[MD] Taking Words Seriously

[Matt Kundert]

Hey Dan,

Dan said:
Yes I see what you mean... although I took a form of "backtrack" 
from your previous post which I mistakenly attributed to Steve.

Matt:
Me?  That doesn't sound like one of my words that I use when 
reading Pirsig.  Hm.

Matt said:
My intervention tried to bring out how I think you dissolved a problem 
only by glossing away some of Pirsig's conceptual positioning.

Dan said:
I would be interested in knowing how you came to that conclusion. It 
was my hope and intention not to dissolve the problem by glossing 
away any of RMP's conceptual positioning but rather expanding on 
them.

Matt:
No, I understand.  My reasoning was in that Oct. 2 post I was talking 
about.  In particular the paragraph that begins "Dan seems to object 
to this formulation," where I try and enter you into the somewhat 
gerrymandered conversation over a common object of inquiry 
between you, Ron, and Steve.  I'm not so sure, now, that this was a 
good idea (because of this next bit).

Dan said:
The point I was attempting to make is that we don't always 
intellectually know what's better.

Matt:
That makes much more sense as an articulation of Pirsig, and--as I 
understand it--is not at all at issue between Ron and Steve, nor for 
our understanding of Pirsig.  Whatever "betterness" is a problem in 
the DQ formulation is not a static-intellectual-betterness.  (And I'm 
not terribly sure that's what Pirsig was talking about in the LC 
passage at issue either.)  At least, I still can't quite see how you've 
illuminated a mistake Steve, Ron, or myself was making with the 
approach and salve you wanted to apply.

Pirsig in Lila:
Any person of any philosophic persuasion who sits on a hot stove will 
verify without any intellectual argument whatsoever that he is in an 
undeniably low-quality situation: that the _value_ of his predicament 
is negative.

Dan said:
But note the term "intellectual argument." The difficulty (as I see it) 
resides in pointing to that which comes before intellectual argument 
and evaluation. I agree that the experience of sitting upon a hot 
stove is a negative experience. As far as I can see, and as you say, 
that is quite uncontroversial. But that negative experience isn't what 
gets the person off the hot stove. That comes later.

Matt:
There's that subtlety I remarked about again. I read Pirsig, and I see 
him saying that sitting on a hot stove is "an undeniably low-quality 
situation," and that this "value" is "negative."  And since Pirsig 
collapses the reality/experience distinction, meaning everything is an 
experience, I naturally inferred that our connection to the negative 
situation was through experience, thus ipso facto, Pirsig was saying 
that sitting on the hot stove is a negative experience.

You say, no.  You say that "low-quality situation," the negative 
experience, comes after what actually gets us off the stove.  I 
reiterate that this seems revisionary, for in Pirsig's implicit dichotomy 
in the sentence "intellectual argument" stands off against "is in an 
undeniably low-quality situation."  It is because Pirsig says "without 
any intellectual argument" that I am to understand that this 
"undeniably low-quality situation" is what he otherwise calls a "direct 
experience," i.e. DQ.

But you seem to be saying that's wrong.  I don't see how you are 
saying this with Pirsigian tools.  (And it certainly doesn't appear to be 
an accurate rendering of that moment in the text, though I haven't 
close read the passage fully at all.)  And that's why I commend 
innovation on your part.

Matt