[MD] Pirsig, Peirce and Philosophologology re-establishing pragmatism

[Ron Kulp]

Good stuff Dave. 

-----Original Message-----
From: moq_discuss-bounces at moqtalk.org
[mailto:moq_discuss-bounces at moqtalk.org] On Behalf Of david buchanan
Sent: Friday, February 23, 2007 1:43 PM
To: moq_discuss at moqtalk.org
Subject: Re: [MD] Pirsig,Peirce and Philosophologology re-establishing
pragmatism

Dearest darling Matt and x:

As I understand it, the difference between philosophy and philosophology
is like the difference between art and art criticism, which is far more
than a difference of style. See, its not that intellectual history is
bad or unimportant. Its just that creativity is different from the
analysis of creativity. But think about the huge amount of historical
analysis Pirsig engages in. He says that Plato made a huge mistake in
trying to depict reality in a fixed, static way. He says Aristotle was
an asshole and the Hegelian dialectic is asinine. And one of the things
he likes best about James was his decidedly non-academic, and non-snobby
attitude about what was and wasn't interesting to contemplate, such as
the squirrel going round the tree for example. I think the idea here is
simply that a philosophologist, an academic professionally, can't really
get away with this level of hostility toward these figures. It seems to
me that the philosophologist is going to have to immerse herself in the
so-called philosophical questions.

It seems to me that this can be seen in the issues you've been working
on and these same issues strike me as odd and weird and pointless. The
appearance/reality distinction, for example, never made any sense to me.
The notion of Absolute Truth never made and sense to me either. I mean,
in what sense is appearance not real? I'm learning about the continental
philosophers these days and its very clear to me now that Hegel was a
theologian. I mean, the notion of finding the absolute truth is just
more religion in a tux. This is why I was so baffled by your approach
and why I asked so many times and in so many ways, "What in the world
are you talking about?". Your pal Rorty thinks these questions get us
nowhere. The difference is that he spent a lifetime on them anyway. In
the piece from Rorty that was central in my paper, for exampe, he makes
a case against the idea that critics can obtain the objective truth in a
piece of writing. I don't disagree with Rorty on the point, per se. But
I kepts thinking, "Well, of course not. What reason do we have to think
otherwise? Who ever said we could? It seems to me that your pal spends a
lot of time on problems that seem meaningful within an academic context,
but they're total nonsense to most everybody else. By contrast, Pirsig
just says, "What an asshole! That's asinine. That's a ridiculous fiction
and here's why." By contrast, if philosophical ideas have no bearing on
the quality of our lives, then forget it. Its a waste of time.

I love music. I can't live without it and yet I could count the times
I've read music critics on one hand. I just don't care what they say.
And I can understand why musicians might have nothing but contempt for
music critics. 
They're thinking, "Shut the hell up and go write your own song, you
freakin' 
parasites!"

He is not just critical. He is not just clearing the way for something
new. 
He offers an alternative of his own design. It can be compared and
contrasted with the ideas we find in the history philosophy, but this is
a secondary activity insofar as we have to have the MOQ before it can be
compared to anything. And comparing things is not the same as creating
them.

I used to think Pirsig was exaggerating the case for dramatic purposes,
but now that I'm required to read this stuff and pass some kind of
judgement upon it I can see that he was only being accurate. Its true.
Some of the most respected figures from the history of philosophy were
putting out some really crazy stuff. And these grandiose notions usually
have very little to do with life as its lived. Its so abstract that it
hardly relates to anything a normal person would care about. I think
that many of our disagreement spring from this difference.

But if you ask me about this in a couple years I'll probably have a
different answer.

dmb






>From: "Matt Kundert" <pirsigaffliction at hotmail.com>
>Reply-To: moq_discuss at moqtalk.org
>To: moq_discuss at moqtalk.org
>Subject: Re: [MD] Pirsig,Peirce and Philosophologology re-establishing 
>pragmatism
>Date: Thu, 22 Feb 2007 21:47:36 -0600
>
>x,
>
>Your reply is the classic reaction to my thoughts on Pirsig's term 
>"philosophology," or in general to most of what I do.  I certainly 
>drove Pirsig around in the paper: I forced him to say things I would 
>think he wouldn't want to say, but I certainly wasn't doing it out of 
>spite: I think I was fairly justified in the extrapolations I made from

>the things he has said.  Most simply put, my thesis would be this:
>
>Pirsig himself says in the chapter he introduces "philosophology" that 
>philosophy cannot be defined.  However, you cannot distinguish between 
>two words without defining _both_ of them.  This is inevitable, with 
>biology, philosophy, or Quality.  This also isn't bad in and of itself.

>We must inevitably delimit our area of inquiry to even have an inquiry,

>which therefore defines it in a certain way.  The trouble with Pirsig's

>way of defining it is that he enters in the time-honored, but ugly 
>practice of philosophers claiming of other philosophers, "Those other 
>guys aren't even _doing_ philosophy!  Don't pay attention to them,
they're full of crap."
>You can just say they're full of crap because of X, Y, and Z, you don't

>have to try and bully them out of the field entirely.  That would be 
>too easy.
>
>Pirsig's attempt to free up what we think of as philosophy (not just 
>what those stuffed shirts in the ivory tower do) ties him into saying 
>that what the stuffed shirts do _isn't even_ philosophy, which is 
>overkill, a kind of overkill that I think is symptomatic of something 
>else, but one we can settle on for right now as just overkill.
>
>This overkill creates tension, as when one says "you can't define 
>philosophy" and "those guys aren't doing philosophy" only a few pages 
>apart.  I think saying that Pirsig is antielitist is fair enough, but I

>never make fun of the way Pirsig does his philosophy.  Part of the 
>point of my essay on Pirsig (all of my writing on Pirsig, really) is to

>praise the way he does philosophy--I just happen to do it in what you 
>call "a formal academic" way.  But why is that bad?  Tell me what is 
>inherently bad with academic work and I'll show you a person who said 
>that Pirsig is "not saying get rid of academics!"  And if there is 
>nothing inherently wrong with it, why make fun of me?  Am I holding
Pirsig down?
>
>You might say that I am, that all the formality is stifiling, but I 
>should remind everyone that _no one_ here is doing philosophy the way
Pirsig did:
>autobiographically or in a novel.  Is that bad?  No, I shouldn't think
so.  
>But I think we should be a little more cognizant of where our missiles 
>of disapprobation come from and where they are going.
>
>For instance, what I do when I write is exactly what Pirsig tells me I 
>should do: I write what I like.  I'm not trying to conform to an 
>Academic Style Book or something, I just write.  I do know how to vary 
>style, and I have several different ways in my toolbox, but I don't 
>think one of them is better in the way that Pirsig obviously prefers
what he calls "philosophy"
>(in invidious opposition to "philosophology").
>
>And if you agree that, yes, yes, Matt, I agree that the "academic
style" 
>shouldn't be gotten rid of, and may have its purposes, I would ask how 
>my paper didn't serve my purposes.  What was wrong with it?  If Pirsig 
>was just talking about arrogance and sloppy thinking, why didn't he 
>just talk about arrogance and sloppy thinking?  Why did he start firing

>shots at professional philosophy?  Are some of them arrogant and/or 
>sloppy?  Sure, but show me a profession that doesn't have those in
there.
>
>Another way of putting my disagreement with Pirsig's rhetorical 
>generation of philosophology would be to look at this peice of your 
>post: "The cycle you work on is the cycle of your mind (us older Harley

>Owners know what this means) you are always working on your bike is 
>What it means. Pirsig wrote from the craftsman stand point, working 
>with your Hands, participating in the 'quality' process, caring, using 
>words like 'Gumption traps' infusing learned classical knowledge with 
>practical learned Hands-on experience. No substitute. It all is a 
>process of caring Fusing thought with matter."
>
>I can't say I disagree with the spirit of anything you've said here.  
>However, it was said in counterdistinction to my paper, as if my paper 
>lacked care and craftsmanship.  What I want to say, counter to the 
>rhetoric Pirsig employs and that others like yourself pick up on and 
>use, is that philosophy, whether academic in style or otherwise, is 
>itself a craft that requires care.  If it's a garden that you prefer to

>stay out of, that's fine.  But why piss all over my 
>garden--particularly if you can't define the garden in any suitable way
to allow the pissing.
>
>So, again, as you were saying with Peirce, "knowledge is not a body of 
>certainties but A body of explanations and the growth of our scientific

>knowledge does not Consist in adding new certainties to a body of 
>existing ones, it consists in Replacing existing explanations with 
>better explanations."  Nothing could be more Rortyan than that.  Or 
>academic, for that matter.
>
>Your most facetious remark, however, came at the end: "To compare him 
>to any philosopher is comparing apples to pineapples."  The only way to

>back that claim up is to do what Pirsig has relegated and reviled as 
>"philosophology."  Nothing has been more harmful to Pirsig or his fans 
>than the thought that Pirsig simply cannot, tout court, be compared to
anybody.
>It's so silly as to defy comprehension.  _Nothing_ gets done if it is 
>not by comparison.  How, after all, would you replace all those 
>sedimented explanations with the new, better ones if you weren't 
>comparing?  The only way to establish Pirsig's originality is _by_ 
>comparison, not by denying it.  I said this some time ago during the
Baggini controversy:
>------------
>One of the things that I learned early on in engaging Pirsig's 
>philosophy is that the status of Pirsig's originality swings free from 
>the status of Pirsig's arguments and theses being any good.  One way to

>formulate the distinction between philosophy and philosophology is 
>between the assertion of philosophical theses and intellectual history.

>This means that the difference between doing philosophy and doing 
>philosophology is the difference between being able to tell whether a 
>thesis, or position, or argument is any _good_ and being able to tell
if its _original_.
>
>This means that when Pirsig says that his philosophy is original or 
>revolutionary _he_ is doing philosophology.  This also means that I 
>think Pirsig himself is distracting attention away from where he thinks

>attention should be paid: the merit of his arguments, not their
relations to others.
>When Pirsig claims that his philosophy is original or revolutionary he 
>is making a claim that he has no intention of backing up.  From 
>Pirsig's own point of view, to back up that claim would be besides the 
>point, so he doesn't feel the need to bother with it.  But Pirsig baits

>the trail by his continued insistence on these claims and so distracts 
>his interlocuters.  I surely doubt Pirsig does this on purpose, but by 
>baiting the trail he opens up space to berate his interlocuter from 
>missing his point by focusing on philosophology instead of philosophy.
>------------
>
>I think one can play fast and loose with that kind of distinction 
>between philosophy and intellectual history, but the point of my paper 
>is that such a distinction doesn't hold up that well under scrutiny, 
>and certainly won't hold up as a way of distinguishing real philosophy 
>from false.  How do we tell a good thesis from a bad one?  The good one

>works better.  However, that means that there has to be a bad one to 
>compare it to (as Dewey said, the bad is simply a rejected good), and 
>where would that bad one come from other than past experience?  All 
>"philosophology" is is the "past experience of philosophizing."  Isn't 
>that what we should be using our better stuff to kick ass against?  And

>how would we do that if we didn't compare?
>
>Matt
>
>_________________________________________________________________
>Find what you need at prices you'll love. Compare products and save at 
>MSN(r) Shopping.
>http://shopping.msn.com/default/shp/?ptnrid=37,ptnrdata=24102&tcode=T00
>1MSN20A0701
>


>moq_discuss mailing list
>Listinfo, Unsubscribing etc.
>http://lists.moqtalk.org/listinfo.cgi/moq_discuss-moqtalk.org
>Archives:
>http://lists.moqtalk.org/pipermail/moq_discuss-moqtalk.org/
>http://moq.org.uk/pipermail/moq_discuss_archive/

_________________________________________________________________
The average US Credit Score is 675. The cost to see yours: $0 by
Experian. 
http://www.freecreditreport.com/pm/default.aspx?sc=660600&bcd=EMAILFOOTE
RAVERAGE