[MD] Empirical and Historical

[Ian Glendinning]

Hi Matt, good stuff.
A few comments inserted.

On Tue, Jul 14, 2009 at 2:39 AM, Matt
Kundert<pirsigaffliction at hotmail.com> wrote:
>
> Steve, DMB,
>
> I can see the distinction is generating some energy, no less also displaying some of the different styles people write with.  The object under discussion seems to be so small that everyone's answers are almost identical, with the variance then almost entirely given to orientation.  For instance, Dave, your initial statements were of the usual kind of matter-of-fact, this-is-pretty-easy-obvious-stuff-so-I'm-not-sure-why-I-even-need-to-say-it that you often use in the MD, but Steve's comments were the exact opposite color--this isn't obvious, and quite important to understanding what's going on.  You both agree on the content, but I take it that Steve wins out in whether the matter is at all obvious--the issue is something of a lightening rod for some of the more radical differences among us (thinking of Bo here).
>
> It does turn out to help focus my difficulties, too, though it wasn't clear to me initially until we focused some attention on it.  The empirical/historical perspective distinction has something of the same impetus and problem-solving designs as Paul Turner's suggestion between epistemological and metaphysical perspectives (which went off like a firecracker in the MD, sharp and bright before fading from view in, I think, November 2005).  But where the latter distinction makes some sense to me, the former only serves to punch up an underlying disagreement I have with Pirsig's philosophy.

[IG] Perhaps you'd better illustrate your agreement with Paul's suggestion ?

>
> Pirsig himself, I don't believe, ever makes something like the empirical/historical perspective distinction (though matters would certainly become clearer if one surfaced).  So for now, I take it that this is either A) an implicit shifting in the texts or B) an interpretational device we need to import to make sense of Pirsig, or even save him from incoherence (the line between A and B being pretty small).

[IG] I think he makes the distinction - just not in so may words - but
his illustrations of the immediate / empirical (the hot stove, the
magnet & iron filings, the Jamesian squirrel & tree) are quite
distinct from the evolutionary descriptions of the levels of patterns
? I have to say I fall into the "how hard can it be ?" camp here.

[IG] Not sure he needs "saving from incoherence" - his coherence is
where it needs to be not where people were expecting it. Not sure
interpretation is a "device", just a fact of human understanding of
any text - Derrida, Deleuze et al. You are making a S/O distinction
between reader and book.
>
> I find the need for an interpretive device to demarcate sharply between "empirical" and "historical" strange and upon reflection, it may rest on my problems with the notion of a "cutting edge of reality."  The second of my two softening questions was "wouldn't viewing the world as experiential commit one to viewing it as an historical sequence of experiences?"  Seeing now that "empirical perspective" is stand-in for, roughly, the first-person point of view and "historical perspective" for, roughly, the subject of history, I think I can formulate my qualms as follows:
>
> The first thing one might notice is the non-parallel nature of the distinction at this stage: we have on the one hand a point-of-view and on the other hand one discipline amongst many.  The two have something in common, however: time--a concept I believe has come up a time or two recently.  So we might formulate the distinction as between the first-person point of view on time and the third-person point of view on time (which I think, roughly, we could agree is "history").

[IG] This brings in so many complications though - that I doubt it
will fix anything, but I will read on and listen. The first person "is
a member of" the third persons too. The first person also has the
historical perspective ... in mind, just not in "immediate"
experience. Going back to an old view of time seems counter
productive, particularly given that Paul gave us a much more
sophisticated "as if" view of time.

>
> The trouble for me comes when we notice that in times past this would have been the distinction between Subjective Time and Objective Time.  Our Pirsigian instincts are supposed to break down the S/O distinctions, but of course we can always reformulate (one of my favorites being first-person/third-person).  The trouble for this distinction, between empirical and historical, as it was deployed is that it is being deployed to _make sense of_ Pirsig's philosophy, without which perspective on DQ would become muddled and self-destructive (concepts listing into each other like battleships without rudders).  In other words, I brought up a supposed problem--the diffuse nature of DQ--and I was told, nah, its just two different perspectives on DQ.  When pressing whether two different perspectives is just the problem I was suggesting--diffuse rather than unitary--the perspectives were again forwarded with further articulation, and they came out as roughly the S/O distinction.
>
> Everyone should want to deny it, but think about this:  the problem with the S/O _distinction_ is that it is taken to be a _dichotomy_.  The former is a heuristic (dispensable for different problems), but the latter is metaphysical in the sense of one side not being able to break down into the other (_no matter perspective_).  I was asking how to make sense of a unitary DQ, and if the only way to do it is to foward something like the S/O distinction, then that means, I take it, that the empirical/historical distinction cannot be broken down into each other (as we would normally break down the S/O distinction) _without losing focus on DQ_.  But doesn't that give us two DQs?  And if the distinction can be broken down (like a good distinction should be able to do), why wasn't the non-dual, fuzzy DQ given as the unitary DQ?
>
> This is simply a conversational difficulty to ponder, a fan of the proposed distinction can then think about their next choice of venue (if they take seriously the above argument at all).
>
> >From my point of view, the whole thing is suspicious for the very reason that Henri Bergson, the 19th-century French metaphysician that William James admired, once railed against the distinction between Subjective and Objective Time, or as Ian put it, "immediate" and "historical."

[IG] I agree with the point you are going on to make - but I have
already disagreed that this difference is equivalent to the S/O
distinction on the perspective of time. Because time is not like that
...

> Bergson suggested that time is not like that, it is not a category that pops up later like Kant said (or as Steve suggest with "time itself is not a given but derived from experience"), but something that is experienced, _though not like the edge of a knife_.  He called it "duration," an enveloping field a little bit into the "future" and little bit into the "past" (both concepts being a little weird once we dispense with the notion of the _present_ as an edge that one can only fall on one side or the other, past or future).  I think Pirsig even talks a little like this in Lila, at least with reference to Whitehead and DQ as "dim apprehension," but maybe elsewhere, too.
>
> Ever since reading a footnote in one of Rorty's early papers, I've had an increasing feeling that the issue of time was perhaps the most important difference between the way I perceive the way forward and Pirsig: "... time cannot be taken seriously until one ceases to think of the present as a knife-edge and begins to think of it as an extended duration."  (from "Matter and Event")

[IG] Absolutely. Although Pirsig does debate different views if time,
I don't believe he ever nails exactly which view he is using. Which is
why I liked Paul's ideas. There is no doubt that time and causation
are seriously & weirdly different from the common sense sequential /
directional view and the idea of single points in time distinct from
the whole. Pirsig simply doesn't allow the view to get in the way of
what he does present. Focussing on the "now" in the Pirsigian DQ sense
is a matter fo focussing on the "immediate experience" ... but the
immediate has nothing to do with time - it's to do with significance
and proximity.

I don't think much of this has to do with interpreting Pirsig's MoQ -
but I do believe time and causation need a thorough work-out.

Regards
Ian

 The paper was on, roughly, Whitehead's superiority to Aristotle
(people forget that Rorty began, roughly, as a Whiteheadian) and
people have often noticed the kindred spirit of process philosophy and
Pirsig.
>
> After becoming convinced of Robert Brandom's philosophy of language, I see now that if we construe "pre-intellecual" as "pre-propositional," that half of Pirsig's famous formulation, "Dynamic Quality is the pre-intellectual cutting edge of reality," needn't concern me.  The working of the distinction between know-how and knowing-that (and the latter resting on the former) has become clear to me, and how that's what Dewey meant when he was redescribing knowledge and breaking down the praxis/theoria dichotomy.  The "cutting edge of reality," however, doesn't appear to me to be what Dewey meant by his immediate/mediate distinction, and it continues to look like what Sellars attacked as the "Myth of the Given."
>
> I've talked some about time in the last year, though mainly in little papers on novels/literary theorists.
>
> On Dewey/Pirsig:
> http://pirsigaffliction.blogspot.com/2007/03/notes-on-experience-dewey-and-pirsig.html
> (nothing really happens until the big block quote six or seven paragraphs down)
>
> I took a class on time in literature and literary theory (i.e., philosophy) last summer, and in the back of my head was Pirsig the whole time.  In fact, every kid had to do a little presentation on a book of their choosing and (mainly because I was lazy) I chose Pirsig.  Pirsig's distinction between classic and romantic did wonders for helping the bafflement almost everyone felt in reading T.S. Eliot and Wyndham Lewis, two centerpieces of modern criticism.  If one is bored, one might trail through the six short papers I wrote successively for the class (under the "Lit Crit" heading in my sidebar, begin with "James and Woolf" at the bottom and trail up to "Longing for the Apocalypse").  Every piece takes up topics that are of pertinence to Pirsig, from "stream of consciousness" style to Bergson to (sort of) schizophrenia.  They might produce some sidelight, angles on Pirsig that might help spur further exploration.  Eventually I'll get up my final for the class, "Narrative and Making Sense," which to me was simply the first step to writing about what Pirsig's ZMM helps highlight in the dance of Western philosophy--the interrelationship between theory and narrative (which we might also call, logos and mythos).
>
> Matt
>
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