[MD] Are There Bad Questions?: Pirsig

[Matt Kundert]

Hi Bodvar,

You're a funny guy, Bo.

Matt said:
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),

Bo said:
The diagrams in ZAMM aren't half-hearted stabs but 
contains the Quality Idea far as it was brought there,

Matt:
I'm cutting you off on a comma, like you did to me, so we 
can get something straight.  By focusing on this line as a 
staging point for your interpretation of Pirsig's metaphysics, 
as opposed to my very limited point about the utility of 
metaphysics, are you suggesting that the utility of 
metaphysics is _not_ conversational (even in some wide 
sense to include, for example, scientific inquiry)?

I just thought I'd ask.  For, it's pretty obvious that you 
didn't need me for that diatribe.  I was just convenient 
fodder.  You could've gone off on your interpretation, 
taking suitable quotes from Pirsig, in your own thread if 
you'd wanted.  You didn't even try to speak to the subject 
I'd delineated.  You changed the subject, to what you 
want to talk about.  

And because--in its own way--that _is_ what my subject 
was, I take it that your reply to my topic was performative.  
Kind of like if somebody asked about dancing, and in reply 
you just got up and danced.  Sometimes performances are 
better than verbal/linguistic responses, though the 
performance of a conversation (rather than two performed 
monologues going back-to-back) has it's own utility.  So 
this is how I interpret your performance linguistically as a 
response to my monologue (thus turning it into a dialogue): 

"Metaphysics _is_ conversational, and the real pernicious 
trouble around here is that everybody is constantly talking 
about really lame things, like themselves, when there's 
really only one thing we should be talking about--me; me 
and my theory about the MoQ.  I am at the center of this 
universe, I am the measure of all things, and people are 
getting reality just plain wrong when they're not talking 
about me."

It's an interesting point, as far as it goes.  It also highlights 
something about Protagoras.  While on the one hand, 
there's the Protagorean point that pragmatists agree with, 
that whenever you enter a dialogue, you can't help but 
talk--in some sense--about yourself, because when you 
lodge a complaint, a criticism, or even a compliment about 
someone else's monologue, you are doing it from your 
perspective, which is the one where you are at the center.  
Your theories _are_ you, in the same sense that Pirsig 
taught us that we don't _have_ patterns, we _are_ patterns.

However, we can now perhaps see why pragmatism and 
relativism occasionally get called narcissistic.  I think it's 
easy to avoid the narcissism performatively while holding 
pragmatist or relativist (leaving aside differences or 
commonalities) philosophical theses.  Some people don't.  
Some people think that if these theses seeped out into 
the common culture, our culture would produce more 
narcissists.  They think that conversational virtues like 
hearing the other side, not interrupting them, or letting 
other people's hobby-horses have the stage occasionally 
will disappear.  I don't think they're right, but there's no 
way I can prove it.  The only evidence I can muster is 
circumstantial, like referring to pragmatists who are great 
conversationalists, or perhaps pointing out that Bo is 
neither a pragmatist nor a relativist.

Matt said:
What sometimes gets lost in metaphysical system-building 
is the person doing the building, and what the building is for.

Bo said:
This is not true Matt, the subject has been the latter day 
philosophy's focus after a long and futile pursuit of  the 
object, but the subject will also lead to frustration - guaranteed.

Matt:
Heh, heh.  You are funny, Bo.  I was, of course, not 
referring to "the subject," a metaphysical object paired with 
its opposite "the object," but rather the person constructing 
or toying with the metaphysical dyad of subject/object (as an
example; they could be toying with DQ/static or SOL or 
mind/matter or God or whatever).  Perhaps not seeing the 
difference was my point.

Bo said:
Nor do I subscribe to the "map" metaphor, it sounds so 
obvious but is SOM's about an objective reality and our 
different subjective maps of it. The "one can't avoid 
metaphysics " goes against the grain of  this.

Matt:
Even though this has nothing to do with what I said, I did 
want to meet you halfway and say that there's a good 
point here.  I've often suggested that we avoid map 
metaphors for the same reason.  It's what Davidson 
rejected as the scheme/content distinction, and Hilary 
Putnam made fun of as the "cookie-cutter view of reality."  
(Of course, if you look closely, I doubt you'd find that my 
use of that passage or metaphor had anything to do with 
those pernicious views.)

Though, on the other hand, the map metaphor doesn't 
quite go against "one can't avoid metaphysics," because 
as I understand Pirsig's understanding of metaphysics, a 
metaphysics isn't a special line of inquiry like physics (which 
you can avoid doing), but just a systematic, hierarchitized, 
super-consistent version of a person's common sense.  
Basically, your intellectual patterns, or "thinking."  You 
can't avoid thinking, or having intellectual patterns, while 
remaining a person.  That's how I think Pirsig would 
reconcile the two.

Matt
 		 	   		  
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