[MD] knowledge

[Matt Kundert]

Hey Steve,

Steve said:
What we don't have is know-that intellectual knowledge 
that could ever exhaust DQ. ... Know-that is always 
secondary because it is knowledge about our know-how 
rather than knowledge of DQ.
...
Knowledge-that increases our know-how. Pirsig of ZAMM 
set out to show that classical know-that has its own 
aesthetic and opens new possibilities for know-how and 
then new know-thats in response to the new know-hows 
in a feeback loop building up analogues upon analogues. 
Intellect, like everything else, has static and dynamic 
aspects. Intellect is not divorced from know-how.

...Knowledge-that is also always know-how (though only 
intellectual know-how is called knowledge-that.) ... 
Know-how is the dynamic aspect of knowledge and can be 
thought of as being at work on all levels, but on other levels, 
know-how doesn't obtain a static latch as knowledge-that. 
Know-how is maintained through physical "laws,"  DNA, or 
social habits copied from one person to the next.

Matt:
I like trying to use know-how and knowing-that to unpack 
the static/Dynamic distinction, but the part that always 
eludes is the ambiguity contained in the formulation 
"Dynamic Quality is pre-intellectual experience"--we all 
know that DQ is not being equated to inorganic/bio/social 
static patterns, yet you don't have to squint much to see 
it that way.

For example, I still see no need to use the 
primary/secondary distinction.  If you're not saying this 
above, Steve, you come close to using this formula in the 
third paragraph: "knowledge-that = intellectual know-how".  
However, if this formula is true (which I think it is), then 
there's no sense in saying that knowledge-that is not of DQ 
but know-how, as you suggest above, because you also 
seem to assert this formula (which I also think is true): 
"know-how = connection to DQ".  Combining these two 
formulas has the effect of the Rortyan injunction that 
"language does not take you away from reality."  
Constituting the primary/secondary distinction as the 
"know-how is about DQ/knowing-that is about know-how" 
distinction doesn't seem to work much better than saying 
experience precedes language.  There are a lot of 
commonsensical ways of asserting both forms of the 
primary/secondary distinction, but none of them seem to 
give you the extra umph to distinguish between static and 
DQ, which was supposed to be what the formulations of 
DQ were involved in.

The nearest Western analogue to the mysticism Pirsig 
encapsulates with DQ is the kind of mysticism created by 
Romanticism--beginning in France (Rousseau), spreading to 
Germany (Kant), reaching its European climax in England 
(Coleridge), before being transformed in America (Emerson) 
and recycled back into Germany (Nietzsche).  Pirsig runs 
headlong into the debate about Romanticism's 
anti-intellectualism in ZMM, but it slides curiously 
underneath his Lila formulas.  To balance the 
long-established anti-intellectualism of Romanticism 
(whose best philosophical critic seems to me the forgotten 
Wyndham Lewis), Pirsig formulated the classic/romantic 
split.  But once we move to Lila, the blur created by the 
DQ as pre-intellectual experience formula--cutting us off 
from knowing whether we've degenerated into dogma or 
instinct, or whether we've taken a step into the dimly 
apprehended unknown--seems to undo the rebalancing of 
ZMM.

There might be ways of receiving the formula as Pirsig's 
acknowledgement of the first-person unknowableness of 
which is which--ensconced in what I've before termed the 
"indeterminacy of DQ thesis," which "degeneration" alludes 
to--but I'm uncomfortable in asserting that Pirsig 
perceived the formula that way.  Are these two letters, 
capitalized and placed in close spatiotemporal proximity, 
just a circle around a metaphysical hole, like the infinite 
regress in cameras pointing at their own live-feed monitor 
or guitar pickups next to amps, creating feedback distortion?  
What Rorty once called the "literary openness" of Derrida 
over and against the "philosophical closure" of Platonism 
seems a good way of capturing that hole.  What dismays 
me is not the hole, but 1) the demand from some for a 
system with a hole (granting that, if you want a system, 
you gotta' have a hole--my question is: why do I need a 
system?) and 2) the sense some systematizers have that 
Pirsig's the first to do or recognize this or has taken a giant 
leap forward (granting that, I don't really think giant leaps 
are possible, except when you skew your perspectibe 
enough they look like it).

Though of course, those aren't really your problems, Steve.

Matt
 		 	   		  
_________________________________________________________________
The New Busy is not the too busy. Combine all your e-mail accounts with Hotmail.
http://www.windowslive.com/campaign/thenewbusy?tile=multiaccount&ocid=PID28326::T:WLMTAGL:ON:WL:en-US:WM_HMP:042010_4