[MD] Noncognitive babble

[david buchanan]

steve said to all:
20 years after Lila, I wonder how it would be read by someone new to Pirsig. Would the ideas seem relevent? As we get more and more distance from the positivists, I wonder how young people today would read Pirsig's attacks on the fact-value dichotomy. Would they wonder just who it is Pirsig thinks he is arguing against?


dmb says:
I'd very much like to know what seems relevant to young people these days and I wonder how many college freshmen could say what "positivism" or "the fact-value dichotomy" means. If the stories I've heard from university professors can be taken as a generalization, kids these days are shallow, complacent and conservative. What is today's version of beatniks, hippies, punks or goths? Isn't there supposed to be some kind of creative form of rebellion in every generation? I digress. Back to the point. I'd say Pirsig is pretty clear and concrete about what he's arguing against. One of the things he's working against is the irrelevance of philosophy. Long before he identified with the pragmatists, he said "metaphysics is good if it improves everyday life; otherwise forget it."

Less than one percent of college students choose philosophy as their major field but the majority will take a class or two. I wonder how many poor freshman sign up for philosophy 101 expecting to learn profound secrets or deep truths and find arcane nonsense instead. Pragmatism was practically invented to help us dispense with the fake problems and endless verbal disputes that dissuade so many freshman. Supposedly, pragmatism is a method for solving human problems more than philosophical problems. In fact, the parameters of radical empiricism (all experience counts and whatever is beyond experience should not count) can be seen as a kind of epistemological humility. It's humanism in the sense that it recognizes the limited nature of our truths. James thought humanism was another name for pragmatism. Some people take that whole "man is the measure" idea as a form of arrogance but I think it's quite the opposite. Did you know that human, humility and humble all come from a common root meaning "dirt"? I kid you not.

If you were a freshman and my aim was to get you excited enough about philosophy to take at least one more class, which would be more likely to enthuse them? A) Assign Descartes, Hume and Kant or B) Assign Zen and the Art? Richard Rorty told Cornel West that he'd give his right arm to write like William James. Ever seen Cornel West give a sermon - er um - I mean - give a lecture? He's like a jazz artist of ideas. Dewey helped to found the ACLU and NAACP and for decades he had an opinion on everything that mattered and people wanted to know what it was. I mean, teachers should be able to show that philosophy is a living, breathing thing. I wish some professionals would step up with a response to the new atheists. Wouldn't that be fun to watch? I mean, let's face it, we're talking about two scientists and a journalist - but I digress. The point is simply that young people will not see the relevance of philosophy if their introduction to it means grappling with arcane jargon in order to entertain fake doubts and consider artificial problems. We can save that kind of grappling for more advanced students and those headed to grad school. I guess it's obvious. The first-year reading assignments have to be readable by first-year students. You want to challenge but not overwhelm. The pragmatists are good for that too. 

The fact-value dichotomy seems like such a clinical name for the issue, especially when you think about the kind of thing James and Pirsig are doing. Values are so central that facts are something like a subspecies of value. Pirsig's objection to SOM could be boiled down to an objection to the supremacy of facts (objective truths) and the denigration of values (merely subjective preferences). Radical empiricists say that value judgements come first and the reasons come later so that it's prioritized in some sense even epistemologically. This is part of the reason they both talk about the role of one's basic temperament in taking the views we take  - and that's just one of the ways that different values produce different perspectives. As they paint it, values are so intertwined with facts and knowledge that the distinction starts to seem quite untenable and downright unrealistic. 

Steve said:
Maybe this aspect of SOM that attracted most of us to the MOQ is a straw man. If Pirsig and the other antiSomers are successful, at least at some point it will be a straw man, right?  Someday young people just won't even know what Pirsig was going on about. At the time I got into Pirsig, I really felt like the notion of objectivity was being used to push values into some realm of noncognitive babble. Is that still happening today?

dmb says:

They say that ideas have a life cycle. They begin as heresy, become truth, and then they end on a greeting card.


I couldn't tell you if the realm of "noncognitive babble" is still a happening place these days because I don't know what that means.


How can I put this? 


If anti-SOMers are successful - and let's say that success means philosophy is taught from their critical perspective - then every philosophy student will still be challenged to re-think everything. In our culture at least, there is a common sense realism in everyone's basic, unphilosophical beliefs. In this sense, anyone who's ever worn a band-aid is a realist, you know? These young people might realize that reality is a lot more plastic and intimate than they thought. And, just to go a bit too big with this, if this realization were widespread it might inspire a for the art in all things and general atmosphere of creativity and engagement.

Also, please notice that a former problem is not the same thing as a straw man. The first is one means success or progress and the second is a bogus fiction.



Steve said:

Here are some examples of the views that Pirsig attacks with regard to the dichotomy between facts and values taken from an article on Hilary Putnam who also made such critiques on SOM: (1) No statement is both evaluative and factual. (2) There is no logical connection between evaluative and factual statements. (3) Factual statements are true or false independently of any value judgments. (4) Facts can, and values cannot, be established beyond controversy. (5) Evaluative statements are neither true nor false. 
Are these dogmas ones that people still adhere to? Or have Pirsig, Putnam, and the other critics of the fact-value dichotomy been successful?





dmb says:

Well, those are philosophical dogmas that most people will never entertain, at least not in those terms. It seems quite artificial even to me. it's not really about facts or values so much as it's about statements. I can see that it's all very carefully thought out and exact and yet it's empty and lifeless. I mean, I don't think that way of defeating the problem isn't very moving. i'd even say this analytic approach is part of the problem or a symptom of it.