[MD] All the way down

[david buchanan]

Gents, I'm not changing the subject. But I'm going to approach it from a different angle and dispense with the polemics for a change too.

Up to a point, there is an affinity between James's image (the human snake coils over everything), the neo-pragmatic slogan (it's language all the way down), and Pirsig's sand sorting analogy:

"To understand what he was trying to do it's necessary to see that PART of the landscape, INSEPARABLE from it, which MUST be understood, is a figure in the middle of it, sorting sand into piles. To see the landscape without seeing this figure is not to see the landscape at all. To reject that part of the Buddha that attends to the analysis of motorcycles is to miss the Buddha entirely.  ... About the Buddha that exists independently of any analytic thought much has been said - some would say TOO much, and would question any attempt to add to it. But about the Buddha that exists WITHIN analytic thought, and GIVES THAT ANALYTIC THOUGHT ITS DIRECTION, virtually nothing has been said, and there are historic reasons for this. But history keeps happening, and it seems no harm and maybe some positive good to add to our historical heritage with some talk in this area of discourse." (ZAMM, p. 83 (Emphasis is Pirsig's))

dmb continues:
The Buddha that exists WITHIN analytic thought. This is what's interesting. In Lila, this notion will become the operation of Dynamic Quality within the scientific process itself, the co-operation of DQ and intellectual static quality. But in ZAMM Pirsig is not yet using such terms and yet his central aim to to expand and improve rationality by re-integrating "Quality" into it from the ground up. This Buddha talk is not aimed at converting anyone to Buddhism anymore than his comparisons between "Quality" and the Tao. What he's trying to do is expand rationality or intellect. 


"No, he did nothing for Quality or the Tao.  What benefited was reason. He showed a way by which reason may be expanded to include elements that have previously been unassimilable and thus have been considered irrational." (ZAMM, p. 257)

"Quality is the Buddha. Quality is scientific reality. Quality is the goal of Art. It remains to work these concepts out into a practical, down-to-earth context, and for this there is nothing more practical or down-to-earth than what I have been talking about all along - the repair of old motorcycle." (ZAMM, p. 276) 

"I want to show that that classic pattern of rationality can be tremendously improved, expanded and made far more effective through the formal recognition of Quality in its operation." (ZAMM, p. 278) 

"The difference between a good mechanic and a bad one, like the difference between a good mathematician and a bad one, is precisely this ability to SELECT the good facts from the bad ones on the basis of quality. .. I think that it will be found that a formal acknowledgment of the role of Quality in the scientific process doesn't destroy the empirical vision at all.  It expands it, strengthens it and brings it far closer to actual scientific practice." (ZAMM, p. 281-2) 

"... Dynamic Quality [is] the value-force that chooses an elegant mathematical solution to a laborious one, or a brilliant experiment over a confusing, inconclusive one ...  Dynamic value is an integral part of science.  It is the cutting edge of scientific progress itself." (LILA, p. 366)

dmb resumes:
I take these examples literally. The mechanic, the mathematician, the scientist and philosophers are all working within systems of rationality. They're all doing intellectual work within the limits of language and reason. But Pirsig is keen to get at "the Buddha that exists within analytic thought, and gives that analytic thought its direction". This move solves a whole slough of philosophical problems, but I think the main idea here is to improve actual mechanics, scientists and philosophers. It's about bringing all your faculties to bear and a deep engagement with whatever you're doing. It is aimed at down to earth stuff, which a lofty and worthy goal. It's also exceedingly sane, because that's where we live; practical, everyday reality.

And that, gents, is why I object to the neo-pragmatic slogan. Pirsig agrees that our understanding of the world is a pile of analogies BUT he also says that Quality is the generator of this mythos, guides the train that pulls the boxcars full of analogies. The important idea here is that this central term (Quality in the first book and Dynamic Quality in the second book) is outside of language and outside of the mythos. This value-force is pre-intellectual and yet he's asserting "the formal recognition of Quality" within intellectual operations. That's what radical empiricism does. It makes the dynamic a crucial phase in the overall cognitive process. It explains the relations between the dynamic and static phases of experience as aspects of a single, co-operative process. This "formal acknowledgment of the role of Quality in the scientific process doesn't destroy the empirical vision at all. It expands it, strengthens it and brings it far closer to actual scientific practice."

Again, I take the slogan to be a negative epistemological statement. It doesn't say the universe is made of words. It says that we can't get outside of language in an epistemological sense. It says our truths can only be justified within language and by language. But Pirsig is saying there is something outside of language that IS epistemologically important, that is the generator of language and this is a part of experience too. One of the ways he uses to show that Quality is real by showing how the world can't function normally without it and trying to effect a repair job on a mode of rationality that functions badly without it. Rationality itself is the bike he's working on and fixing it entails a formal acknowledgment of the role of Quality in the overall cognitive process.