[MD] Quine and the Linguistic Turn

[Arlo Bensinger]

[Platt]
My cat UTOE can't respond to DQ. He is locked into static biological 
patterns called instinct.

[Arlo]
I'm sorry to hear this. My dog can respond to DQ, in fact he 
demonstrates this continuously. His responses to DQ are, of course, 
limited to range of activity constrained (and enabled) by his biological being.

The idea that "only humans can respond to DQ" is one of the more 
indefensible out-of-context quotes that keeps being rehashed here.

Let's take Pirsig's "hot stove" analogy from LILA as a starting point.

Pirsig says, "When the person who sits on the stove first discovers 
his low-Quality situation, the front edge of his experience is Dynamic." (LILA)

Now, I ask, how is that "front edge of his experience" any different 
than if a cat or dog sat on the same hot stove? Answer... it isn't.

Pirsig goes on saying, "A "dim perception of he knows not what" gets 
him off Dynamically." (LILA)

I ask again, how is this any different than a cat or dog jumping away 
from the hot stove? Answer.. it isn't.

Pirsig's next comment reveals the idea that the difference is NOT in 
responding to DQ, but in the repertoire of responses the organism's 
particular beingness entails. "Later he generates static patterns of 
thought to explain the situation." (LILA)

A cat or dog, limited to the biological level, can't respond with the 
social and intellectual repertoire of a human. This continues the 
same sentinment expressed in ZMM when he writes about the amoeba and acid.

"If it had a nervous system it would act in a much more complex way 
to overcome the poor quality of the environment. It would seek 
analogues, that is, images and symbols from its previous experience, 
to define the unpleasant nature of its new environment and thus 
'understand' it. In our highly complex organic state we advanced 
organisms respond to our environment with an invention of many 
marvelous analogues." (ZMM)

It is not, thus, what "can and can not" respond to DQ (everything 
does), but HOW one is able to respond, and this is predicated on the 
evolutionary complexity of the pattern in question.

Happily, a contextual understanding of Pirsig makes this clear, as 
the isolated idea that "only man can respond to DQ" is philosophical 
indefensible and simply can not hold water.