[MD] Being a Pirsigian

[Matt Kundert]

Hi Dave, Ian,

When Dave said that I raised at least three different questions, I have 
to agree, with emphasis on "at least."  The closer one looks the more 
questions there are based on things to disagree about.  There are a 
lot of interrelations, but you have to, for example, distinguish 
between personal-judgments and group-judgments.  So this:

Ian said:
"Being" a Pirsigian is a matter of self-identification (having done the 
above exercise).

DMB said:
I can't help but think of that moment in Lila's Child wherein Pirsig 
says that the views held by two self-identified Pirsigians actually 
work to UNDERMINE the MOQ. As I see it, this moment proves that 
self-identification is not enough. It demonstrates that a person can 
be wrong about these things.

Matt:
I absolutely agree with Dave, and it repeats my point about 
conceptual groups managing themselves.  This is terribly important 
to understand how a pragmatist conception of truth must work.  It 
_cannot_ be that "truth is what works _for you and you alone_."  
Then an account of truth would probably fall prey to subjectivism or 
emotivism, or a number of other isms along those lines.  One has to 
take into account a community one is relative to (e.g., in 
communicating those things one thinks is true).  The big claim is that 
for normativity to be possible, which is a narrower way of saying that 
for _valuing_ to be possible (which is clearly on interest to Pirsigians), 
there has to be traction for wrongess and correctness to get a grip.  
(And this a "genus"-style claim.  It does not mean that there are not 
species of valuing in which correctness is out of point.)  The traction 
for various Realisms/SOMisms was Reality: Reality will show one 
when an individual judgment is wrong.  Once one chucks that idea, as 
I think Pirsig and the classical pragmatists did, one needs to look 
elsewhere for reconstructing correctness.  The classical pragmatists 
quite clearly looked into the direction of "community."  I'm not going 
to say giving such an account is easy, for my favorite account is some 
700 pages long, and I certainly couldn't do it justice.

But back to my earlier formulation: a distinction between 
personal-judgments and group-judgments.  How does a "group" 
judge?  Wouldn't the infamous voting disanalogy go here?  It could, 
but voting isn't how a conceptual group works, even if a political 
group does (again, genus/species: conceptual/political).  A group 
only has a voice _through_ its individual members.  This means that 
a group regulates itself by its members fighting amongst themselves.   
This is what I meant when I said, "the idea is that should a conflict 
like this arise, the revoker tries to argue that the illegitimate 
self-identifier shouldn't be taken seriously as a mouthpiece for the 
group both identify with."  I articulated all of that group-management 
stuff in the earlier post to provide the framework in which I can both 
say that while I don't think Dave is right (should he, as is his wont, 
press the claim that I'm an illegitimate Pirsigian or pragmatist), he is 
arguing in a valid way.  Some Pirsigians have a mind to say that 
there's no point in jockeying over isms or groupings or what have you.  
That's fine as far as it goes, since it does dovetail with Pirsig's 
philosophical individualism, but one should rather say that it's not that 
there is _no_ point, but rather that you, the one, don't see the point 
(because of X, Y, and Z, all of which could be quite right in the given 
context--some conceptual groupings aren't worth fighting over, like 
who's a true Scotsman based on haggis enjoyment).

None of which is to argue any actual cases.  I'm not sure if you, Dave, 
replied in the new thread to take up the argument with me again, 
since I had been alluding to my own fraught case with you (though 
others, too), but I don't actually have any new arguments.  The only 
thing you pressed was the idea that to be a Pirsigian you have to 
"understand or appreciate" Dynamic Quality.  (As a nod to Ian's 
modulation to include "being it," I think we might have to clarify that 
"to be a Pirsigian" means first and foremost to be a philosopher who 
articulates in theses the philosophical underpinnings of what other 
people might just do, rather than say.  Because it has to be true that 
one can experience DQ without ever having heard of the MoQ.  But 
"being a Pirsigian" in the sense that Dave and I would have an 
argument about is narrower than that.)  

But to that claim, I can only shrug and say that I think I "understand 
or appreciate" DQ as well as one should to be allowed in the door.  
There are a lot of things above my head, and there are many lines 
of inquiry and questioning about my own philosophical beliefs that I 
consider still yet open and could potentially modulate or reformulate 
my various, particularized understandings of things, generally, and 
Pirsig's philosophy, particularly.  But I think the direction I would 
move in articulating a philosophical account of what Dynamic Quality 
and Quality mean in Pirsig's philosophy wouldn't violate central 
planks in Pirsig's vision.  I may have once thought that, but I'm not 
sure I do anymore.

The last estimations of where I might fall in an argument with Dave 
might be cobbled together from these two pieces:

http://pirsigaffliction.blogspot.com/2006/10/dewey-pirsig-rorty-or-how-i-convinced.html
http://pirsigaffliction.blogspot.com/2010/01/discussion-with-dave-buchanan.html

I think I still agree with most of the stuff posted in those places.

But on "direct experience," which is mainly the locution that our 
argument hangs on, and on its relationship to analytic philosophy 
(which Dave is suspicious of, to put it mildly), one might see these:

http://pirsigaffliction.blogspot.com/2007/03/notes-on-experience-dewey-and-pirsig.html
http://pirsigaffliction.blogspot.com/2009/04/quine-sellars-empiricism-and-linguistic.html

I'm pretty sure I still agree with everything in those pieces.

Matt