[MD] Taking Words Seriously

[Matt Kundert]

Hi Dave,

The opening thing to remark before my itemized comments below is 
that I don't see the way in which your responses are effective 
ripostes to the point I'd like to make about amateur philosophy and 
creativity.  I can't quite see how they connect to the overarching 
issue.  They might require some patient thinking, though, and I have 
to confess to being without that time and energy.  (Matthew Arnold 
and Chaucer are calling.)

DMB said:
You're only working with the static half of the aphorism and this 
static side has been flattened or simplified to become simply "static 
patterns", as opposed to a complex, migrating forest of patterns 
from the various levels WITH the capacity to respond to DQ.

Matt said:
I thought about my lack of inclusion of how DQ fits in the picture as I 
was finishing the post, but I wasn't sure then (nor now) how exactly 
its inclusion was going to adversely effect the limited point I was 
making. (I also am assuming for the sake of time, energy, and space 
that leaving pieces of a systematic philosophy out is reasonable and 
expected so long as one doesn't get what one leaves in or out 
wrong.)

DMB said:
The complaint is about using only half of that aphorisms, only half of 
the description of the self.

Matt:
Right, which if that is to be a relevant complaint, means that there is 
a relevant augmentation to my point that I was distorting.  As I said 
before, I still yet am unsure of what that is.  (I'm not sure why you 
began with this methodological preliminary if you already agreed 
with my parenthetical on methodology, rather than just moving to 
take up the substantive point that was obscure to me.)

DMB said:
I don't think that analogy is intended to depict DQ as a kind of 
blankness. How did Pirsig put it? The analogy shows that DQ both 
exceeds and permeates static quality. This analogy can be very well 
illuminated, I think, by seeing how it's parallel to the sand sorting 
analogy.

Matt:
I confess to not seeing the force of this reframing.  For, it seems to 
me, it is still to my point that it is better to see DQ permeating static 
quality.  This works for, not against, the sense I have that, on the 
practical side, it doesn't make sense to promote the mantra "one 
begins with DQ before moving to SQ" when on the theoretical side 
one cannot separate the two quite so perspicuously.

But perhaps there's an underlying suggestion from the sand-sorting 
analogy that gives this reframing force that I don't feel is the right 
direction, for me or for Pirsig.  In your description of DQ as not 
blank at all, but "rich and thick and overflowing," does this come from 
the idea that there are little particulates of sand that one sorts?  I 
can't help but feel this is a regress into the Myth of the Given (i.e., 
divisions that are given to one's mind from outside it).  Because from 
here one could get purchase on saying that one _feels_ 
differentiations before one can _classify_ them, but I (though 
perhaps not Pirsig) would want to say that feeling is partly a function 
of the static patterns that make up the self (the other function being 
your connection to DQ).  And this means that it doesn't make sense 
to distinguish feeling and classifying in this way, because feeling is 
as much SQ as DQ (as is classifying for that matter).

But this might be where I would have to disagree with Pirsig on how 
to flesh out the relationship between SQ and DQ.  The question of 
interpretation might be, then: is there a conflict between his SODV 
description of a permeating DQ and where DQ would fit in the 
earlier sand-sorting analogy?  I don't know.

Matt said:
I think it is further illustrative of my point to consider, along the lines 
of the DQ-as-blank-page analogy, what Pirsig suggests to the girl in 
his composition class in ZMM: "start with the upper left-hand brick." 
(Ch. 16)  His point, as to the girl, is that the background whole of 
reality is too big to start with--you start with a little chunk: a static 
pattern.  That begins _the process_, from which one can expand in 
any direction to include as much as one wants.  And it happens 
_on_ the page and always in relationship to it.  But to say, as you 
were, that one begins with DQ/process and then moves to 
static-pattern/standards seems to me to misunderstand the nature 
of the process.

DMB said:
Well, yes, he described that girl as a dull drudge and he kept telling 
her to narrow her topic. But she never intended to write a 500-word 
essay on the whole of reality or DQ or anything like that. Her 
problem was that there were fewer things to imitate as she got 
increasingly narrow. She was stuck because she always relied on 
repeating things she's heard before. Starting with the upper left 
hand brick precluded that parroting option and forced her to see 
with her own eyes, apparently for the first time in her life. ... This 
specificity doesn't just mean smaller or more limited  so much as it 
means more concretely felt and lived and immediate.

Matt:
That's interesting: I think you're probably right that that moral is 
likely lurking in Pirsig's story here.  However, I'm still not sure how 
that affects the point I was making.  For even if you substitute 
"immediacy" for "process" in how DQ fits into the story, I'm not sure 
how that changes the conceptual story I told--you start with [an 
immediate] chunk: a static pattern.  For the brick is a static pattern, 
still, isn't it?  Does it make sense to say that the girl is beginning with 
DQ/immediacy when she begins, as a practical heuristic, with the 
brick/inorganic-static-pattern?  I don't know if I see the purpose 
behind that.  On the other hand, it also doesn't make sense, and by 
the same token, to say that one begins with static patterns.  I 
haven't wanted to say that.  (I didn't say that, did I?  Perhaps I did.)  
The interpenetration of DQ/SQ makes it apparent that it doesn't 
make a whole lot of theoretical sense to say one begins with either.  
And reverting to the discussion of amateur philosophy, I didn't want 
to say that one _begins_ with standards, but that one _is_ 
standards, facing down that DQ/blank page (which is this analogy's 
version of the whole of the aphorism: static patterns plus contact 
with DQ).

My point a post or two ago was, then, that since it doesn't make any 
theoretical sense to say that DQ comes before SQ, or vice versa, it 
doesn't make any practical sense to suggest that one has to start 
with DQ or SQ: one starts, as a creative artist, wherever you think 
the quality is going to come from.  (And as I noted before, this 
theoretical formulation does seem to violate Pirsig's "primary 
empirical reality" description of DQ, but I hope I have justified a 
little why I continue to be unsure about how deep the violation goes 
(assuming my incorporation of "immediacy" into the theoretical 
account passes muster).)

Matt said:
As you say, "the question of WHAT you ARE and the question of HOW 
you should ACT are two different questions."  I agree for the most 
part, but I hope this makes more sense of why I wish to reformulate 
your practical answer of where to start the creative process by 
reflecting on the theoretical question of what the creative process is.

DMB said:
But his central point in those classroom scenes is that the theoretical 
approach to creativity is fundamentally wrong.

Matt:
I think you misunderstood me here.  I'm not suggesting the creation 
of a formula for creativity, as in: if you follow these steps, poof!, 
new genius!  I was attempting to do what Dewey meant by theory 
and what he was doing in Experience and Nature: he was 
reformulating an _account_ of experience.  I'm not suggesting a 
"theoretical approach to creativity," just trying to augment the 
theoretical account of creativity one gives (which is parallel to your 
counter-account).  I'm not suggesting, for example, that our theory 
rule our practice, I'm doing what Dewey suggested was theory's 
role in the process of inquiry: when you reach a practical problem, 
you bump up to the reflective, theoretical side to see if you can't 
tinker with the framing of the problem to better solve it.

Matt