[MD] knowledge

[Matt Kundert]

Hey Steve,

Matt said:
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.

Steve said:
Yeah, lots of people have read it that way. I think when 
Pirsig says pre-intellectual, based on his sport of idealism 
it goes without saying that we are also talking pre-social, 
pre-biological, and pre-static anything.

Matt:
Well, hold on--I'm not sure that anybody really has read 
"pre-intellectual" as "social/bio/inorganic."  Thinking about 
it that way, however, does tend to make us face what 
exactly we mean by DQ.  Pirsig did not say "DQ is 
pre-static experience."  There may or may not be an 
important reason behind this.  However, it does cause us 
to face up to the idea of what it means to be, say, 
pre-subatomic particles.

The notion of "pre-intellectual" has a long history in 
intellectual culture, and we think we kind of understand 
what it means--just drop out language.  Our brains must 
have a pre-linguistic processing component, since we're 
just animals and most animals, including our offspring for a 
few uneasy years, don't articulate linguistically.  Based on 
this kind of intuition, which Pirsig captializes on with talk 
about babies and time-lags, we think we know what it 
would mean to get back to this "pre-intellectual" stage.

But what could it mean to be pre-electrons?  We might be 
able to extend our understanding of "pre-" to "pre-social," 
getting back to biological instincts, but pre-lightwaves?  
What does it mean to be in touch with something that is 
before any "thing"?  Why is it we don't melt away when 
this happens?  How come we only talk about the 
nothingness of our culturally constructed "self" rather 
than the brief, or permanent, obliteration of our bodies?  
Why are descriptions of enlightenment not accompanied 
by on-looker reports of how the person faded away 
before their eyes?

Matt said:
If you're not saying this above, Steve, you come close to 
using this formula in the third paragraph: "knowledge-that 
= intellectual know-how".

Steve said:
What I was trying to set up was knowledge-that as the 
static aspect intellect and knowledge-how as the dynamic 
aspect of intellect. By analogy, on the biological level, the 
static aspect is DNA encoding while the dynamic aspect is 
biological know-how.

Matt:
Hunh.  I guess I would need to know what, exactly, 
intellectual know-how is, as distinguished from 
knowing-that.  For instance, in your analogy, I have no 
sense of what "biological know-how" stands for.  Static 
latching is DNA encoding, dymanic bio is _____.  You 
gestured, but I don't know what the gesture was to.  
Similarly, I would prefer propositional knowing-that to be 
equated to a "knowing-how-to-use-sentences."  I don't 
know what it means to distinguish the two as different 
aspects.  I have a feeling, though, that if one approached 
the philosophy of language with the distinction, it would 
reintroduce thickets we don't want (like Saussure's 
synchronic/diachronic distinction, which produces his talk 
about "conventional arbitrariness" that has infected 
literary theorists to this day, and constantly baits them 
for relativism charges).

Steve said:
I would say that knowledge-how is DQ and knowledge-that 
is the intellectual sq static latching of DQ 

Matt:
So: intellectual know-how might be "using sentences" and 
latching knowing-thats might be "true sentences"?

The work of Robert Brandom--which I take to be a 
"rhetoric all the way down" philosophy of language--suggests 
that the inferential pathways between sentences, which is 
to say the network that supports a sentence's 
taking-to-be-true, is never static, but always in use.  We 
might say that to truly take the semantic, non-epistemic 
turn with respect to truth, one needs to turn in all notions 
of "static" with respect to lifeforms: a latch is less a latch 
than a rubberband.  Inferential moves between sentences 
are always potentially in flux.  The word "true" is static and 
absolute with respect to how it functions in a language, 
but that tells you nothing about which sentences are true, 
which is to say, which ones to latch.

Better than rubberband even is Quine's self as a web of 
belief.  Web is nice because if we visualize "life" as instead 
of a river, but an open space of air with a nice breeze 
blowing through, picture the web in that space, unattached, 
and how it undulates in the breeze, maintaining a unity, but 
not static, always flexing.  That's the picture of the 
linguistic self that happens in post-pragmatic philosophy of 
language I think.  And with this picture, I think we need a 
revised notion of what "static" could mean.  For when you 
say, "the give and take between dynamic and static," what 
could that mean if, strictly speaking, "dynamic" is a stand-in 
for "no-thing"?  And think about "give and take"--isn't _that_ 
the dynamism?

I think it might be better in general to drop the notion of 
"static" entirely.  What works better for Pirsig's purposes is 
a "pattern-pattern" tension, with the undulating tension 
being the dynamic bit.  We can isolate patterns, but the 
purpose of isolation will always be directed towards 
"where's the tension here?"  Finding the tension will be 
finding the dynamism, finding the sweet spot that can be 
broken.  Mark/Squonk liked to talk about coherence, but I 
think that conceptualizes the area in the wrong way.  
Your yin/yang reference, and the non-existence of a 
dynamic or static "in and of itself" is, I think, spot on, but 
once we reach that point, I think it might be time to hand 
in our "static" cards.  Dynamic Quality and patterned 
quality.  That's all we need.

Matt
 		 	   		  
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