[MD] Creative Freedom

[david buchanan]

Dan, David and all MOQers:

One of the sources of confusion here is that you're both reading my claims as if I were talking about the mystic reality or Dynamic Quality itself - even though I keep telling that I'm not talking about mysticism or the ultimate reality. Obviously, we need to be on the same topic if we're going to understand each other. Please hear me and believe me. By switching the topic over to mysticism, my claims are moved into a very different context and so will appear to have a meaning that is very different from my intentions. By switching the topic over to the mystic reality, you will certainly misunderstand I'm saying.
And - this is a very important point - if the difference between Pirsig's expanded rationality and Pirsig's mysticism is blurred or unclear, you will certainly misunderstand what Pirsig is saying. This is one of Marsha's central mistakes. She uses the mystic's objection to metaphysics (the ultimate reality cannot named or otherwise fit into intellectual descriptions) to denigrate the intellect in general, to distort the pragmatic theory of truth and the art of rationality. These are two different topics but she doesn't realize that and the result is to make a big mess of things.
Sorry, but you guys both seem to be pushing back at my claims with quotes from Pirsig on the topic of mysticism - even though I keep insisting that my point is not on that topic. I take this to mean that you're not acknowledging the distinction between mysticism and creative intellect. Without this distinction, the mystic's prohibition against naming the ultimate reality will be mistaken for a prohibition against naming anything at all, against intellectual descriptions of any kind. And Presto! You have a very vigorous form of anti-intellectualism wherein thinking about anything is a degenerate activity. I hope you can see how this might be quite a problem if your aim is to expand rationality so that science and philosophy are no longer value-free. 
That's why you really have to believe me when I tell you that this is NOT about mysticism. It's about Pirsig's expansion and improvement of intellect - and Pirsig does this by putting undefined Quality right into the center of philosophy and science. I agree with the mystic's prohibitions against naming the ultimate reality but that's simply not what I'm doing. I'm merely explaining Pirsig ideas, trying to clarify the meaning of his books. I have nothing to say about the ultimate reality but I have plenty to say about Pirsig's philosophy. Okay, with that in mind, let's take a look at Dan's objection....


Dan said to dmb:
Now, I am not claiming to be a mystic but from a pragmatic point of view I think we need to respect the boundaries that Robert Pirsig has set up between a static quality reality that is intellectualized and a Dynamic reality which is to be kept free of all concepts. Labeling Dynamic freedom as negative and positive is misleading just as using any term to define it is.

dmb says:
This is an example of what I was just saying. You are taking "positive" and "negative" as definitions of Dynamic reality itself. That is switching the topic to mysticism, which totally changes the meaning. I'm talking about creative intellect, not mysticism and so I'm not using these terms to define or describe DQ. Instead, the distinction between positive and negative freedom is all about how we treat static quality. One involves mastery and the other involves rejection and escape. Positive freedom is the ability or capacity to exercise real options, to create real solutions, whereas negative freedom is merely a lack of restraints. This distinction between two kinds of freedom is not an attempt to name of define the ultimate reality.


Dan:
As I pointed out earlier, I am at a loss to find anywhere that Robert Pirsig uses negative freedom and positive freedom. I searched Lila. I searched Anthony McWatt's numerous works. I searched through various interviews and essays I have gathered over the years. I see where he refers to negative experiences like sitting upon hot stoves but that is not what I take to be a negative freedom.


dmb says:

Hmmm. You keep saying you can't find anywhere that Pirsig uses these terms. This is very frustrating. I've posted A quote WHEREIN Pirsig uses the term "negative" in relation to "freedom" several times already. And you posted one that employes those terms too.

"When they call it freedom, that's not right. 'Freedom' doesn't mean anything. Freedom's just an ESCAPE from something NEGATIVE. The real reason it's so hallowed is that when people talk about it they mean Dynamic Quality." 
"The hippies had in mind something that they wanted, and were calling it "freedom," but in the final analysis "freedom" is a purely NEGATIVE goal."

I think we should be able to put this objection to bed now, don't you? The hippies, Pirsig says elsewhere, rejected social and intellectual values in a mistaken effort to be free. That was their mistake. They only escaped something negative rather than achieving something positive and so what could have been an improvement turned out to be mostly degenerate. Because biological quality and Dynamic Quality are not social or intellectual, they confused mere hedonism with real freedom. In any case, we can all see that Pirsig does indeed talk about he dangers of negative freedom, of merely rejecting or escaping from static patterns. 

Dan comments on the hippie quote:
Note again how he uses quotation marks around "freedom" to distinguish it from real freedom. Of course Dynamic freedom didn't exist when ZMM was written but even then Robert Pirsig took care in how he pointed to it. I think that might be your mistake, Dave. You using negative "freedom" as an analogy with negative Dynamic Quality, which just doesn't wash... well, it might wash but it won't come clean...

dmb says:
Dynamic freedom didn't exist when ZAMM was written? Well, the terms "static" and "Dynamic" become the central terms in Lila but he was already using them in his conclusions about this very topic, creative freedom, especially in relation to his central metaphor (the artful mechanic). He is talking about positive freedom even if doesn't use that particular term for it. The idea is still there even if he uses various terms for it. Like I said, this distinction can be found throughout both books and, as we see in the quotes above, sometimes he does use those specific terms and explicitly says that NEGATIVE freedom differs from meaningful freedom.  



Dan said:
... I would still say there is a difference between real Dynamic freedom and a stable situation created so that Dynamic Quality can flourish. The former is free of all patterns; the latter while allowing Dynamic Quality to flourish constrains the situation with stable static patterns.


dmb says:

No, Dan, that's the crucial error I'm talking about. I'm talking about creative intellect, wherein it makes no sense to be "free" of all static patterns. This is switching the topic over to mysticism. In conflating these two topics you will certainly misunderstand what I'm saying and you'll misread Pirsig too. The mystic reality or DQ itself is free of static patterns but I'm talking about creative intellect, about "science's organization for the handling of the Dynamic" and Pirsig's claim that "the whole thing [is] to obtain static AND Dynamic Quality SIMULTANEOUSLY. If you don't have the static patterns of scientific knowledge to build upon you're back with the cave man." If we were talking about mysticism it would makes sense to talk about being free of all static patterns but since we are talking about the art of rationality, getting free of all static patterns would be the worst kind of degenerate, negative freedom. In the context of science, rationality, philosophical thinking, escaping from all static patterns would be a complete disaster. And if you use the mystic's prohibition against naming the ultimate reality to prohibit the use of intellectual descriptions in science and philosophy, then you will certainly end up holding a profoundly anti-intellectual position. This is one of Marsha's most destructive mistakes, from which many other errors flow.

Dan said:
I don't see that I am espousing any such notion. I am simply saying Dynamic Quality should be kept concept-free. My concerns are not about killing static patterns but rather with having them overrun Dynamic Quality.

dmb says:
Okay, I hear you saying that your intention is to protect DQ from being overrun and you haven't intended to espouse any anti-intellectualism. But I'm trying to get you to see how you're ending up there anyway. This is the result even if it's not your intention. Please notice how your efforts to protect DQ from definition have resulting in shutting down my attempt to discuss the intellect! I've been quoting Pirsig on the topic of mastering those static intellectual patterns and you keep coming back with quotes prohibiting the use of static patterns. I'm talking about what makes scientific progress possible, what makes creativity and innovation possible and yet, despite my repeated protests, you're taking this to mean something like a claim "that reality as a whole is intelligible in principle" and then warning me that "we cannot completely define reality intellectually".

We don't disagree on that point, Dan. But it's a mistake to make that point in this context because I'm not trying to define all of reality. I'm doing something much less ambitious; to explain Pirsig's repair job on rationality. Isn't this the focal point of his work, after all. He says that he did absolute nothing for Quality or the Tao, what benefits from his work, he says, is REASON and rationality. That's where we have a problem and that's where he has a solution. That's why anti-intellectualism is such a heart-breaking misinterpretation. It spoils the main point and purpose of his work. 

"Now I want 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."

This is how he gets rid of value-free science, makes truth and intellect itself a species of value, makes motorcycle mechanics into motorcycle scientists and artists. This improvement is achieved through a formal recognition of Quality in the operation of rationality. And yet we have MOQers using Pirsig's mysticism to assert that intellect should never have anything to do with Quality! Oh dude, that is a misconception right in the middle of it all, a total wrecking ball.

Here's a way to think about it that might help. 

The problem, Pirsig says, is that "Reason and Quality had become separated and in conflict with each other" back in the days of Plato. More specifically Plato had made Quality subordinate to reason. The solution is to reverse that priority. "Reason was to be subordinate, logically, to Quality." That's how he puts it in ZAMM but then you see this same solution in Lila. "That was exactly what is meant by the Metaphysics of Quality. Truth is a static intellectual pattern within a larger entity called Quality."  To say that truth is within a larger entity called Quality is to say that reason is subordinate to Quality. As the mystic will point out, Quality cannot be defined because definitions can only exist within Quality. Definitions have a relationship to this larger and more primary reality but it is a subordinate relationship. DQ can't be put into an intellectual truth because intellectual truths are within DQ, derived from DQ, were formed on the basis of DQ. It's that container problem, right?

"Now, to take that which has caused us to create the world, and include it within the world we have created, is clearly impossible. That is why Quality cannot be defined. If we do define it we are defining something less than Quality itself."

To define Quality is to subordinate it to reason or intellect. We both agree Quality can't be defined. But I'm talking about Pirsig's reformed intellect, which is improved by making it subordinate to Quality, by making the formal recognition that our intellectual truths exist within Quality and are subordinate to it. Then having them both simultaneously not only failed to be a transgression, it's exactly what you want when practicing the art of rationality or any other high quality endeavor.