[MD] Julian Baggini Interview with Pirsig

[David M]

Matt

Well the bias I suspect in your emphasis sounds a bit Platonic
to me, the emphasis on theoretical knowledge and making maps
seems a bit removed from practical experience and getting your
hands dirty, i.e.  the tradition's elitism and other 
worldliness/transcendence
seems to be hanging around still. I think a suspicion of Platonism should
remove certain dualisms that try to repress one end of those dualisms,
hence beyond Platonism there should be a more open and richer exploration
of experience. I want to clearly recognise Being as one pole of experience 
and
the creativity of language at the other and the need to wander back and 
forth
between both to keep the elaborations going. To quote Roy Bhaskar:

"I accept of course that all extra-discursive realities are constituted 
within discursive
practice, from the point of view of their inteliigibility.But that is not to 
say that they are
constituted in discursive practice from the point of view of their causal 
impact."
                                                                      From 
Science to Emancipation, 2002.

DM


----- Original Message ----- 
From: "Matt Kundert" <pirsigaffliction at hotmail.com>
To: <moq_discuss at moqtalk.org>
Sent: Friday, March 03, 2006 11:15 PM
Subject: Re: [MD] Julian Baggini Interview with Pirsig


> 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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