[MD] Creativity and Philosophology, 2 (from 2005)

[Matt Kundert]

DMB said:
If we take your first point about the paradoxical nature of 
the
question and convert it to the music/musicology 
distinction, I think it
exposes a weakness in your first point. 
How would we know what counts
as music, as opposed to 
other types of sounds, if it wasn't the kind of
sound studied 
by musicologists? I mean, music is defined by what
musicians 
do and when they do something sufficiently innovative that

definition will change accordingly. The same goes for 
philosophy. It's
defined by what philosophers do.

Matt:
In your response to the first point, you've already assumed 
we know how
to distinguish between philosophers and p
hilosophologists.  I will grant we know how to distinguish 
between musicians and musicologists, but as I said from the 
paper, it is _obvious_ how to do that because they are 
completely different (sound v. discourse).  My broad
claim is 
that the only way to get Pirsig's criteria to work is if you

were an essentialist/Platonist (which, I think, the 
horse/cart metaphor
brings out clearest).

I will absolutely grant that philosophy is defined by what 
philosophers do (because all philosophers are philosophers, 
not distinguishable by fakes and real ones), but the exact 
trouble I'm trying to point to is that we don't know how to 
distinguish between philosophers and philosophologists, 
except by a number of other distinctions we know how to 
use, though it is questionable we need another, single 
distinction (i.e. philosophy/philosophology) to encapsulate 
all the other ones (e.g., original/unoriginal, good/bad, 
philosophy/intellectual history).

DMB said:
As to your second point, I think you're turning the

philosopher/philosophologist distinction into something like 
an
ignorant-hack-navel-gazer/well-informed professional 
distinction. This
would be something like a contest between 
insufficient static patterns
and a rich palate of static 
patterns, in which case the professional
would certainly be 
at an advantage. But the distinction is not that
kind of 
contest, of course. It about adding some life and blood to

competence. It's about going beyond the existing static 
patterns,
dynamically. This goes way beyond "clever", a 
word I tend to use as
reference to things that are 
superficially intelligent. It's a word I'd contrast with "wisdom".

Matt:
Right, I've turned the distinction into the roots of it, which 
is a distaste from academic philosophy.  I want to know 
why it is distasteful.  Pirsig, on the other hand, doesn't just 
want to rip on academics, he wants to make a philosophical 
point with his philosophy/philosophology distinction.  What I 
try to do in the paper is go back and forth between what we 
obviously know about the distinction (amateurs v. 
professionals, or philosophy v. intellectual history) and how 
Pirsig rips on them (unoriginality, badness).

I like the idea of adding life and blood to competence.  
That's great.  But I'm not quite sure how that helps the 
distinction, how that idea leads to the horse/cart metaphor. 
 I'm glad you distinguish between cleverness and wisdom, 
because you'll remember that I did, too.  However, I would 
also note that, while that's great you have your own 
connotations for the words, you'll certainly have noticed 
that I was specifically using "clever" as what one is when 
they are creative/original.  We can certainly quibble about 
what single word to use to denote the attribute someone 
has when they are being original, but larger point I hope we 
agree on is the distinction between originality and betterness, 
which I called cleverness and wisdom.  (I like clever because 
it is slightly ironic, with its Nietzchean allusion to humans as 
"clever animals."  I like it because it's slightly self-deprecating, 
because of the shades you point out, but it's not like I'm 
wedded to it if it causes rancor.)

DMB said:
If we put both points together, the central thrust seems to 
be about
whether or not the philosopher is engaged with 
the so-called
traditional questions and problems.

Matt:
No.  My question--and again, I try to develop this point 
more fully in the very beginning of Part I of 
"Philosophogoogley" where there is more space than a post 
to do so--is how do we tell the difference between a 
philosopher and philosophologist.  This _then_ leads to, 
"Well, okay, a philosophologist studies philosophers."  Well, 
what does a philosopher do?  You've answered (I think quite 
cogently and rightly), "Philosophers do whatever philosophers 
do."  The question _then_ becomes, "Well, how do I become 
a philosopher, so that whatever it is I do is philosophy?"

I've begun the inquiry into the distinction at an abstract 
level.  In a way, I am asking that a person pretend they 
don't know very well and good how to use the term 
"philosophology," so we might look into how it actually 
works, what else using the term requires you to believe as 
a discursive committment (by which I mean, something like 
the activating assumptions in a logical proof--no assumptions, 
no ability to prove anything).  

The reason I rested on "traditional philosophical problems" at 
that moment in the paper is because Pirsig does seem to 
consider, say, Plato and Kant actual, real philosophers.  So 
considering the problems they considered ("doing whatever 
philosophers do") seemed another entry into the problem of 
the distinction, another way someone might want to hold the 
"horse" end of the horse/cart metaphor.  They would say that, 
say, the question of Being, or of Knowledge, or other very 
abstract or common thing that pretty much everybody would 
run into is the kind of question a real philosopher attends to.  
But why would these questions receive special status (as 
"philosophical") over other questions?  Or, even deflate the 
superiority--what distinguishes a philosophical question from 
any other question?

I am cutting straight to the quick of what philosophy exactly 
is, because that's what the distinction requires us to do.  
We have to be able to say with fair enough exactness so we 
can tell the fakers from the realsies.  And because I don't 
think philosophy is exactly _anything_, and I also think that 
Pirsig doesn't think it is exactly anything, I find Pirsig in bad 
faith in making the distinction.

And, by the way, I think the direction you take in reading 
Pirsig--his philosophy generated out his life struggles--is 
exactly right, and the slogan "philosophy as autobiography" 
is something I've been writing about for a long while.  It's 
the right way to read Pirsig, I'm just not sure how that's an 
apropos counter to something I'm saying.

Pirsig in Lila:

"Philosophology is to philosophy as musicology is to music, 
or as art
history and art appreciation are to art, or as 
literary criticism is to
creative writing. It's a derivative, 
secondary field, a sometimes
parasitic growth that likes to 
think it controls its host by analyzing
and intellectualizing its 
host's behavior." (first paragraph, Ch. 26)

Matt said:
We have two activities, sure, but one of these is a
parasite. 
That doesn't sound very nice. I mean, I'm sure there have

been some very cocksure art historians and literary critics, 
but if
meanness and assuredness is what we're talking about, 
have you ever met
a genius who was so into his own vision 
that everyone else was wrong?
Isn't that the very notion of 
a "visionary," which is essentially what
Pirsig thinks of as 
philosophy. So, how is the visionary not doing
their own 
controling and intellectualizing when they slot everyone else

in their own place, like say an amoeba as a biological pattern 
or
academic philosophers as philosophologists?

DMB said:
Well, you seemed to concede the distinction and admit that 
one is a
parasite but then go on to argue that "meanness 
and assuredness is what
we're talking about" and since the 
host is as big a dick as the the
parasite, then there really is 
no difference. Yea, visionaries are just
dicks. That's a grown 
up argument. C'mon Matt, you're being ridiculous.
This point 
is childish and weak beyond all reason.

Matt:
No, I won't "c'mon" because you aren't working with me very 
well on this.  I don't think you understand what I'm doing 
when I'm working with the text, and with other people's 
arguments.  I'm _specifically_ working with the terms other 
people are using and trying to show why I don't think they 
work.  It's not _me_ who is being ridiculous, because I'm 
pretty sure the consequences I pulled out of the terms 
being used very well apply.  We might say, then, that I think 
it is those using the terms that are the ridiculous ones.  I'm 
just trying to show _why_ its ridiculous.

People are saying they are just two different activities.  
_Pirsig_ calls one of these activities a "parasite."  I'm trying 
to figure out how to _apply_ the distinction.  Pirsig flippantly 
described philosophologists as "thinking they control the host."  
Right, the haughty art historian and such, thinking they 
know so much about art or whatever?  That's what Pirsig's 
alluding to, right there.  So I'm working out that behavioral 
criteria as a means of testing for the presence of a 
philosophologist (to put it like a science experiment).  Is 
haughtiness or certainty a criterion?  I'm not sure how it could 
be a fast and hard one, because we can find them in both 
so-called camps--people who analyze and intellectualize other 
stuff (what was James and his buddies doing to that poor, 
scared squirrel on the tree, again?).

>From Matt's paper:
...us delivering ridicule upon the head of the lame-brained 
academic seems
to hinge on his confusing a discursive 
subject for a non-discursive
one. The reason the art historian 
seems so silly is that writing a
thesis on art is clearly different 
than painting. So what about
literature? Though both creative 
writing and literary criticism are
discursive, the line between 
the two does seem to be relatively easy to
draw.

DMB said:
Again, it's not that Pirsig has confused discursive and 
non-discursive disciplines.

Matt:
Are you even reading what I write?

The new paragraph is a sigh, because I made the mistake 
of not reading the massive back-and-forth volley DMB sent 
back before organizing a considered response.  At first, it 
looked like DMB was fielding responses that looked good, and 
might prove to be so.  But the further and further we get, 
the more it looks like you, DMB, just don't understand 
how...I don't know, how arguments work.  How to read an 
argument; christ, I don't know how else to put it.

OUR LAUGHTER AT THE STUPID ACADEMIC HINGES ON

_HIS_

CONFUSING DISCOURSE FOR NON-DISCOURSE.

Not _Pirsig_.  _He's_ not making the confusion, but his 
analogy _banks_ on that confusion, because that's what 
makes the art historian and musicologist telling artists and 
musicians what art and music are _look so stupid_.  What 
I'm pointing at is that, while on the one hand it is certainly 
true that analogies work with their power by drawing the 
seemingly different closer together, that analogy doesn't 
work--so it seems to me--because Pirsig never fills in the 
obvious difference between philosophy, which is about life, 
and philosophology, which is about philosophy.

1) Are philosophy and philosophology a part of life?

2) Of course they are.

3) So philosophology studies a part of life, like biology?

4) Yes.

5) So, why can't philosophology be good philosophy, since 
after all philosophy is one part of life like everything else, 
and philosophy is about life?

6) Because the two are different.

7) Why?

8) Because the horse is the core of philosophy, not the cart.

9) So what's the horse?

10) Life.

11) So the cart's not part of life?

12) No.

13) Do you see now the contradiction between 12 and 1?

14) It doesn't matter, because philosophology studies a 
single piece of life (philosophy), whereas philosophy studies 
the whole of life.

15) Life qua life.

16) Sure.

17) Uh-hunh.  But that's not the philosophical practice of 
Pirsig--he cuts out pieces of life and does cool riffs on them, 
drawing out wisdom.

18) Right--he riffs on life.

19) Well, why can't a riff _on_ philosophy _be itself_ 
philosophy?

20) Well, it can, but only if it's embedded in life.

21) When the hell are we not embedded in life.  This is 
all life.  We're living it.

22) That's what you think.

23) Apparently.

Matt

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