[MD] Are There Bad Questions?: Pirsig

[Matt Kundert]

Addendum on Pirsig

 

What does Pirsig think about bad questions and systems?

 

I think it’s important to notice the course of events and
presentation.  
In ZMM, Pirsig describes the S/O Dilemma as an aporia created by 
a previous agreement on the terms of debate.  Pirsig later describes 
“truth traps,” on the
analogy of the “old South Indian Monkey 
Trap”—which is similar to Chinese
finger-cuffs—and interprets the 
Japenese word “mu” as “unask the question.”

 

And then ZMM ends
(there’s a chance I might be forgetting 
something).  The trick is that Pirsig offers a few
half-hearted stabs 
at sysematizing his thoughts about Quality (don’t forget the
diagram 
in Ch. 20), but the point of the story doesn’t appear to be a 
replacement system, but rather the resurrection of Phaedrus after 
chasing down the
ghost of reason to Plato.  When we move
to 
Lila, I think we should pay close
attention to how the Metaphysics 
of Quality is introduced.  Pirsig quickly presents us with the 
quandry
of SOM, a sort of recapitulation of the point of ZMM, 
and begins to describe his metaphysical answers.  What happens 
then is that Rigel intercedes
and objects (Ch. 6).  Pirsig then 
bemoans
his answers given, and the problem turns out to be a 
pernicious understanding
of virtue—Pirsig let Rigel and the 
Victorians decide the terms of debate (the
definition of the terms) 
and so lost before the fight even began.

 

The Metaphysics of Quality takes flight after a
conversational 
difficulty.  Pirsig writes
that Phaedrus “realized that sooner or later 
he was going to have to stop
carping about how bad subject-object 
metaphysics was and say something positive
for a change” (Lila 
123, Ch. 9).  Why?  Because
“he had already violated the 
nothingness of mystic reality” (124), he’d already
said something 
positive rather than sticking to the via negativa that mystics, 
particularly in the West, typically
force themselves to stick to, a 
route that after Hegel (and particularly
Adorno) became more and 
more prominent in non-theological metaphysics, too.  Pirsig 
realizes that he has to say something,
even that saying things are 
good.  And
this is where the presentation is interesting. 
The two 
paragraphs run like this:

 

“By even using the term “Quality” he had already violated
the 
nothingness of mystic reality.  The
use of the term “Quality” set up 
a pile of questions of its own that have
nothing to do with mystic 
reality and walks away leaving them unaswered.  Even the name, 
“Quality,” was a kind of
definition since it tended to associate 
mystic reality with certain fixed and
limited understandings.  
Already he was
in trouble.  Was the mystic reality of
the universe 
really more immanent in the higher-priced cuts of meat in the 
butcher
shop?  These were “Quality” meants weren’t
they?  Was 
the butcher using the term
incorrectly?  Phaedrus had no answers.

 

. . . [ellipsis Pirsig’s] That was the problem this morning
too, with 
Rigel.  Phaedrus had no
answers.  If you’re going to talk about 
Quality at all you have to be ready to answer someone like Rigel.  
You have to have a ready-made Metaphysics of
Quality that you 
can snap at him like some catechism.  Phaedrus didn’t have a 
Catechism of Quality
and that’s why he got hit.” (124)

 

Pirsig considers metaphysics to be a good thing to do
because it 
gives you an answer to people like Rigel, people who insist on 
certain questions.  The analogy with
Catholic practices in 
particular highlights what Pirsig has in mind.  “Catechism” is from 
Greek roots that mean an “indoctrination.”  This has bad 
connotations to our ears now, as
does the other name Catholics 
have for it: dogma.  But all Pirsig is highlighting is how what he
is 
lacking is a systematic way to keep things straight in his line of 
thought,
and how to answer people who press him.

 

Pirsig immediately goes on to analogize metaphysics with
chess, 
and writes this:

 

“Trying to create a perfect metaphysics is like trying to
create a 
perfect chess strategy, one that will win every time.  You can’t do 
it.  It’s out of the range of human
capability.  No matter what 
position you
take on a metaphysical question someone will always 
start asking questions that
will lead to more positions that lead to 
more questions in this endless
intellectual chess game.  The game 
is
supposed to stop when it is agreed that a particular line of 
reasoning is
illogical.  This is supposed to be
similar to a checkmate.  
But conflicting
positions go on for centuries without any such 
checkmate being agreed upon.”
(125)

 

I’m not sure Pirsig ever comments further on the purpose of
this 
paragraph.  But we might notice that
Pirsig’s subsumption of 
“reasonable” to “good” from ZMM should still be in effect, which 
may explain why “illogic” does
not always hold sway.  And further, 
we
might imagine that Pirsig did have
his Catechism of Quality at 
the ready when Rigel comes calling—would Rigel have
been 
blown away?  Should he have?  There is no
indication in these 
early pages, and particularly with the above paragraph,
that Pirsig 
believes that had Phaedrus the MoQ ready to snap, it would have 
changed Rigel’s mind.  It would have,
rather, continued the 
conversation (until, perhaps, Rigel tired out
first).  Consider, too, 
the fact that
when Rigel returns at the close, there’s no indication 
that any of Phaedrus’ “answers”
are what lead Rigel to come back 
(for
more on this curious aspect see my “Prospectus”
http://pirsigaffliction.blogspot.com/2006/04/prospectus-for-idiosyncratic-and.html).

 

What sometimes gets lost in metaphysical system-building is
the 
person doing the building, and what the building is for.  For Pirsig, 
there is a strong indication that
metaphysics is for keeping yourself 
straight in conversation—consider Pirsig’s
introduction to Lila’s 
Child where he
picks up the chess metaphor again and says that 
“real chess is the game you
play with your neighors.  Real chess is 
‘muddling
through.’  Real chess is the triumph of
mental organization 
over complex experience. 
And so is real philosophy” (viii). 

“Muddling through” is one of Dewey’s favorite images, one that 
Rorty
loved to promote.  Between Pirsig’s
lament about getting 
broad-sided by Rigel and the Catechism of Quality, there’s
Pirsig’s 
chapter on metaphysical platypi—the outcome of previously made 
cuts in
the metaphysical firmament, previously made choices about 
which questions
deserve answers.  Pirsig says early in
that chapter 
that “saying that a Metaphysics of Quality is false and a 
subject-object metaphysics is true is like saying that rectangular 
coordinates
are true and polar coordinates are false” (Lila
115, 
Ch. 8).  Both are used, are
determined better or worse, relative to 
the purpose with which you are using
them.  The figure standing 
there weighing
the options between the two alternatives is the 
philosopher, who sometimes goes
missing in the attempt to limn 
the structure of reality.  

 

And if someone insists
on asking whether Quality is in the subject 
or object?  Just say, “both—the object’s made out of
inorganic, 
and maybe biological static patterns of Quality, and for the subject

just tack on some intellectual and/or social static patterns of Quality.”  
And then you have your answer to a bad
question.  The questions 
won’t stop, but
do they ever? 		 	   		  
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