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

[Ron Kulp]

[X]:
I taught graphic arts for a few years and saw first hand what pirsig was
speaking of. Perhaps that is why I do not percieve it as an attack.I saw
pirsig wanting acadamia to lean more On the tech school level, which I
totally aree with, why keep cranking out people with degree's Who do not
have the practical skills to get a job and perform well in their field?

Matt:
This I don't really see much in Pirsig.  That's a very specific
rendition of what Pirsig is saying.  I mean, I don't necessarily
disagree (though it might, depending on emphasis, underappreciate what a
good liberal arts education means for an educated, voting populace), but
I'm not sure Pirsig was suggesting that we need colleges to focus more
on practical skills.  I don't know, I'd have to see some passages that
would support that.  If there were, it might help shift the meaning of
sections like the philosophology one.  The only thing I can think of is
when he talks about the kid who drops out of college, in ZMM, but then
returns when he finds that there is something he wants from college.
But I'm not sure that does the kind of support you'd need.
[X]
I Believe Pirsigs paper offering an alternative method for assessing and
teaching quality writing
Particulary captures the aim of my understanding about this. 

[Matt]
About the apples and pineapples: this type of comment always gets under
my skin (usually causing me to lash out at people who don't necessarily
deserve
it) because it makes me wonder what I've said to require that to be said
to me.  After all, didn't we all learn in kindergarten that we are all
unique snowflakes?  The truth of that mushy-mushy saying is that, yes,
indeed we are all in our way utterly unique and dissimilar from any
other human being who has every existed (physiologically, no less
culturally in these latter stages of evolution for homo erectus)--but at
the same time, tremendously similar.  I take Pirsig to be overreacting
to others when he suggests, facetiously, that he can't be compared to
anybody else.  He does suggest it, and it is pretty silly on its face.

[x]
I really did'nt know a better way to put it at the time,brings to mind
one of my favorite quotes:
"Remember, you are a unique individual, just like everyone else."

[Matt]
Pirsig's desire to ignore other philosophers, other chess partners, is
tied into the anxiety of influence, Pirsig's unwillingness to see
himself in anybody else's eyes. But unlike strong poets like Socrates,
Nietzsche, and Hegel, Pirsig's tactic sometimes seems more like closing
his eyes then staring down his predecessors and saying with Nietzsche,
"Thus I willed it." 
Pirsig does indeed want to be original and, like Nietzsche, not owe it
to anybody, but without engaging in the conversation, how are we to know
if it is indeed wisdom? Wisdom arises through the conversation, not
outside of it.

[x]
Agreed, or I wouldn't of made the paralell with Peirce.
---------------
[Matt]
I think this anxiety is inevitable for the strongest of creators, but it
creates in them a blindness (a blindness that is needed, Bloom argues,
for the creation).  While Pirsig may have needed to blind himself to
create ZMM and Lila, we do not in fact need to be blind to appreciate
them.  And the only reason I attend to Pirsig's blindness more harshly
than, say, Wallace Stevens' is because Pirsig was writing philosophy,
and that blindness produced philosophical side-effects, side-effects
that I wish to expunge from the great stuff that the blindness in fact
helped create.

I don't want to diminish Pirsig.  My intent is, in fact, the opposite.
But I hear from many that all I go on about is useless and pointless to
what Pirsig was all about.  I'm not so sure, and I tend to lash back.
In fact, I'm pretty sure that what I go on about is part of the inquiry
into "what Pirsig was all about."

{x] 
Non of it is useless and pointless Matt, we are engaged in the
dialectic, we are progressing to a truer
Understanding, Typically I try not to employ sarcasm and because of how
I was raised I tend to
Use colorful metaphors to convey ideas in a  matter-of-fact type of way.
I see Pirsig reacting
To the "mechinization" of learning  which was then, now I see change and
an honest effort
To humanize academia and use more creative methods to teach with a real
focus on understanding.
There is evidence in my childrens curriculum, just in the past 5 yrs
academia has made huge
Strides in this direction.
Thank you for your time in working this out with me Matt.

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