed light on the
> area.
>
> One of the things that I learned early on in engaging Pirsig's philosophy is
> that the status of Pirsig's originality swings free from the status of
> Pirsig's arguments and theses being any good.  One way to formulate the
> distinction between philosophy and philosophology is between the assertion
> of philosophical theses and intellectual history.  This means that the
> difference between doing philosophy and doing philosophology is the
> difference between able to tell whether a thesis, or position, or argument
> is any _good_ and being able to tell if its _original_.
>
> This means that when Pirsig says that his philosophy is original or
> revolutionary _he_ is doing philosophology.  This also means that I think
> Pirsig himself is distracting attention away from where he thinks attention
> should be paid: the merit of his arguments, not their relations to others.
> When Pirsig claims that his philosophy is original or revolutionary he is
> making a claim that he has no intention of backing up.  From Pirsig's own
> point of view, to back up that claim would be besides the point, so he
> doesn't feel the need to bother with it.  But Pirsig baits the trail by his
> continued insistence on these claims and so distracts his interlocuters.  I
> surely doubt Pirsig does this on purpose, but by baiting the trail he opens
> up space to berate his interlocuter from missing his point by focusing on
> philosophology instead of philosophy.
>
> If there's any truth in Erin's remark that she thinks I should have done the
> interview (and this would probably be the only small kernel of truth to it),
> its that I know better than to talk about intellectual history with Pirsig.
> I wouldn't have gotten bogged down in this.  Pressing him on points of
> originality _are_ besides the point.  Granted, I think there is a lot to be
> learned by seeing Pirsig in relation to the philosophical tradition, East or
> West, but any relationships brought up need to be about elucidating Pirsig's
> philosophy and arguments, what they are saying, not on how new what he's
> saying is.
>
> Matt
>
> p.s. Does Pirsig saying, "in philosophy rhetorical styles are supposed to be
> irrelevant to the truth" strike anybody else as incredibly weird for Pirsig
> to say?
>
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