[MD] Julian Baggini Interview with Pirsig

[Matt Kundert]

DMB said:
I also have a problem reading this sort of map.  Each on the thinkers you've 
named have said quite a bit, but you seem to have reduced all their efforts 
to a few simple choices.

Matt:
If you can't condense, then I don't know what the point of a map is.  A map 
is all about various ways of condensation for whatever purpose you're making 
the map.  Pirsig did it, Plato did it, everybody does it.  You have to to 
talk about anybody or anything.  Gloss over some things in favor of others.  
If I were talking about something different, the map and the condensations 
and the alignment of thinkers would look a little different.

And its a post DMB.  Not a thesis.  Don't find it useful?  Don't use it.  
David asked what I thought.  So I told him.  Maybe he'll ask what you think 
next time.

DMB said:
What? Empiricism is unimportant, an old, outdated stepping stone that 
doesn't have much to teach? But, but, but that's just NOT what Pirsig is 
saying at all. Not even close. Since Pirsig calls himself a radical 
empiricist, equates reality with experience and refers to DQ as the primary 
emprical reality, I find your assertions to be quite incorrect, even 
bizzare. As I understand it, the MOQ is just about as empirical as it 
gets...

Matt:
Well, I was condensing.  Part of the condensation was that the difference 
between James' radical empiricism and the post-analytic eschewment of "sense 
data" doesn't matter all that much for what they were forwarded to correct.

And "empirical" is different from "empiricism."  Empiricism as a 
philosophical thesis would roughly be one that took really, really seriously 
(or "f-e-t-i-s-h-i-z-e-d") stuff that was "empirical," like sense data.  It 
was launched as a reaction to the a prioriness of the rationalists.  But 
three hundred years later we don't have many rationalists, and most 
philosophers are commonsensically empiricist (just like good ole' 
nonphilosophical, workaday common sense tells us), so we can just get on 
with saying, yeah, there are empirical studies (like sociology) and there 
are more analytic, push-around-concepts studies (like philosophy).  But, as 
I said before, I don't think there's anything philosophically interesting 
about the difference between the two, though when people took empiricism 
seriously, they did think there was an important difference (just as Pirsig 
may in fact, against my wishes, think there's an important difference).

You can point out all the Pirsig material you want.  Almost none of it is 
surprising and would cause me to rethink what I was saying because the point 
of what I'm saying is to cause people to rethink the way _they_ think about 
those passages.  In other words, what I write takes into account all those 
things.  I'm not saying there aren't passages I've forgotten about or 
neglected.  You could dig up something that would force me to rethink my 
opinion about Pirsig or philosophy.  But the more obvious passages that 
would apply to the types of things I write about I remember and fit within 
the condensed glosses and maps I offer.

So, for instance, your quote from Lila's Child: "So in the MOQ experience 
comes first, everything else comes later. This is pure empiricism, as 
opposed to scientific empiricism, which, with its pre-existing subjects and 
objects, is not really so pure."  Let's see.  I said this, "On the one hand, 
Pirsig repudiates it in the Hegelian mold (that leads to James and Dewey) by 
making reality = experience, thus relinquishing the fetish with sense data." 
  Try and guess how I would view the passage you quoted.  That's right, the 
good, Hegelian answer (with that good ole' hint of Kantianism).

Now, obviously what you've been bucking against is any intimation that there 
is anything wrong with Pirsig, that he looks like he makes any bad 
philosophical moves.  But why, then, throw at me a passage that you already 
know how I think of it, because I've told you how I would think of it?  What 
would be by far more effective (which is what Paul and I usually do when we 
tangle about an interpretation) is to dig up a passage that would to me look 
bad, and then suggest a plausible interpretation that would look more like 
what I already consider good.  For instance, I just said that the above 
passage, while it for the most part looks alright, hints at badness to me.  
Why would that be?  If you understand my position well enough (which I think 
you've said you don't), you should be able to predict what sends up a little 
red flag.  If you don't understand my position, then I can't quite figure 
out how you would argue against me so vociferously.  What's to dislike if 
you don't understand?  At this point, it would look like you just don't like 
my style.  Which (I smile impishly and ironically) Pirsig said in the 
interview shouldn't matter at all to philosophy.

DMB said:
Another reason I find your assertions so bizzare is that these clues from 
Pirsig should be taken up and expanded by philosophologists like yourself.

Matt:
Ah, but you forget DMB.  The James thread was the first one I picked up.  It 
was what led me to Rorty.

And besides, Pirsig teaches us to think for ourselves.  If I were writing an 
intellectual biography of Pirsig, people he mentions (like James and 
especially Northrop) would be at the top of the list as I give myself 
totally over to Pirsig.  But I'm not writing an intellectual biography at 
the moment and so I don't give myself totally over to him.  I have a mind of 
my own and my own sense of what good philosophy looks like, a sense that was 
first developed by my teacher Kay Picart, then most especially by Pirsig, 
and then by Rorty, and now by a whole assortment of thinkers like Fish, and 
Geertz, and Stout, and Bernstein, etc., etc.  James and Northrop and Pirsig 
were writing in a huge philosophical milieu that extends further than the 
people they mention.  And sometimes in coming to terms with their thought, 
it helps to have some of that milieu in mind to understand what their 
philosophical moves mean, what they are reacting against.

Matt

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