[MD] Kant's Motorcycle

[david buchanan]

Case said to dmb:
I could see Pirsig's description of a motorcycle mentally formed and shaped 
by a priori concepts, but he seemed to saying the concept of motorcycle is a 
priori. When he says: "We have in our minds a very real a priori motorcycle 
whose existence we have no reason to doubt, whose reality can be confirmed 
anytime." You read this "a priori motorcycle" to be the product of sense 
functions formatted by a priori concepts?

dmb says:
I think that is the way Kant would see the motorcycle. The bike is a 
synthetic concept in the way it depends on the sensory data and the 
categories of the mind which shape that data. I think that it is being 
called an "a priori motorcycle" because of the way it seems to persist 
independently of the constant changes in the sensory data. Its reality is 
constantly being confirmed by the sense data as we ride it; the scene 
changes, the motor's sound changes, the texture and direction of the road 
changes, the gas disappears faster than the rubber and the oil, etc, etc.. 
These gazillion impressions all attach to the concept of the bike and 
confirm its reality. That's Kant's bike, I think. Pirsig is going to take 
things in a different direction on a different set of wheels. Commenting on 
it later, he contradicts the notion that the data confirm what's real and 
says instead that the bike is just a convenient fiction, a workable way to 
organize the data. Maybe it goes without saying, but this is different than 
the a priority of the categories of the mind, which are supposed to be 
natural or innate, almost like an anatomical feature. Obviously, we aren't 
born with the concept of a motorcycle and in fact Kant could never've had 
such a concept. As every school boy knows, Kant got around on a scooter.

Case said:
If a priori concepts are part of our nature, how would you compare them to 
the archetypes of Jung's collective unconscious? Although he was a mystical 
kind of guy, Jung always talked about the collective unconscious as an 
inherited part of biological human nature. He saw the archetypes as patterns 
of thought we are predisposed to have knowledge of as part of our structure. 
Rather like categories of experience, would you say?

dmb says:
Yes, rather like - and what a great question! I think the Jungian idea of 
archetypes is, like the Pirsigian idea of inherited analogies, so much 
richer than the Kantian categories. If Kant sees the human mind as a filter 
or screen that shapes experience like a pasta maker or one of those little 
toys that squeeze playdoh into various shapes, then Pirsig and Jung see the 
mind as the factory where they make toys, playdoh, and pasta machines. I 
mean, Kant's categories like time and space seem pretty dusty, dry and 
linear compared to something like an archetype, where an entire complex of 
cultural values can be symbolized. Its like the difference between a machine 
tools and poetry. Plus, and this is a pretty big plus, Pirsig and Jung are 
post-Darwin. They have the concept of evolutionary change built into their 
"categories" of the mind. Of course we can't blame Kant for failing to read 
his Freud or Darwin anymore than we can condemn him for riding his moped so 
wrecklessly.

Case said:
I have been puzzled a couple of times by people saying Pirsig rejects Kant 
but I read it very much as you describe it. If this is the case I tend to 
see Pirsig more as Kepler refining the shape of orbits not starting a whole 
new revolution. Kant may offer SOM in the extreme from some vantage point 
but Pirsig has essentially turned "things in themselves" into Quality.

dmb says:
Well, Pirsig says there are no "things in themselves" in the MOQ. Somebody 
asked him about it or maybe it came up when he was annotating that text on 
idealism. Its not explicitly addressed in the books, as far as I know, and I 
can see how a guy could come to that view, but I'm pretty sure that it 
wouldn't work and doesn't square with the empiricism described in LILA. Plus 
there is a quote from Pirisg saying so explicitly and without equivocation. 
But you've already hinted at the really compelling problem in trying to 
compare Kant and Pirsig; "SOM in the extreme". Pirsig's revolution on Kant 
extends to Hume and the Positivists and a whole range of others because he 
doesn't try to put the emphasis on subjectivity or on objectivity or try to 
work out they way they work together. Instead, he says the source of all the 
epistemological trouble with all those failed attempts is created by these 
very assumptions. The idea of subjective experiencers in a world of objects 
(things in themselves or other versions like that.) creates the so-called 
epistemic gap. But Pirsig points out that this is an idea, a deeply 
ingrained assumption. Its so deep and pervasive that questioning it seems a 
little crazy. But, I think, Pirsig is saying that subjects and objects are 
like the bike. They're convenient fictions, part of the complex of inherited 
analogues, interpretations of experience rather than the cause of it.

Case quoted Kant?:
"In the sense-representation of external things, the quality of space in 
which we intuit them is the merely subjective side of my representation of 
them (by which what the things are in themselves as objects is left quite 
open." Open (undefined)?

dmb says:
Kant is saying that some kind of object or thing is the cause of subjective 
experience, classic SOM, but also saying we can't know the cause directly. 
The filters of the mind prevent that direct link with the external world. 
Pirsig is saying that the subjective mind and the external world are 
concepts derived from experience, not the cause or framework in which 
experience occurs. By contrast, the MOQ asserts no cause behind experience. 
Reality begins and ends in experience. DQ is the primary experience and the 
levels of static quality are basically categories of experience so that in 
the MOQ reality is identical to experience rather than an unknowable or 
unreachabable cause of experience. There is something really depressing 
about the notion that we live in a reality that can never be known. Its like 
the ultimate form of alienation. Alone in the universe and cut off from that 
too? If I believed that, I'd put a gun in my mouth.

Case tinkered and toyed:
Pirsig can be read as saying that Subjects and Objects arise from 
relationships among unknowable, indefinable "things in themselves". In this 
way experience captures these relationships in a temporal bubble. Very fifth 
dimensional. Once in this temporal memory bubble these relationships are 
replayed, compared with other such relationships categorized and fit 
together. The capturing and organizing of these relationships is a function 
of our biological systems. How they are categorized and shaped is in some 
measure determined by the nature of the biological system, hence a prioris 
and archetypes. What we call memory is the after image of experience. 
Conceptualization is the organization of the after images and consciousness 
it the evaluation of the resulting structure...

dmb says:
Another thing about that section on Kant. In that part of ZAMM there is a 
discussion about the "high country of the mind". This is where the 
epistemological questions take place, way up high. But, he says, carrying 
the metaphor further, most of life occurs at lower elevations, on the sides 
of mountains if not out on the plains of understanding. These geological 
features are all connected to each other, of course, but things are done 
differently down near sea level. This, I think, makes it tough to connect 
biology and physics to this high country stuff. Its tough for me anyway. I 
guess it would take a couple of books to even sketch it out. I don't to 
burst your temporal memory bubble, but I think most biologists and 
physicistsisticsits view themselves as investigating "real" things rather 
than convenient fictions and their excellent work is done out on the plains. 
I guess this is where Poincare (who commuted to work mostly on roller 
skates) comes into the discussion, but my fingers need a break and your eyes 
probably do too.

always a pleasure,
dmb

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