[MD] Overcoming the System

[Matt Kundert]

Hi Ian,

This is very much missed ships:

Ian said:
If you feel asking for an example is missing your point - I'm 
not "daring" you to break the system, I'm trying to 
understand your objection to accepting the MoQ - 
pragmatically. Anyway you say, stay at the conceptual 
level ... OK. So answer me these instead ...

Matt:
No--I didn't say asking for "an example" sans phrase was 
missing the point--I was saying asking me for an example 
_for the MoQ_ was missing the point, because I wasn't 
talking _inside_ the MoQ, if you will, but _about_ it, and 
it's related cousins (other "systems").  As an illustration of 
the confusion, you say you're not daring me to break the 
system of the MoQ, but then say you're "trying to 
understand [my] objection to accepting the MoQ"--but I'm 
not talking about accepting _or_ rejecting _the MoQ_, I'm 
talking about the system metaphor we use to explicate 
(and Pirsig used to write) the MoQ--that's why I talk about 
Steve's circumlocution, which started this whole thread, 
because when someone says "system" and begins taking it 
too seriously, like thinking it underlies the whole of reality 
and always has, Steve's translation scheme quickly reminds 
us, "Oh, no--it's the creation of one dude who's as caught 
in time and place as anyone else."  Which is what Steve did 
for--god, I don't even remember who he was talking to 
anymore.

And I didn't say "stay at the conceptual level"--it's the 
confusion of taking _the MoQ_ as the _only_ conceptual 
level that might lead you to think that the _only_ way to 
talk _about_ something (which I sort of defined as basic 
"reflection," "philosophy") is through _the MoQ_, which 
makes sense of why you keep thinking I'm objecting to 
_the MoQ_, and why I keep taking all of your replies as 
_more examples_ of why the system _metaphor_ is 
bad--why all these "onlys"?  I added them, but do you see 
how they fall out of what you're saying as replies to me, 
how, while on the one hand you say you believe in lots of 
systems, yet on the other hand you seem to (consistently) 
conflate conceptual thinking through the lens of a single 
system.

Now, on the other hand, if you asked me to stop thinking 
with whatever lens I'm using (we can call it "Matt's 
pragmatism"), I wouldn't know how--but I'm not asking you 
to stop thinking like Ian, as if you were to pop eyeballs out 
(because for pragmatists it's lenses all the way down).  Like 
the wisdom of the post-analytic tradition of Wittgenstein, 
Sellars, and Rorty tells us, you can't put everything into 
question at once, but you can put one bit here in question 
while standing on this other bit over there.  It's like you think 
I'm asking for you to put _the whole bit of the MoQ_ in 
question, when it's more like I'm just talking about a little bit 
of it (it's composure as "system").

Ian said:
I'm also not saying philosophy is a system. Or rather I'd 
have to stretch the "system" metaphor too far to be useful - 
its a whole collection of different "systems" in my terms.

Matt:
Heh.  Well, then it really is a wonder what you've been 
talking about with me, because I've been _only_ talking 
about the system metaphor in philosophy.

Ian said:
What "two practices" are you really talking about here "I 
care about the real life experience of balancing two 
practices. Right now I care about the interplay, the thin 
moments we have _between_ two practices" ? 

Matt:
What you're missing is the fact (which I may have 
obfuscated a couple times, but I'm also pretty sure I said 
fairly clearly a couple times) that my term "life" is the whole 
to which "philosophy" and "dish washing" are but two, 
random particular parts of the whole.  In the above "real life 
experience of balancing two practices" I am talking about 
balancing--as the _two_ examples I keep talking 
about--philosophy and washing the dishes.  And from my 
point of view, you are only focused on _the MoQ_, not the 
interplay between the practice of the MoQ/philosophy and 
the practice of the dishes, because you keep asking for an 
example that illustrates why I don't accept the MoQ.  But 
A) I'm not talking about accepting or rejecting the MoQ and 
B) I don't think the dichotomy between accepting and 
rejecting do justice to the way _any of us_ do 
philosophy--or _should_ if we were able to get out from 
under the metaphor of system.

I'm talking about my opinion of the MoQ, right now--I don't 
accept it _or_ reject it.  Why?  And now I'm _not_ talking 
about my opinion of the MoQ--because it is only by virtue 
of the idea of _system_ that we think that it, or any other 
philosophy, is something we need to accept or reject 
wholesale.  Steve's circumlocution puches up this absurdity 
of accepting or rejecting wholesale--if we replace "the 
MoQ" with "Robert M. Pirsig's writings," we can see how 
silly it is to _accept_ the bit in ZMM when he describes 
sitting in a corner and letting the cigarettes burn down to 
his knuckles.  What's there to _accept_?  It is a bit of 
narrative, not a philosophical position (though, like all pieces 
of life, it most certainly _can_ be turned into grist for a 
philosophical mill, which is what Pirsig was doing).

You keep asking for one illustration of the interplay, how 
system is like weights, and all the rest of phrases I keep 
using to try and articulate my point.  So, I'll give it again:

"The deal is, if you're focused on the system (a _philosophy_), 
then you're ability to repair _the system_ becomes your 
ability to not fall into disarray in the world.  If you come 
across a problem that you can't for the life of you figure 
out how to fix (we can't be ingenious all the time)--isn't 
that _exactly_ what happened to Pirsig in ZMM...? 

"But, if instead you are focused on life, then you're already 
well aware that there are tons of problems that you face, 
not all of them at once, some you defer, like that problem 
with your philosophy you just...can't...work...out--ah, screw 
it, I need to do the dishes right now, or feed myself, or put 
that cigarette out so it doesn't burn into my fingers."

Notice: life is the whole, and philosophy and dishes are two 
particulars within the whole.  What I'm asking is that we _not 
lose sight of the whole_.  This is illustrated in the second 
part where, while focused on the whole, we treat both 
philosophy as a particular bit we can pick up and put down 
because we need to do a different particular bit of life 
(the dishes).

System, on other other hand, lends itself to obsession (and 
becomes a weight) because of the example of 
Pirsig--because Phaedrus conceives of the world, not just 
as a mythos, but as a _systematic mythos_ and his ability 
to fix the world, and his life, becomes his ability to fix 
conceptually the mythos.  Which is why he goes off the 
deep end (narratively speaking).

I'm with you--I think there are all sorts of strands (you said 
"systems" in a very wide sense) of mythos floating around 
our cultural ether, and Pirsig picked out one and focused on 
it.  And it helps a lot to focus on the one he did.  But there 
are others, and there are others we use all the time just 
fine without our world falling apart because someone asked 
us whether the value we place upon the fork is in the fork 
or in our heads.

Ian said in a different thread:
Matt, you claim "Down with System, Up with Life!" in one 
short paragraph, .... and spend the whole of the rest of 
your response in the traditional system of comparing 
philsophical "isms".

Matt:
That's a good, fair point, drawing attention to my isms.  
"Down with System" doesn't mean down with philosophy, 
though, silly--it means down with a certain metaphor for 
philosophy.  I'm still okay with sitting here and doing 
philosophy and not the dishes.  Remember when I said 
that Pirsig's talk of "the MoQ" and Rorty's "we's" were 
rhetorical figures?  So are "isms," and I don't fault rhetorical 
figures for being figures, I just want to talk about their 
effects.

For instance, you say "traditional system," but in my 
terms--which, granted, I'm only articulating more fully 
here--that's an oxymoron.  I'm not sure he ever said so, 
but the reason why I think Rorty preferred "isms" to 
"system," and why I do, is because "system" is a synchronic 
notion, while an "ism" is a diachronic notion.  The former 
rests on a spatial metaphor that, therefore, stretches 
throughout your entire web of beliefs.  The latter rests on a 
temporal metaphor that, therefore, stretches throughout 
time to other people's webs of belief.

The short of it is that Rorty thinks pragmatists should favor 
diachronic notions because the notion of a "tradition" is 
what hangs our world together after Platonic, ahistorical 
foundations go by the wayside.  So, Rorty's "isms," 
specifically "pragmatism," are actually the opposite rhetorical 
figure from Pirsig's "the MoQ."  Instead of repeating all the 
time, "I think, I think, I think," Rorty externalizes his 
philosophy, not by the metaphor of building a big machine 
outside of his house, but by joining hands with other people.

Matt

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