[MD] subject/object: pragmatism

[David M]

Hi Matt

That's great but only up to a point, because its emphasis is too weak
and the implications of this change more significant I'd suggest.

Charles Taylor hints at the problem, and Nick Maxwell takes it
on explicitly. Problem is to really address what this tells us about
the relationship between values and knowledge. The enlightment
suggests that we can tackle human problems by adopting the approach
to knowledge demonstrated by science and its success. This was an
approach developed to kick the church out of knowledge. This
approach threw values, in theory, out of the development of knowledge
as if theories could be created in a value free realm of reason and logic,
and without any questionable assumptions. Of course Kuhn has shown
us how these paradigms operate. Foucault how power is involved
in knowledge production. And Taylor that values are always present
even if denied. Nick Maxwell has looked at this denial of values
in science. He suggests that we need a revolution in education and
science to transform this false self-conception of science and knowledge.
He suggets that we need an aim-orietated conception of knowledge that
self consciously sees it's purpose as the realisation (in both senses) of
what is of value. And that determining what is of value needs to be open
to democratic debate. As we stand academics are cut off from real social
needs and problems that need to be addressed. And they are also able
to determine orhave determined for them by polticians and other powerful
interests what values they are pursuing unarticulated.

This is good stuff and fits not only with my own sense of the experiental
reduction caused by the enlightenment (as pointed out by the romantics)
and its democratic failure that so many of us currently recognise.

See, for some of Maxwell's (he's a philosopher of science) stuff:

http://philsci-archive.pitt.edu/archive/00002449/

Thanks
David M


----- Original Message ----- 
From: "Matt Kundert" <pirsigaffliction at hotmail.com>
To: <moq_discuss at moqtalk.org>
Sent: Saturday, September 15, 2007 6:02 AM
Subject: Re: [MD] subject/object: pragmatism









Hey,

DMB said:
Gravity is usually understood as one of those pre-existing facts of the 
universe, a law of reality that has always operated regardless of whether of 
not anyone was aware of the fact. And so we naturally (SOM) think that it 
was discovered by Newton. No so, says Pirsig. Instead, he says, Newton 
invented gravity. I forget the source, probably Lila's Child, but there is 
an account of somebody trying to wrap their heads around the idea and asking 
him something like, "You mean before Issac Newton came along apples didn't 
obey the law of gravity". Pirsig replied, "No, they didn't. Apples just 
fell."
...
The world is built of analogies upon analogies going back too far back to 
see but always growing out of lived experience.

Matt:
I believe you're thinking of what I like to call Pirsig's "discourse on 
Western ghosts," which is pages 32-36 (Ch. 3) of ZMM.  This passage always 
sounds like pure idealism, but there is definitely a straight line between 
this at the beginning of ZMM and the other passage you're alluding to, which 
occurs towards the end of the book, in the mythos-over-logos argument 
passage: "The mythos is a building of analogues upon analogues upon 
analogues." (360, Ch. 28)

I think this line is fundamental to how Pirsig shunts Plato and to why we 
should see Pirsig as embedded in the tradition of American pragmatism.  To 
riff off of what DMB said, I would draw a line that begins with the 
discourse on Western ghosts and continues to these:

"The real University is nothing less than the continuing body of reason 
itself." (148, Ch. 13)

"We constantly seek to find, in the Quality event, analogues to our previous 
experiences. If we didn't we'd be unable to act. We build up our language in 
terms of these analogues. We build up our whole culture in terms of these 
analogues." (253, Ch. 20)

"Of course it's an analogy. Everything is an analogy. But the dialecticians 
don't know that." (399, Ch. 30)

Normally I'd digress about the Hegelian and Nietzschean patterns in this, 
but the only thing I want to focus on is the connection between "the 
continuing body of reason" and "our whole culture [is built] in terms of 
these analogues." What I want to suggest is the reason Pirsig escapes 
subjectivism and solipsism is because for Pirsig ideas are not tiny little 
things hanging around our mind (the S) that have to be matched up to reality 
(the O).  For Pirsig, ideas are more like tools, public items that we all 
use to make our way through the stream of experience.  The better an idea 
works, like gravity and matter, the more we use it and the more likely we 
pass it on to our children (through a process Pirsig grinningly calls in the 
discourse on Western ghosts, "Mass hypnosis. In a very orthodox form known 
as 'education.'" (36, Ch. 3)

The link I see is that we are educated to a certain set of tools/ideas, but 
this isn't an arbitrary practice, as if we do things the way we happen to do 
them _just_ because they relate to our "previous experiences."  Rather, 
culture is something like a massive experiment, where each person embedded 
in a stream of experience picks up and uses, or rejects and fashions new, 
tools for particular reasons--basically all fitting the mold, "this works 
better than that."

Pirsig's trope of Analogy is used to counter Plato's trope of Reason, 
"Dialectic--the usurper." (380, Ch. 29)  For once we make the rhetorical 
turn, of course Plato's use of dialectic and reason is just one more trope. 
The difference between the rhetorician and the dialectician is that the 
dialectician cannot admit that he is using tropes, analogies, the rhetorical 
art. (Indeed, this is why Socrates, and even Plato, was far savvier than the 
Western tradition stemming from them has been able to admit.)

I see in Pirsig's simple trope a sophisticated staging point for the 
amelioration of all the traditional, Platonic dangers, for all the 
particular attacks on Platonism that are represented by American pragmatism. 
When DMB says that our analogues grow out of "lived experience," he's 
emphasizing that an analogue lives and dies at the hands of its value in a 
particular experience.  For the most part, most of our tools, most of our 
culture, is a stabilized body of experience that we all dip into and 
participate in with no problem (what we call "common sense"). What Pirsig 
and the pragmatists are calling for is not a tearing down of our culture or 
tools, but a sea change in _attitude towards_ the stable body of reason that 
has proven itself useful in the course of historical experience, e.g. 
science.

So when we come to the idea of idealism and "do ideas actually come before 
matter?", the first thing to realize is that idealism and scientific 
realism/materialism are only options for those still living under the 
dichotomous poles of Subject and Object.  Which is what everybody says.  But 
what does that mean?  I think it means is that 1) it is difficult to stop 
sounding like you're swinging between the two poles, but 2) it's a paradigm 
shift in thinking where you just stop seeing the problem of swinging back 
and forth.  One way is to ask yourself what the practical consequences of a 
pure idealism are given successful communication between people.  What are 
they, are there any rammifications towards how we live our lives if you 
think that its all in our minds?  No.  The theatrical effects of The Matrix 
are attained only by positing that there _is_ a reality that exists beyond 
that which our mind conceives.  But a pure idealism doesn't do that--it just 
says that the only thing we can be sure of is not an independent realty, but 
that stuffs going on in our head.  But if that's the case, then one of the 
ways stuff functions in our head is that you can't move rocks or tigers with 
your mind.  The pure idealism of a Berkeley has no bearing on our practical 
lives, it is only a thought experiment.

And the same goes for scientific realism.  Even if you are a hard-core, 
Ayerian logical positivist who thinks that ought-statements are neither true 
nor false and are simply emotive assertions, that still doesn't sidestep the 
huge public fight for the triumph of your assertions in the court of public 
opinion.  Emotivism doesn't make us feel more or less attached to our 
feelings about abortion, poor people, affirmative action, God, the Pope, 
Iraq, Blake, Yeats, Hollander, Pirsig, Rorty or DMB.  It is an idle 
philosophical theses.  The pragmatism of Pirsig desires a retiring of idle 
philosophical theses in the hopes of relaxing our minds of idle anxieties 
that mean quite little to problems that matter.

Matt

_________________________________________________________________
Can you find the hidden words? Take a break and play Seekadoo!
http://club.live.com/seekadoo.aspx?icid=seek_wlmailtextlink
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/