[MD] Representationalism

[Matt Kundert]

Steve, Mike,

Matt said:
I think the nonrepresentationalist picture of language that we can extend to 
Pirsig (or find there latent in him) is the notion that language is just 
another tool of differentiation that has evolved in the course of 
evolutionary history. Instead of language being "over here" representing 
other stuff "over there", language and all the other patterns are in one big 
heap of differentiation. The laws of physics are inorganic patterns of 
differentiation.  Biological patterns created new ways of differentiation.  
All the creation of language did was to create a new way to differentiate.  
Now we differentiate by naming stuff, alongside having sex with sruff or 
falling off of stuff.

Steve said:
I think that Pirsig would say that the laws of physics are intellectual 
patterns of value that describe inorganic patterns of value. I say this 
because of the ghosts discussion in ZAMM where he says that Newton's Laws of 
Gravitation exist only in our minds. At that time he didn't describe them as 
referring to anything, but I think that is because he had not yet defined a 
type of experience called inorganic patterns of value. I think in the MOQ 
ideas do represent other types of experience. They can represent inorganic, 
biological, social, or other intellectual patterns of value.

Matt:
The trouble with "represent" is taking it in a philosophically 
interteresting way, which I don't think you're doing here.  The first step 
of purging representationalism was taken by Berkeley when he said, against 
Cartesianism, that the only thing that an idea can represent is another 
idea.  Thus modern idealism was born.  At that point, however, we begin to 
wonder what the mind or ideas contrast with, considering that now everything 
is mind.  That's when we take the next step by becoming pragmatists.

Mike reproduced Paul's reply to him from some time ago and at the end he 
says, "In thesis (1), everything is recognised as a human invention; a 
pattern of knowledge.  But in thesis (2), the pattern of knowledge called 
the MOQ is laid out as a 'plain of understanding' [I think he meant "plane"] 
and IN THIS PATTERN inorganic patterns of values are independent of 
intellectual patterns and evolved prior to them."  These are the two steps, 
though they still contain that minor hint of idealism (a little bit stronger 
waft then the hint that realists still always find in pragmatism, but still 
negligible).  Paul's first thesis says that all knowledge is linguistic; the 
only way we know things is by talking about them.  The second thesis roughly 
says that one of the things we know is that rocks were here before us--we 
didn't have to invent them (which is kinda' what thesis one seemed to 
imply).

It is the push and sway of these two different theses, which are implicit 
and can be drawn from Pirsig, that causes most of the intermural activity in 
epistemology for us Pirsigians.  By the light of those two theses, Pirsig 
and his followers can all be seen to be pragmatists (and from my vantage, 
Arlo, Steve, and Mike, not to mention DMB, Anthony, and Paul are all 
pragmatists), attempting to reformulate Pirsig's insights into better and 
better nonrepresentationalist language--and keep others from falling 
backwards.  I think most of the criticism we level at each other in this 
area is because, say, one person starts talking about thesis one and another 
one of us criticizes them from thesis two's vantage point, which causes the 
first person to criticize the other person from a stronger version of thesis 
one's point of view.  And on and on.

This muddle occurs because you'll notice that thesis one says that humans 
invent everything.  But where did humans come from?  You only find that out 
in thesis two.  It is by slightly incautious formulations of the two theses 
that leads to a lot of fire on this topic.  My suggestion for cleaning up is 
as above in how I exposited Paul's first thesis: all knowledge is 
linguistic; the only way we know things is by talking about them.  This at 
least has the virtue of leaving "humans" out of it (humans more obviously 
have a physical element to them) and by not firing up the claim in more 
bombastic terms by saying "everything is linguistic".  Because by the time 
we get to thesis two, obviously not everything is linguistic--rocks, 
sunsets, tigers, etc.

We can see this dialectic played out in the dialogue you and I just began, 
Steve.   From the vantage of thesis two ("inorganic patterns of values are 
independent of intellectual patterns") I said the "laws of physics are 
inorganic patterns of differentiation".  From the vantage of thesis one you 
remarked that "the laws of physics are intellectual patterns of value".  
They are both right, just depending on what context you're coming from.  
When you say that "in the MOQ ideas do represent other types of experience" 
you are of course right.  But this kind of representation is a far cry from 
the one we need to excoriate in the philosophical tradition and not the kind 
I was talking about.  And you should be willing to say (as I was referring 
when I said that the "laws of physics are inorganic patterns of 
differentiation") that apples were falling off of trees long before Newton 
was around.  Given agreement on those two points, I'm not sure we have much 
of importance to quibble about.

Matt

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