[MD] The One True MOQ

[Matt Kundert]

Arlo said:
So if we had an umbrella "ism" that could refer to a general 
structure of agreement (maybe even only DQ/SQ, IBSI 
levels) then we could use that to build the common ground, 
but then differentiate on specific disagreements. Something 
like "Qualityism says there are four static levels. Bo's 
Qualityism holds the intellectual level to SOM, while Pirsig's 
Qualityism considers SOM to be one of many intellectual 
patterns."

Am I understanding you correctly? Not sure I like 
"Qualityism" though, maybe "Valueism"?

Matt:
Yeah.  I just used "experientialism" to cover a particular 
kind of agreement that Pirsig, James, and Dewey share, 
though I at first subsumed them in "semanticism."  The 
reason I did that is because the former is pitched in an 
idiom I don't tend to use, but if we wanted an umbrella to 
discuss, for example, the differences between those two 
idioms (debate about the "linguistic turn"), we might use 
"holism" or "relationalism."

One reason I like to use isms, particularly those generated 
by writers in Philosophy Departments, is because I think 
we tend to unnecessarily consign ourselves to a 
self-imposed ghetto from general philosophical conversation 
by terminological demands.  For instance, this silly 
nonsense that casts Pirsig as the most unique creation 
History has ever cast up on Philosophy's shore.  My 
favorite is when people repeat variations of "No one to my 
knowledge has ever put Quality at the center of their 
metaphysics."  For that statement to be true, you'd have 
to first construe metaphysics narrowly as system, then 
demand a deductive structure (working outwards from "a 
center"), and then note that no one who has done the 
first two things has used the word "Quality."  It's the 
stupidest pat on the back I can think of.  Pirsig is actually 
unique for interesting and important enough reasons that 
we don't need to start making up trivial ones.  What we 
should be doing, particularly if you want to "break" Pirsig 
into the mainstream, is what Pirsig began doing in Lila 
with James: emphasizing continuity with others while 
noting the differences that make you stand out.  And as 
soon as you read Dewey saying that "reality is an 
evaluative term," you should realize that you have more 
friends than even Pirsig thought when he began the 
uniqueness-rhetoric in his own books.

Matt said:
The interpretation of what the core of any ism is is just as 
contentious, if not fundamentally interminable, as 
interpretation of a particular person.

Arlo said:
Sure. But I think contention over defining "common ground" 
is different from contention over whose ground is the One 
True Ground. This is moving the dialogue to better ground, 
as opposed to ending it or watching it flail about in the mud.

Matt:
Yeah.  I'm not so sure as I used to be about this point in 
terms of its rhetorical value.  It is good philosophical policy 
to shuck the appearance/reality distinction: no One True 
Ground.  However, I've begun to lose hold of the point in 
narrow, self-contained bits of discourse.  For example, it 
used to be beastly for relativists to combate the Platt 
Question: Well, is your relativism universal?  I still hear 
Foucauldians in the academy get all Nietzschean and talk 
about how truth is an illusion.  Really?  If it's power (or 
rhetoric or metaphor or whatever) all the way down, what 
reality is the illusion contrasted with to constitute the 
illusion _as_ an illusion?  We who side with Protagoras 
used to wave the question, but I think we've learned 
some pretty damn good techniques for avoiding the 
question entirely by making the required kind of 
distinctions.  I think most of the reason why people still 
feel attracted to it's-all-illusion rhetoric is because they 
don't think you can make an assertion without it being 
an automatic piercing of illusions to reality.  But it isn't 
clear why that's so.

The point I'm driving at is that when we argue about the 
"true core" of pragmatism or Pirsig, most of the time these 
are not idle bogs, but simply the effort at reproducing your 
version.  What I've come to better appreciate is the 
specifiable rhetorical techniques that bog one down, and 
the ones that don't.  Saying "true core" isn't exactly one 
of them, for its the distilling of the essence of a tradition 
that makes it evolve.  And most of the time, it is not 
apropos to deflect attacks on your position by repairing 
back to the almost commonplace (now, and particularly 
here) "there is no true interpretation."  I think I probably 
did that more often then I should have in the past, 
though it is hard not to when combating 
awkwardly-phrased critical pressures.

For example, is there really a difference most of the time 
between "better" and "best"?  If you delimit your area well, 
usually not.  The only difference between better and best 
in common argumentation is if somebody _makes_ the 
distinction between the two, and then claims "best," as in, 
"I'm the Villiage Champion, and because of that fact, none 
shall ever defeat me."  That's the Platonic move.  Not only 
are you forwarding your assertion with justification, but 
you are justifying your primary assertion with a special 
secondary assertion: that yours cuts through 
appearances, and is not just better, but is final.

So, what I'm always looking for these days is that special 
secondary assertion.  I've come to see that most people 
aren't even aware that they could make it, and that when 
they make their primary assertion, it just _happens_ to be 
wearing a dress I, at least, have learned to avoid.  But as 
long as they avoid in practice--even if they aren't explicitly 
aware--the attempt to justify by that special secondary 
assertion, then there's no problem.  In other words, the 
only difference in practice between arguing for "common 
ground" vs. "the One True Ground" is IF somebody reaches 
for the special secondary assertion of "and my assertion-X 
shall _never_ be proven false because of Y."  I've come to 
think that that "if" is actually a much more rare thing than 
I used to.  Even if it _is_ better in the long run to purge 
our culture of certain rhetorics, unless you always want to 
only fight about Platonism, and never discuss anything 
else, then we can't always focus on the unactualized 
rhetorical dressing of certain assertions.

This is another way of putting why I don't find it useful to 
discuss pragmatism with Mr. Buchanan anymore: I've finally 
determined that he has _no_ desire to be either a Platonist 
or it's mirror-image (the scarecrows that sometimes go by 
relativist, skeptic, irrationalist, whatever).  Neither of us is 
concerned about finality, just betterness in the face of the 
other.  Our differences amount to different bets on what 
the core of pragmatism shall reproduce itself as.  After a 
few times around explicating what each respective bet 
amounts to, there isn't a lot more to talk about, because 
the only determining factor is History at that point.  (This 
is where the two of us disagree about our disagreement: 
he doesn't think I have no desire to be a Platonic 
scarecrow, which is why he gets his rocks off calling Rorty 
a relativist.  I have no idea how to try and show that I'm 
not, because it seems like anything I say upsets him.  I 
used to occasionally ask what I would need to say to 
convince him, but the list of instructions were either not 
forthcoming or inadequate--I can't remember.  And while 
Mr. Buchanan thinks I'm avoiding argument by referring to 
"history will decide," I'm not sure what else I'm supposed 
to refer to after I've emptied my bag of arguments and 
reasons, ones that I think are good and better than his.  
Mr. Buchanan thinks that continuing to natter at me will 
help him in the eyes of history, though I have a feeling 
that my case is better made by doing other things, or at 
the very least, even if it doesn't help my case--by 
exploring, for example, Brandom's philosophy without 
worrying about experience v. language--it at least feels 
like a better use of my time.)  Mr. Buchanan thinks that 
experience-talk will be the wave of the future.  I think it 
saw it's day and that philosophy, while currently still 
talking about language, will shortly move onto different 
problems where it doesn't matter whether we talk about 
experience or language.  So I'm already getting used to 
that future by not caring.  

The present point, however, is that both of us can call our 
version of pragmatism "the true pragmatism" by simply 
being careful not to reach for the secondary assertion.  Mr. 
Buchanan doesn't think his is final, just better in the face 
of mine.  As long as you face other people and not the 
Universe, you're fine conversationally.  The only point in 
saying, "there is no true pragmatism, guys," would be if 
there was an even lower common denominator that better 
sums up the common ground of which both he and I were 
optional variants.  In other words, in a good old-fashioned 
assertional slugfest, "no true X" is just a distraction if no 
one's making the secondary assertion.  Because the 
_best_ way to show that the other guy's X isn't the true 
one is defend an alternative Y.  If you are Marxist, you 
can criticize the institution of private property all you 
want, but until you come up with a viable, actualizable 
alternative, nobody's going to give a shit (partly because 
we want to avoid gulags and bloodshed).

Does that make sense?

Arlo said:
I, personally, have begun trying to purge use of the 
narrative "the MOQ" from my posts.

Matt:
Soon after I wrote "Confessions of a Fallen Priest" I began 
a concerted effort to talk about "Pirsig's philosophy" 
instead of "the MoQ."  Now people say I don't talk about 
the Metaphysics of Quality ever, which is technically true, 
but not nearly worth the polemical currency as I think 
some people think.  You say we need to understand that 
his philosophy was deployed within the narrative genre, 
and as soon as I began to appreciate what that means, I 
haven't budged from tangling with the power of what 
that means.

Matt said:
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....

Arlo said:
Hmm. I am going to have to think about this a bit. My first 
reaction is to say "of course", as Pirsig wrote "our 
intellectual description of nature is always culturally 
defined". But I think you mean something more than this 
foundational wellspring uniting these two "realms", no?

Matt:
Yes, I think so.  I think much of the time when what Pirsig 
meant by differentiating the levels is explicated, it has 
been in such a way as to obscure just how the levels 
interact.  Whenever "dominated by social values" is used, 
it is a fundamental obscuring of not only the interaction, 
but also of the issues that should rather be discussed (for 
what amounts to moral grandstanding).  Because what is 
at issue is being dominated by the _better_ social values, 
social values that for example emphasize how one should 
try as much as possible to act for explicit reasons much 
of the time.  (I can't remember how far back it was, but 
when Steve was talking about the intellectual level as 
"rationales for action," I think it was a gigantic leap 
forward in understanding level-interaction.)  Because 
when you say "inorganic is foundational for biological" 
what that doesn't do is tell you _which_ inorganic 
patterns are the foundation for biological patterns.  
That's what I don't think we've been explicit enough 
about.  Looking back to inorganic/bio or bio/social, it 
seems obvious how _specific_ kinds of inorganic patterns 
can help to form biological patterns, or how _specific_ 
kinds of biological patterns (let's say, the Anamalia 
Kingdom) hold the potential for social patterns (of 
course, now it depends much more on what definitions 
we use for levels).

Your explication of Bakhtin fits nicely with this line of 
thought.  You get the same thing through Wittgenstein 
when you appreciate his private language argument (as 
I think Craig was talking about recently) and how to fit 
together his notion of language-games with that of 
lebensform (lifeform).

Arlo said:
I'd add only that I see these labels as being conferred, not 
necessarily demanded. I "accept" you as a Pirsigan, for 
example, based on your participation and knowledge I 
experience here. Its not so much you coming to me and 
saying "I am a Pirsigian". In this way, the title is more or 
less the "diploma" for gaining acceptance into a discourse 
community, and often it is unspoken, evidenced only by 
the way the community accepts your participation. This is 
not to imply its a passive process, though, as gaining 
acceptance (by virtue of participation) is something 
actively sought (or at times actively resisted).

Matt:
What about this: in _many_ communities, labeling is an 
implicit diploma that often remains that way.  For 
example, motorcyle mechanics.  Even if they go to 
conferences about how best to bang on a motorcycle, 
the discussion of techniques won't explicitly form 
communities, and will often leave more peculiarly 
itemized discourse-communities (like "mechanics who 
care" or "mechanics who know intuitively where all their 
tools are") implicit though particular versions may 
recognize each other, and like that, though they may 
not know explicitly why.

However, there is one genus of community--called 
"intellectual"--whose overriding goal is to be as explicit 
as possible.  In this case, labeling becomes an important 
kind of tool, a kind of shorthand with which a certain 
kind of know-how in wielding can be invaluable for 
negotiating the intellectual community.  So that's why I 
just might come up to you and say, "I am a Pirsigian."  
In fact, we might say that the activity of differentiating 
members of the intellectual community into properly 
sorted piles _is_ the activity of being an intellectual.  
Every distinction in the sand creates two piles, and 
becoming explicit about what you just did is the 
distinctive office of the intellectual (or, the "classic" 
mind as Pirsig puts it in ZMM).  We don't need it, we 
sometimes should avoid it to do other things, but the 
best kind helps out with other things.

Matt
 		 	   		  
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