[MD] Julian Baggini Interview with Pirsig

[Matt Kundert]

David,

David said:
I understand your problems but think that there are problems with the 
emphasis of your approach that are giving you these problems. It is too 
embedded with traditional philosophy problems & given a modern gloss. It has 
the feel of a disembodied subject struggling with observational problems. I 
think this can be shifted & the emphasis changed. Being should not be seen 
as out there in the external world. It also should not be seen as 
unknowable. As embodied individual creatures we are simply a very small part 
of a greater whole. We are [not?] out of touch with some abstract Being but 
just another embodied part of the whole,we are within Being and in a 
constant state of being either kicked and kissed by the greater whole of 
Being. It is only because of this primary kicking and kissing and kicking 
and kissing back that we are able to move on to evolve the sort of secondary 
forms of interactions that you want to call knowledge proper. As for maps 
and landscapes, well the landscape is that with which we interact, and its 
realist importance needs to be squarely kept in contact with giving the 
unbelievable density of our many many maps. For me the pluralism of the maps 
is what makes us realise the plasticity of Being and that (of course Pirsig 
says filters) each type of map conceals many aspects of Being whilst 
revealing others that they in turn conceal. Alongside a physicalist story of 
evolution there is an experiental story of evolution and how ever changing 
maps have dragged us up from single cell forms of life.

Matt:
Meh, I don't know.  I obviously demur on being too stuck in traditional 
philosophy, but sometimes it may feel like it because of the parasitic use 
of traditional philosophical language pragmatists use to make their point.  
And with the "primary kicking and kissing" before "secondary forms of 
interactions," if you are saying the primary/secondary distinction is more 
than temporal, then I can't see why we'd want any truck with it.  I tend to 
think anthing more desired is what hitches one up to traditional philosophy, 
not the other way around.  And with the placticity of Being, of the 
narrative that tells the "physicalist story of evolution" alongside the 
"experimental story of evolution," our cultural narrative of "ever changing 
maps," I can only agree.

Matt

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