[MD] Argumentation: Social/Intellectual

[Matt Kundert]

Hey Dan,

Dan said:
Could you please offer for discussion a couple examples where Robert Pirsig 
seems to suggest the thinking of ideas as disconnected from the person.

Matt:
There are several things in compound.  One is Pirsig's definition of the 
intellectual level in his letter to Paul:

"Like so many words, 'intellectual' has different meanings that are 
confused. The first confusion is between the social title, 'Intellectual,' 
and the intellectual level itself.
..
Another subtler confusion exists between the word, 'intellect,' that can 
mean thought about anything and the word, 'intellectual,' where abstract 
thought itself is of primary importance.
...
When getting into a definition of the intellectual level much clarity can be 
gained by recognizing a parallel with the lower levels. Just as every 
biological pattern is also inorganic, but not all inorganic patterns are 
biological; and just as every social level is also biological, although not 
all biological patterns are social; so every intellectual pattern is social 
although not all social patterns are intellectual. Handshaking, ballroom 
dancing, raising one's right hand to take an oath, tipping one's hat to the 
ladies, saying "Gesundheit !" after a sneeze-there are trillions of social 
customs that have no intellectual component. Intellectuality occurs when 
these customs as well as biological and inorganic patterns are designated 
with a sign that stands for them and these signs are manipulated 
independently of the patterns they stand for. "Intellect" can then be 
defined very loosely as the level of independently manipulable signs. 
Grammar, logic and mathematics can be described as the rules of this sign 
manipulation."

When Pirsig includes grammar as part of the rules of sign manipulation, I 
think that is exactly the place where the distinction between social and 
intellectual breaksdown.  Only Cartesians like Chomsky think that there is a 
universal grammar that stands apart from communities that employ language.  
And look at the way he distinguishes "thought" from "abstract thought".  
What could he be suggesting?  I see what Pirsig is suggesting in part, but I 
think there is only a difference in degree between handshaking and 
"Gesundheit!" and logic and math, not a discrete difference where logic and 
math go off on their own merry way.

_Where_ they go would be a good question.  Some of the evidence, I think, is 
suggestive for thinking Pirsig has in the back of his head some difference 
between truth and justification (as I outlined in my post to Ian).  You have 
to connect the dots, but I'm thinking of this:

"The alternative to 'The Metaphysics of Quality says,' would be 'I, Robert 
Pirsig, says,' and that repeated many times sounds worse to me. I don't 
understand this objection to a complete metaphysical system that someone has 
worked out. It seems to imply that some kind of confusion is preferable. It 
also seems to be an objection to the rhetorical style of the Metaphysics of 
Quality rather than a discovery of any falsehood in it, and in philosophy 
rhetorical styles are supposed to be irrelevant to the truth." (Baggini 
interview transcript)

I was very surprised to see this.  I again see what Pirsig is getting at, 
but his argument seems kinda' funny for those who've read ZMM.  Rhetorical 
style/Truth.  This should remind us of the end of ZMM when Pirsig pits the 
rhetoric of the Sophists against the dialectic of Plato.  What was Plato 
doing?  He was making the Good subservient to the Truth--everything 
subservient to dialectic (which elsewhere in ZMM, you'll recall, he links 
with logic).  Opposed to that were the rhetoricians.  If we look at the S/O 
Dilemma of Ch. 19 of ZMM, we'll see Pirsig offer "three classical logical 
refutations" and "some illogical, 'rhetorical' ones".  The rhetorical 
options are designed for particular audiences--throw sand in the bull's 
eyes, sing the bull to sleep, refuse to enter the arena.  The dialectical 
ones are not--they simply deal with the options presented in the dilemma, 
rather than considering the terrain you're on.  Audience/Isolation.

At the end of ZMM, however, as we all know, Pirsig says that dialectic came 
out of rhetoric.  This has always suggested to me that dialectic is rooted 
in rhetoric, that dialectical options are particular kinds of rhetorical 
ones (recall Pirsig's squabble with Aristotle: rhetoric is not a branch of 
dialectic, rather dialectic is a branch of rhetoric).  But this all seems to 
me to be reversed radically by Pirsig's riposte in the Baggini interview, 
though it makes sense and can be seen to be implicit in Pirsig's distinction 
between social and intellectual.  Rhetoric, in the broad scale Pirsig uses 
the term in ZMM, is not irrelevant to truth--it is the first step towards 
making truth possible.  Symbols are not independantly manipulable from a 
community of manipulators because the _rules_ of manipulation are 
instantiated by that community.

Taken by themselves, the riposte and what Pirsig says on behalf of the 
definition can be seen to make innocuous sense.  But taken together, I 
think, a pattern begins to emerge, one that sings a different philosophical 
song then the one ZMM sang, though reading backwards, the tune of ZMM itself 
can begin to change.

Matt

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