[MD] Are There Bad Questions?: Pirsig

[Matt Kundert]

All due apologies to anyone who wanted to read the two 
posts, but had trouble because they looked like bad free 
verse.  They are posted here now:

http://pirsigaffliction.blogspot.com/2010/05/are-there-bad-questions.html

Steve said:
I recommended avoiding ever identifying with any philosophical 
isms because he would make no friends and hand his enemies 
a line of attack since every ism has its set of counter 
arguments.  Actual books about chess openings are about 
defenses as well. Despite DMBs view of empirisism, you can 
actually get *accused* of empiricism as my friend recently 
was. Likewise, you can be *accused* of being a realist or an 
idealist or a materialist or an anti-realist or any other sort of 
proponent of an ism, and defending that ism will always put 
you on the defensive.

Matt:
Your recommendation is good.  Also mention the concurrent 
tactic--because having isms foisted on oneself is the price 
of philosophical dialogue (because if you have a viewpoint, 
the viewpoint might as well be named and put into 
philosophical space, a similar bit of wisdom to what Rorty 
learned about theses)--of denying you know what the other 
person means by the ism.  In the short run, your opponent 
can always respond with laughter and claim you are an 
ignoramus, but while laughter is sometimes appropriate in 
conversation, it isn't an argument, and until (as you well 
know) the ism is articulated to a reasonable degree you 
actually have the moral high-ground.  

Because when it comes down to it, most philosophical (or 
academic) dialogue is posturing.  And the fact of the matter 
is that if you just assume a definition of the ism, your 
opponent (as you well know) can always shift back to 
whatever hidden, assumed definition that they like.  Then 
the two people just talk past each other.  Like the say, 
when you assume, you make an "ass" out of "u" and "me."  
So it's actually morally upright to exude patience and 
request a clear articulation of the ism, or whatever, that 
the two people can then agree on to simultaneously 
discuss.  And in combat, after the request for articulation, 
if you get one, you are then always left the option of 
saying, "that ain't me," and moving on if it's a strawman 
and doesn't look like you (which they usually don't).  As 
a dialectical reply, it is the move of forcing the burden of 
proof on your opponent.

Steve said:
One I would add and maybe you'll have some thoughts on 
is that bit in the Bagini interview where Pirsig says in 
defense of the uniqueness of his system that is the only 
one that began with the question "what is Quality?" (why 
is THAT relevant??) which I guess also relates to his being 
interested in reading a biuography of James and his 
speculation in Lila that "maybe the ultimate truth about the 
world isn't history or sociology but biography."

Matt:
Did you know that the history as biography bit is from 
Emerson?  If anybody ever wonders why I've begun talking 
about Romanticism and Emerson so much, think about the 
relationship between Thoreau and Emerson, and their 
relationships to ZMM and Lila.

The Baginni interview is a curious artifact.  If you think 
about his writing on the analogy of a polygraph, then ZMM 
and Lila (and to a lesser extent Lila's Child) would register 
steady, baseline movements from the needle.  The Baginni 
interview makes the needle go crazy.  While the two books 
basically all point in a consistent direction (whatever 
direction that is), the interview is clearly under agitation 
and points in all kinds of directions.  If the interview was 
our baseline for Pirsig's philosophy, it would be impossible 
to read ZMM or Lila.

Interestingly, of course, the agitation is dialectical, 
philosophical conversation, the kind I just finished saying is 
what the MoQ was created for.  I think Pirsig is being 
eristically obscure when he suggests that no other 
metaphysics has centered around "What is Quality?", 
implying by that that the MoQ is superior for it, but he's 
absolutely right when being pressed by Baginni that 
alternative lines of reasoning involve "sticking to the 
subject," which lends a lot of credence to our Rorty-inspired 
suggestion that Pirsig is rejecting questions and changing 
the subject.  I lay out my own route through that question, 
and how it determines different answers than SOM, in still 
my favorite post on Pirsig, "What is Quality?"

http://pirsigaffliction.blogspot.com/2007/01/what-is-quality.html

Matt
 		 	   		  
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