[MD] Decision

[Matt Kundert]

Dear Horse,

I've been on vacation for over a week, strictly imposing on 
myself a "no-writing" clause (not a "no-reading"), though--as 
everyone here whose gone on vacation knows--there'd be 
so much mail when I got back, that I do check in to delete 
the conversation I'm missing.

This, however, brought me out of my brief, self-imposed 
exile because I think Platt is right about the moral issue, 
even if he's a right-wing lunatic (a broken clock comes to 
mind, and it's about that time).  I have not been following 
the lead up to this decision, but the rationale for it raised 
the hairs on my neck (though as far as I'm aware, no one's 
said that I, myself, should be censored; though on the other 
hand, I don't read the people anymore who might).

I would strongly suggest that making an interpretational 
position a line with which one must be on the right side of 
for membership in the MD is a bad administrative move, and 
antithetical to the philosophical enterprise.  On the former 
score, every _healthy_ academic department in universities 
goes out of its way to include diverse voices--not because 
of "political correctness" (where Platt's clock goes back to 
usually being wrong), but because, as EM Forster put it, while 
laissez-faire may not work for economics, it is the only way 
to go for the spirit.  If popular winds change direction, and 
you're left holding a bag full of Hegelian philosophy professors, 
your department will die (this is something like what happened 
to Yale's during the 70s, and it could happen to Princeton if 
the Analytic idiom falls out of favor).

A private club always has the prerogative to let in who it 
wants, but the best intellectual clubs--because they are 
conversational--let self-selection do the task, and otherwise 
mainly stay out of the way (mainly).  You don't write an 
essay about Emerson for Milton Quarterly (without some r
eference to Milton), but that's also because you have ESQ 
available to submit your thoughts.  Things are different for 
us amateur philosophers, and generally there's been a lot of 
latitude about what people can write about at the MD.

What raised my hairs is that I think Steve hits the nail of 
what's wrong with Bo's interpretation: the "real MoQ" is 
such and such.  Combined with what most (only most) 
people agree is a radical revision of Pirsig's vision, it just 
seems silly.

But the way you put the point, Horse, makes me fear that 
if there had been someone else at the helm (Mr. Buchanan), 
then I would've gotten the axe, because Mr. Buchanan 
(among some others) think I _grossly_ distort Pirsig so badly 
that my own explicative invocations of "Pirsig thinks..." are 
massive misrepresentations.

The issue is understanding why "supposition, implication, 
and inference" fall on the _outside_ of what a thinker thinks.  
The short defense for thinking that those three things are 
legitimate instruments of explication is that a philosophical 
position _must_ fall on a publicly available map (meaning 
Pirsig's philosophy was already independent and open for 
public development whether he'd said "I think" or "the MoQ") 
in which some other positions are implied or can be inferred 
to, because without those there is 

--no way to assess it's utility because the utility of a 
philosophy lies in what you can infer from it: how you use it--

The MoQ's value lies in "supposition, implication, inference."

(It would be suitably provocative for me to say that that's 
what value consists in, but that would be extending my 
hand too much with things I've been reading on my vacation.)

Bo's _rhetoric_ is silly.  And his position seems largely 
untenable as a working out of what Pirsig thought _and_ 
what Pirsig's thought _implies_ (two different things).  
(Every great philosopher is still being argued over for, if not 
the former, then at the least the latter.)  However, while 
what Pirsig thinks about the SOM/SOL issue seems fairly 
certain, Pirsig _might be wrong_ about what his core insights 
imply.  That's what makes philosophy a publicly debatable 
commodity.  We can't (for the most part) be wrong about 
_what_ we think, but we can _wrongly infer_ to other 
things.  The jumble of philosophy, naturally, is that the two 
are coextensive: the thing that you wrongly inferred to is 
also a "what" that you can't be wrong about thinking.  But 
we need the distinction--a movable one worked out over 
the course of inquiry (i.e. History)--because we found out 
long ago (around the time the first person got eaten by 
what he thought was a large, voracious orange-striped 
herbivore) that we are occasionally wrong _in_ what we 
think and infer, even if it is correct that we thought it (e.g., 
right before he went up and pet the tiger).

Because of all those things about inference, it makes the 
way we talk about Pirsig, what he thinks, what it means to 
be a Pirsigian, etc., a lot more complex then perhaps 
initially appears, though there are ways of _not_ being 
misleading and saying just what you mean with as careful 
precision as you can muster.  This, I think it is clear to 
most of us, Bo does not do.  I think it is regrettable, but I 
think it is negligible.  I think the best _administrative_ way 
to deal with crackpots (of which there are many in every 
intellectual corner of the world, Milton, Emerson, or Pirsig) 
is to put the onus on the other participants: don't talk to 
the crackpot and dignify the crazy spilling out of his mouth.  
It's what we do in large cities all the time.  I don't think 
we even need a moratorium--just talk about whatever you 
want to talk about.  (Rorty, at I believe a discussion panel 
at an American Philosophical Association meeting, once 
suggested a moratorium for a year on the word "truth," a 
joke to punch up his point that he didn't think epistemology 
really needed to.  But if Rorty had actually had control of 
some publishing organ, like a journal, I doubt he would've 
implemented it.)

If you're worried about newbies getting the wrong idea, 
think about this: my girlfriend's aunt to me this week about 
her experience in Catholic school 40 years ago.  She said 
they were in religion class, studying the differences between 
this and that and the Catholic, and the young, innocent, 
naive youngster asked in honest sincerity--given what they 
had just read--what the difference was between a cult and 
the Catholic Church.  (They had just read that one mark of 
a cult is an infallible leader, and she immediately inferred to 
the Pope.)  The nun immediately ordered her out of the class.  
Never answered her.  The next year, different teacher, same 
repetition of thematics as the year before, and she asks 
again--still innocently and honestly wondering--and she is 
again ordered out of the room.

Short of it is, as a simple matter of maintaining dogma, it is 
psychologically much more effective to mumble some sweet 
words to blow over it without anybody noticing than to 
throw somebody out, which just wakes up the student 
sleeping a desk back, who than has to ask what happened, 
and is related a story that is apparently (given the 
throwing-out) a powerful objection or alternative of some kind.

Why imply that much power to Bo?

Matt

p.s.  Good luck with the problem: I don't wish your position on 
anyone, and though I have an opinion on the matter, I'm also 
not a rabble-rouser.  You've always done as decent job as 
any over the years.
 		 	   		  
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