[MD] The One True MOQ

[Matt Kundert]

Arlo said:
Consider that regarding other philosophical systems, you 
never hear anyone saying "THE Absolute Idealism says..." 
or "THE Pragmatism says...". People speak generally about 
these philosophies to describe general trends within those 
particular lines of thinking, but the discussion is about 
"James' Pragmatism" or "Hegel's Idealism", etc.

Matt:
I was thinking about this when I first replied, and I'm glad 
you brought it up (can you believe it? I censored myself 
for brevity).  One reason you don't hear "THE pragmatism 
says..." is because it is grammatically awkward.  Because 
now you need a distinction between, not a/the, but 
the/thee.  What you are pointing out about our debates 
is that interpretive issues are (sometimes) taken to be 
the only ground on which philosophical debate can 
happen: my version of THE MoQ has become THEE MoQ.  
THEE best philosophy to hold is an admirable goal, but 
not when you can only talk about THE MoQ (if you catch 
my drift).  So you suggest talking about "a MoQ" to get 
to thee best philosophy.

Switching to isms, however, presents something a little 
different rhetorically, I think.  I could say "THEE pragmatism 
says...," but it would be redundant from saying, 
"Pragmatism says..." because implicit in the assertion is 
your command of the core of just what "pragmatism says."  
The difference between the isms and the systems is that 
if systems don't turn into fields of inquiry, then they die 
with single owners.  An ism, however, rhetorically creates 
a field of inquiry just like the article "a" when placed before 
a system, like "a MoQ."   Fields and isms are public 
property (or hope to be), and so emphasize their 
diachronic (moving over time) aspects over the system's 
emphasis on the synchronic aspect (moving over 
everything within grasp at this point in time).

The interpretation of what the core of any ism is is just as 
contentious, if not fundamentally interminable, as 
interpretation of a particular person.  Because an ism is a 
tradition which is defined, over and against a particular 
system, by being made up of texts from more than one 
person.  So, one of the contentious parts of defining an 
ism (as anyone who had watched in the past Mr. 
Buchanan and I's interminable arguments stretching over 
near a decade) is delimiting the texts you're taking into 
account: which texts you take the interpretation of to 
define your ism.  And _then_ you move to the 
interpretation of them (and those problems).  And 
_then_ to philosophical problems with the insights of 
your ism in tow.  And just stating the conceptual priority 
of these three steps for adherence to an ism (delimitation, 
interpretation, application) shows how--without just 
willy-nilly choosing an ism--you'd already have to have 
some thoughts about the last step (i.e., an opinion about 
philosophical problems) before you could move to the first 
step (delimiting an ism by choosing, e.g., pragmatism over 
positivism).  And that's what makes it fundamentally 
interminable.

Mr. Buchanan and I's discussions _were_ fundamentally 
about pragmatism sans authorial modifier.  He saw the 
definition of pragmatism as delimited by (primarily) the 
texts of Peirce, James, and Dewey: the classical 
pragmatists.  That's why I used to call his (and, e.g., 
Hildebrand's, McDermott's, Sleeper's) retro-pragmatism.  
You can't reverse history, but you can bring the past 
forward.  I, on the other hand, saw pragmatism as 
delimited by (say) James' Pragmatism, Dewey's 
Reconstruction in Philosophy, and Rorty's Contingency, 
Irony, and Solidarity (and _not_ by James' Essays in 
Radical Empiricism or Dewey's Experience and Nature).  
This was the problem, of course: because I just wanted 
to interpret Pragmatism, and Mr. Buchanan wanted to 
at least interpret it in the light of the Essays, to get 
the whole of James right (though often he just wanted 
to interpret the Essays).  I didn't care as much about 
getting James or Dewey right because I wasn't 
concerned to be a scholar of James or Dewey.  I think 
I get James' Pragmatism right enough to be considered 
not misrepresenting anything.

When you fight over a tradition (an ism), the fight is 
fundamentally interminable because it is a fundamental 
right to reject a portion of text as extraneous or wrong 
and not central to the _living_ tissue of that tradition.  
(And I try to interpret Mr. Buchanan as if he understands 
the distinction between biography and philosophy, but I 
have a feeling that he thinks one needs to get Peirce, 
James, Dewey, and Pirsig correct _and_ to endorse the 
whole of their thought before one can sign up to be a 
pragmatist or Pirsigian.  Sometimes he would say 
explicitly that he understood the distinction, but I have 
a hard time even now making sense of what the difficulty 
of our conversations could have been if not his implicitly 
blurring just that distinction.  I have no sense of what Mr. 
Buchanan now thinks about any of these issues, and 
have been speaking nostalgically, because I haven't 
remained committed to being up-to-date on his 
trajectory of thought.  For anyone who wants to know 
the last interesting thing I said to Mr. Buchanan  (and 
more nostalgia), you can check out "Discussion with David 
Buchanan": http://pirsigaffliction.blogspot.com/2010/01/discussion-with-dave-buchanan.html)

Arlo said:
[Matt said stuff about acolyting not being treatable by 
rhetorical convention.]  Well, maybe not, but I think such 
acolyting would be exposed clearly. It's kind of a 
slight-of-hand to keep saying "THE metaphysics of Quality 
says..." to masquerade that whatever Pirsig said is 
unassailable truth. It has the "air" of authoritative 
legitimacy, doesn't it? If someone kept writing "Robert 
Pirsig says... Robert Pirsig says... Robert Pirsig says...", 
we'd see that for what it is. But the same person writing 
"the MOQ says... the MOQ says... the MOQ says..." this 
is kinda placed behind a veil.

Matt:
Yeah, okay--the "the/thee" conflation behind "the," right?  
That makes sense.  I think I'm willing to say that, while 
optimism or pessimism about conversation _actually_ 
getting better is still in play, this particular 
recommendation would expose the issue more clearly and 
at least make _this_ area of difficulty less likely.  Good 
show.  Now we just need to get everyone to adopt it 
without thinking that they're conceding an important 
philosophical issue.

Matt said:
If you consider yourself to be a Pirsigian, it will be because 
you have a distinct take on what the metonym "Pirsig" 
stands for, and if it doesn't in some way hook up to a 
correct apprehension of _something_ in the writings of an 
author named "Pirsig," then why on earth call yourself a 
Pirsigian who's working out a metaphysics of Quality?

Arlo said:
This is interesting to me, because how I see it this one 
way of framing a trajectory into a community of practice. 
I don't, personally, know anyone who calls themselves a 
"Peircian" or a "Jungian" in any sense other than to forge 
commonality with a community they are hoping to be 
part of. When used outside of this particular convention, 
I don't see any value in such labeling. In other words, I 
see it as shorthand to tell a group "Hey, I think this 
person's ideas have a lot of value and I agree with most 
of them", the community (based on its unique structures) 
then accepts or rejects this shorthand. In your example, 
Ham may be rejected as  "Pirsigian" here, but in another 
forum not specifically about Pirsig the community may 
see his and Pirsig's ideas as "close enough" to allow the 
label.

I know this is a wild tangent, but I guess I see such 
"branding" as nearly wholly social, maybe quite valuable in 
that realm, but of no real value intellectually. When 
someone is battling for a label ("I AM a Pirsigian, damn you, 
I AM!"), its usually a sign they have nothing of importance 
to say, and are only trying to "fit in" or attain social capital 
in some way.

Matt:
That's good stuff.  I absolutely agree about branding as 
community-forging.  And your example of Ham (properly 
constituted for use in this example only) moving to, say, 
a general philosophy forum and passing for a Pirsigian 
because he is close enough though the "Pirsigian 
community" rejects him (one could apply this example to 
Rorty's relationship to Dewey) is excellent.

My only difference, I think, may be that I think that while 
we _can_ (and should) distinguish between 
social-community-commitments and 
intellectual-content-values, we can only do so _from within_ 
an already constituted community.  This means that there 
can be no intellectual content prior to a commitment to 
some community, and that though the two can be fought 
about somewhat separately (the difference between 
stage-1 and stage-3 in my blather above about isms, 
except notice that I'm now saying that stage-1-branding is 
prior to stage-3-content--which is to say, just as you 
need some thoughts about content before picking a 
community, you also need some thoughts about picking a 
community before having thoughts about content), they 
are also necessarily entwined and important to one and the 
other.  This means that there is no "social realm" distinct 
from an "intellectual realm" where one could have a pure 
value apart from the other.  This is my criticism of the 
social/intellectual distinction (one I haven't talked about in 
a long while, I think now because I've been a long time 
coming to this newer understanding of what I was trying to 
say).

Two objections: what about your endorsement of the Ham 
example? and what about Arlo's point about "battling for a 
label," which does seem to be cogent?

To the first, I think it punches up how we are committed to 
_more than one_ community at all times, fluctuating 
memberships that are instituted by our continually changing 
conversation partners.  I think it is perfectly reasonable to 
expect the same metonym ("Pirsigian" or "Deweyan") to be 
used in slightly different ways depending on the 
discourse-community involved.  In the diverse community 
known as the "on-going conversation of philosophy," a 
metonym may come to be known as defined slimly and 
sveltely by a small number of philosophical committments 
(for example, only holding a dualism between mind and 
matter to be considered a "cartesian," even if you have 
no thoughts about "clear and distincts ideas").  In the 
community where everyone goes by the same metonym, it 
might be reasonable to think that the community may 
occasionally raise and lower the bar of how many 
philosophical committments one would need to share to be 
able to self-brand and belong.

To the second, I think I can still see the value in your 
comment about "battling for a label," and how this truly 
does happen and signify lack of intellectual interest, but 
that it does not require us to see two distinct realms, 
but rather requires the two "realms" to be entwined in 
the way I've specified: to feel this signal, one must 
count up the number of intellectual commitments shared 
between two people arguing about it _and_ set a bar 
for what the required ones are to get one in the door of 
a particular community.  If the two combatants share all 
the required ones, then the battle is just posturing of 
some kind.  (This explains my disinterest in fighting with 
Mr. Buchanan anymore.  Because we still, I think, 
disagree about what we disagree about, one of us thinks 
there's something to fight about, but the other thinks 
that there is large enough agreement and this 
fact--what they agree about--is simply hidden from the 
other.  This other one also doesn't have any bright ideas 
about how to repair the distance, and has given up hope.)

You and I, Arlo, don't often discuss each other explicitly, 
but it's always seemed as if we hold a lot in common on a 
number of fronts.  What do you think about the above?

Matt
 		 	   		  
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