[MD] Philosophy and Abstraction

[Matt Kundert]

Matt said:
..."societies and thoughts and principles themselves are no more than 
sets of static patterns.  These patterns can't by themselves perceive 
or adjust to Dynamic Quality.  Only a living being can do that." (Ch. 13, 
Bantam paperback 185) I've always had a hard time assimilating that 
line...

DMB said:
I think Pirsig just means that textbooks don't re-write themselves, 
ideas don't refine themselves. Evolution is a living thing and the static 
latching follows from that. To make philosophies evolve, you need 
philosophers. These patterns are not external in the sense that they 
grow out of our hands and heads and the books we make are made 
for eyeballs. They co-evolve as part of us, so much so that it is 
sometimes hard to tell what invented who.

Matt:
Did you mean they _are_ external in that sense?  If that's the case, 
then I hope you understood what I went on to say to be basically 
what you've said here.

DMB said:
In your analogy, DQ is a feature of the map. In Pirsig's, the whole 
map is derived from DQ and DQ can be represented on the map only 
as a kind of paradox.

Matt:
Okay, true about the analogy, but with your emendation I can agree.  
Because everything on your map is a feature of your map in the 
same way as it was on mine, but you want to make sure I agree to 
this additional clarification of the relationship of DQ to the map.  I'm 
not sure how it is a feature of my map, as it were, that I am _unable_ 
to agree (which, unless I'm mistaken about your intentions, is what 
you need for your criticisms to stick).

Another attempt at the map analogy: the word "Dynamic Quality" is 
written on the map with an arrow pointing at the tear in the map it 
is next to.  When you look at DQ, you are actually looking through the 
map at the ground below.  This is one way of describing how DQ 
helps one change the map to evolving circumstances.

Aside from a general wariness towards ocular metaphors, I'm not 
sure why I'm barred from this analogy.

Matt said:
One thing map-makers have learned is that a good map should 
include the person changing the map to better negotiate the terrain.  
And part of this means rejecting the closedness of Platonism.

DMB said:
That's right. Including the map-maker within the map also means 
dropping the pretense of disinterested observation and attitudes of 
objectivity in general. It's a way of saying the map-maker chooses 
what to notice and record and so he is always making value 
judgements whether he realizes or not. This is just one more way 
to knock the representational theories of knowledge. It says that 
perfect correspondence is neither possible nor even desirable.

Matt:
Right, this is part of the area where we agree that occasionally 
becomes hidden with all the ruckus.

Matt said:
So when you say, "The question is whether or not it's a good idea to 
exclude certain kinds of experience from our reflections," all I can say 
is, "yes, I agree: I, like you, do not think I'm excluding any kind of 
experience in a pernicious manner."

DMB said:
Hmmm? The terms in question are things like "pure experience" and 
"pre-intellectual experience". I don't know how perniciously you're 
excluding them but this conversation is mostly about why you and 
Steve want to avoid them. Isn't that the main topic here? 

Matt:
Yes, the _terms_ in question, not the things being _referred to by_ 
the terms.

And the conversation can't be just why I (or Steve) avoid them, 
because _you know already know why_ we avoid them.  Knowing 
why is what enables you to make your criticism that we are reading 
a non-Platonist as a Platonist, and therefore getting him wrong.  
Because you are a thorough-going anti-Platonist, you already know 
why anti-Platonists like Steve and I are wary of certain forms of 
expression.  You're concerned to express the fact that Pirsig (et al) 
is an anti-Platonist too and so has purged his terms of Platonic 
baggage.

Since this isn't about Dynamic Quality itself, but about the use of 
adjectives such as "direct" and "pure" to _refer_ to DQ, the 
conversation has to be in part about why you think a philosopher 
_needs_ to use those terms to discuss DQ.  The answer cannot be 
"because Pirsig does" because that gets us no further than Pirsig 
exegesis.  You don't want to just be a Pirsig exegete, you want to 
put his answers into play against other philosophies.  This is how, 
for example, you think you can get Pirsig to criticize Rorty.  But to 
do that, you have to clear a common ground upon which they can 
give answers to common questions so that one doesn't get _either_ 
of them wrong.  (Neither one of us has ever successfully opposed 
Pirsig to Rorty in each other's eyes because you think I get Pirsig 
wrong when I do and I think you get Rorty wrong when you do.)  
At the level of philosophical commitment, where one attempts to 
cross-translate different philosophical vocabularies to see where 
agreement and disagreement lies on substantive philosophical 
issues (and not just superficial differences like "well, the difference 
between James and Pirsig is that James never used the term 
'Dynamic Quality'"), there needs to be another answer than 
"because Pirsig does."  If there wasn't another answer, then 
"pure" and "direct" would be established by fiat rather than 
reasons.

So, why do I need to use qualifiers like "pure," "direct," and 
"pre-intellectual" in my descriptions of DQ's effect on philosophical 
discourse?  If I understand the rules of being an anti-Platonist 
properly, one kind of answer is unavailable to you: that it "fits" reality 
better.  If we agree on what anti-Platonism is, then neither one of us 
can say that this or that description is forced upon us because 
otherwise we'd get reality, or experience, or whatever, wrong.  It 
might fit _Pirsig_ better, but nobody's questioning that.  And if your 
answer is "because it works better," then you have to delineate 
more specifically _how_ it works better than _what_ alternatives 
before we can have a useful conversation about what works better 
than what.

Steve said:
Platonism IS the problem with those terms, but it's not that I think 
Pirsig is a Platonist or intends those terms to punch up Platonism. I 
don't. ... I prefer not to use the terms ...because I think those terms 
are too easily construed as more Platonism.

DMB said:
In a nutshell, that's what I'm talking about. If you don't really think 
the MOQ is Platonism, what's the point of avoiding Pirsig's central 
terms?

Matt:
Maybe this has been the problem: notice how Steve says "I"--"I 
prefer not to use the terms."  Steve's wondering, like I articulated 
above, why--as a philosopher with his own philosophy (as Pirsig 
commends every individual to have)--he should use qualifiers like 
"pure," "direct," and "pre-intellectual."  I take it that neither of us 
thinks Pirsig is a Platonist, but that we are not always answering 
scholastic questions about the exact interpretation of Pirsig or doing 
philosophy from within Pirsig's own framework.  Those two distinct 
activities are things we do occasionally, but they are not the only 
things we have an interest in.  It is the moments of applied 
philosophy, if you will, that we move to our own philosophies and 
use Pirsigian tools when we have occasion to.  The reason why 
we'd still like to call ourselves "Pirsigian" is because, despite the 
fact that we have our own philosophical vocabularies, we do not 
think we are violating any of the official Pirsigian theses (or nearly 
any, or enough, or any of the important ones).  Maybe we are 
violating some of Pirsig's tenets, but (isolating my remarks back 
to just myself) I'm not clear what those are from your viewpoint.  
The lack of clarity is due in part to the fact that a philosophical thesis, 
taking up space on the map of conceptual positions, cannot be 
definable _only_ by one set of terms (the "home" terms of the 
originating philosopher, if you will).  If that was the case, then 
conversation between philosophers and philosophies would be 
impossible.  But because I do view a conversation as possible 
between, e.g., Pirsig and Rorty, when you then rely on arguments to 
the effect that 1) because I do not want to use terms like "pure," 
"direct," and "pre-intellectual" then 2) I am denying the existence of 
Dynamic Quality and mystical experience generally, because of that--I 
start to think that you think I _have to_ but I still lack an understanding 
of _why_.  And without that "why," I lack the ability to own up to 
concessions and the like.

Think about this from both points of view: you are suspicious of me 
and Steve because we don't like "pure."  I'm suspicious of people 
who do like "pure," but I'm willing to let them clear themselves (e.g., 
Pirsig or James).  However, I'm very suspicious of people who are 
suspicious of me because I don't like "pure," especially if they claim 
to be anti-Platonists who at the same time have no idea what's 
wrong with the rhetoric of purity _and_ view other anti-Platonists 
suspiciously if they don't like the rhetoric of purity.

DMB said:
How appropriate is it to use anti-Platonic tactics against an 
anti-Platonic philosophy. Those tactics make sense in the wider 
philosophical world and certainly when encountering a Platonist. But 
here? I don't see how it could do any good in this context.

Matt:
Well, by "this context" you are talking about speaking to people who 
_are not Pirsig_.  Pirsig's texts I can clear.  Every person is there own 
philosopher, remember, and since it is rhetoric all the way down, 
philosophically speaking we might be sneaking in all kinds of 
pernicious philosophical mistakes every time we try are hand at a 
new philosophical context (which is every new conversation we have).  
"Real chess is the game you play with your neighbor."  That's why 
anti-Platonism isn't something you just give a rest, but is rather a 
nose you have to sniff every new positive, constructive philosophical 
plank you or anyone else lays down.

DMB said:
If one construes Pirsig as a Platonist, it changes the meaning of his 
central terms quite dramatically.  And then the MOQ is made out to 
be claiming all kinds of things that it specifically rejects elsewhere in 
text. And then the books are full of contradictions.

Matt:
I think it is a mistake to think that I've urged a global understanding 
of Pirsig as a Platonist.  I don't remember having claimed that his 
books are full of contradictions, or having given that general 
impression.  But if I have, I wish I hadn't, and I take it back.

What I have tried in the past is to try a hand at trying to generate a 
few, isolated contradictions within his text given his use of his terms.  
You, quite apparently, think that during these efforts I have 
misconstrued Pirsig, but I have no sense of where you think those 
places are during those efforts.  (Anthony McWatt once took part of 
my reading in "Philosophologology" to task in the MD, and I replied 
as best and patiently as I could, line by line of Pirsig, to show that in 
trying to refute my reading he was rather misreading Pirsig in this 
limited case.  At least that's my memory.)

The moq.org essays, my longest, sustained attempts at working with 
Pirsig's texts and philosophy, are also old.  I can't think of anything 
I'd take back (even though "Confessions" is likely a clear source of 
outdated thinking), but neither have I studied Pirsig's texts with the 
closeness I had at the time of composition of those essays.  Being 
removed from the height of familiarity with Pirsig that I had in, say, 
2006, I can only a imagine a concerned and dedicated Pirsigian, 
working on the correct interpretation of Pirsig's philosophy, going 
into those essays and showing what is wrong and right in those 
essays.  I would think such a show would be something I could 
follow along and see my mistake.

DMB said:
I hear you saying "slow down" but other than that I really don't know 
what you're saying. Inferential connections? Intentions of a text? The 
local and remote consequences? It's not at all clear to me what these 
phrases mean.

Matt:
Fair enough, but why comment on that part at all?  I don't get the 
sense that these questions are asked in earnest, but are rather a 
form of expressing your claim that I'm obscure and unnecessarily 
complexifying.  Because I don't think it's the case that you are 
looking for me to explain to you what an "inference" is or how 
interpretation works, though that would be what I'd have to do 
were I to take those questions sincerely.

Matt