[MD] Argumentation: Social/Intellectual

[Matt Kundert]

Since the intellectual/social distinction is getting a lot of play recently, 
I'm wondering what people think of this piece of argumentation from my last 
paper, "Pirsig Institutionalized":

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When Pirsig remarked in the introduction to Lila’s Child that “personalities 
emerge” in the course of the discussion, what he failed to mention was that, 
concurrently with personality styles and traits, came differing degrees of 
authority that were shaped by the discussion as it went.  In a new 
conversation, nobody really comes in with any more authority than anybody 
else, but as the conversation moves authority is created and conferred and 
flexed.  As the conversation moves forward, authority can be increased, but 
it can also be decreased as it is challenged.

The authority that a profession develops, and particular individuals within 
the profession attain, isn’t something that should be deplored (nor, really, 
could it be).  The authority that is developing is the authority that 
accrues to lines of argument and interpretation.  When an argument is 
forwarded it is critically evaluated by the rest of the profession.  The 
more an argument is accepted as being a good argument, the more 
authoritative power is given to that argument (it is a _successful_ 
argument).  This also confers authority upon the creator of the argument, 
upon their argumentative skills and practice.  The more an interpretation is 
accepted as being a good interpretation, the more authoritative power is 
given to that interpretation, and thereby, again, also to its creator.  
These lines of successful arguments and interpretations create the power 
grid according to which competing arguments and interpretations are judged. 
[5]   A competitor is forwarded to _dislodge_ the authoritative power of the 
old argument or interpretation in order to set itself up as the new 
authority.  The push and pull of arguments and interpretations, the sway of 
various authorities, is what marks the competitive dynamic of inquiry. [6]
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Footnote six reads like this:

An immediate objection to this line of argument will occur to a Pirsigian: 
I’m conflating social and intellectual static patterns.  Authority is a 
social static pattern, while arguments are intellectual static patterns.  
However, part of the point of this line of argument is to blur the 
distinction between the social and intellectual level.  I have many doubts 
about that distinction, but for my current purposes I would like to 
highlight one: the separation between _who_ we give authority to and _why_ 
we give authority to them.  The social level is where we as social beings 
exist and the intellectual level is where our arguments exist.  But the 
reason we confer authority to people in intellectual discourse is _because_ 
they’ve had good arguments.  These good arguments aren’t disembodied from 
the person, as is possibly suggested by Pirsig’s description of the 
intellectual level as “independently manipulable symbols.” (See “Letter to 
Paul Turner”)  These arguments _are_ the person.  We don’t _have_ static 
patterns, we _are_ static patterns.  But if arguments aren’t easily 
distinguishable from the person, how can we confer authority to the argument 
and not the person?  What is authority in intellectual discourse if not 
trust in the argument’s power and the argumentative skill of the person 
propounding it?  I’m not arguing that there aren’t distinctions in the area 
to be made.  But these distinctions will be more ad hoc and fluid then the 
discrete, universal distinction Pirsig wants to maintain between social and 
intellectual.  Another way of putting my argument against philosophology is 
that, because Pirsig maintains a discrete distinction between a social and 
intellectual level, he undervalues the necessity of a “community” to 
intellectual discourse.  As A. J. Mandt says, “Philosophy is grounded in its 
own practice.  It is not only that philosophical views are developed through 
reflection and argument.  Further, our sense of what it means to be a 
philosopher, and our standards for evaluating philosophical work, have their 
genesis in the on-going practice of the community of philosophers.  It 
follows that community practice is intrinsic, not extrinsic to the _nature_ 
of philosophy.” (Mandt, “The Inevitability of Pluralism” in The Institution 
of Philosophy, p. 98)  Another way of putting this same point is following 
Stanley Fish when he says that “there can be no such thing as theory.” 
(Fish, “The Anti-Formalist Road,” p. 14)  If theory is something that is 
independent of practice, and yet seeks to constrain it, then theory doesn’t 
exist because there are no constraints outside of the content of practices, 
i.e. the practice of argumentation.  A variation of this point is to say 
that theory attempts to escape practice or history, but this is impossible 
because we are all embedded in practice and history, much as Pirsig suggests 
when he says that the intellectual level rests on top of the social level.  
What Fish calls “theory talk” still exists, as in, for example, essentialist 
philosophy, but theory-talk is no less embedded in practice, though it urges 
impossible goals of escaping from that very practice.  This is why community 
practice is internal to philosophy and not external as the distinction 
between social and intellectual levels suggests.

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Matt

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