[MD] Taking words Seriously

[david buchanan]

Steve said to Matt:
.., the preconceptual/conceptual distinction that dmb is trying to use to push against us itself makes the so-called "out of touch with DQ" problem impossible or at least merely "secondary." If this problem is (as dmb must be saying) a problem with our concepts, it is merely a "secondary" problem.

Matt replied to Steve:
...even SOM-philosophers are able to have direct experience despite their inability to conceptualize it. This makes philosophy a kind of therapy, where one tries and get people to stop fussing with bad philosophical hang-ups. Ultimately, one might say, it doesn't matter what philosophy one holds in terms of one's ability to tune into the direct experience of one's life. But if it _does_ get in the way, well--so says the therapeutic Pirsig--here's a way of not so getting hung up.

dmb says:
Oh, man. I think this line of thinking really shows that you're both misreading the central concepts as well as the main point and purpose of the MOQ. I mean, the over-arching theme is that, "our current modes of rationality are not moving society forward into a better world. They are taking it further and further from that better world," because, Pirisg says, "the whole structure of reason, handed down to us from ancient times, is no longer adequate. It begins to be seen for what it really is...emotionally hollow, esthetically meaningless and spiritually empty." He says this problem "can't be solved by rational means because the rationality itself is the source of the problem". That's the problem you just denied. And you reject the solution to the problem you don't recognize as legitimate.

Pirsig wants to "expand the nature of rationality so that it's capable of coming up with a solution" and he thinks "the answers aren't in the branches, they're at the roots" of rationality. And so he wants "to show that that classic pattern of rationality can be tremendously improved, expanded and made far more effective through the formal recognition of Quality in its operation." He says, "a formal acknowledgment of the role of Quality in the scientific process doesn't destroy the empirical vision at all. It expands it, strengthens it and brings it far closer to actual scientific practice." And all of this was effected by reversing Plato's vicious intellectualism and rescuing the art of the Sophists. He knew that Quality (primary empirical reality) had become subordinated to intellect (secondary conceptual reality) somewhere back then and he thinks that is backwards. His "solution started with a new philosophy" or "a new spiritual rationality" wherein "reason was no longer to be "value free." Reason was to be subordinate, logically, to Quality."


Getting into the reasons for your misreading is to open a whole other can of worms. Because you both tend to misread the not only the MOQ in the same way but also misread James's pragmatism and radical empiricism in the same way, I'm fairly certain that your common interest in Richard Rorty has everything to do with it. Where Rorty says, "Truth is a compliment we pay to sentences that earn their keep" you two want to say that "DQ is a compliment we pay to sentences." But in the MOQ truth is conceptual excellence, a static intellectual species of the good. You see the problem there? Your translation might make sense if DQ and truth were the same thing, but in the MOQ they are on opposite sides of the first and central distinction. Truth is static. Sentences are static. Compliments are static. To say DQ is like truth or a compliment or that it refers to any kind of sentence is, in the MOQ, pure nonsense.


To make a long story short, Rorty's Pragmatism is the wrong way to look at the MOQ's core ideas. That approach has you wrongly treating the MOQ's central distinction as if it were Platonism, as if it were an appearance-reality distinction. Rorty's pomo anti-Platonism is one that concludes we shouldn't be doing epistemology, that empiricism is no longer tenable and so he moves everything over to language. Pirsig and James are also anti-Platonic but their approach could hardly be more different from Rorty's. They are radically empirical and, consistently, their pragmatism is a very empirical theory of truth. That's why you both have so much trouble with the central concept of DQ, because it is the primary EMPIRICAL reality, but Rortyisms only ever allow you to frame everything in terms of language webs, sentences that earn their keep, intersubjective agreement, and the like, all of which is static and conceptual and is CONTRASTED with DQ. 


Rorty is the reason you're so often as odds with me and the MOQ. This territory doesn't show up on Rorty's map and so it's inevitable that you'll get lost trying to navigate by it here. You might be able to translate Rorty if you map him onto to Pirsig's description of the problem, onto a description of the empty rationality that prevents you from seeing Quality - but their solutions are not comparable to each other's. In a nutshell, where Pirsig says words and concepts should subordinated to the primary empirical reality, Rorty says we can have access to no such thing and it's language all the way down. Naturally, your attempts to read one in terms of the other is a conceptual train wreck.