[MD] Definitions.

[david buchanan]

Ian said to ARLO:
Constraining - not necessarily - not constraining "within" any boundaries. A pedant can choose to work within dictionary definitions of the words used and the formal syntax of the sentences composed - but any good writer / communicator - like Pirsig does NOT do this.


Arlo replied:
Really? How did you understand a single word in his books? Seems to me that he "relied" a great deal on shared definitions and syntax (can you point out ONE sentence in his books that did not follow a culturally-shared syntax?). "Dictionary definitions", by the way, is a ridiculous straw man (and I'm a little surprised you use this). Of course the "meanings" of individual "words" (and the shared use syntax) evolve over time, who has ever suggested otherwise? The point is not that such-and-such a word is forever etched in iron, but that we can never "think" outside "language", any more than we can "breathe" in a "vacuum" (aka, "our intellectual description of nature is ALWAYS culturally defined" [emphasis added]). (By the way, if you respond to this by implying I deny a pre-intellectual experience or pre-language awareness, I will reach through the nether and slap you. ;-))



Ian replied to Arlo's reply:
Dictionary definition - just two word short-hand for your 10 line paragraph ... but yes OK.  So ... that evolution involves people using the language beyond existing understood explicit meanings - implying, glimpsing, evoking alternative possibilities.  Obviously anyone (me included) "starts" from existing understood definitions - but they're enabling tools as you said - we don't "end" with that, only a pedant involved in some tight logical construction is constrained by those.


dmb says:
I'm totally with Arlo on this. I think it's safe to say that Pirsig, the rhetorician, definitely cares about words and he uses the language with great skill. He's an artist and words are his medium of choice. Even further, we can see that this concern for language reflected in the content of his thought - most conspicuously in his defense of the Sophists and his a attack on the dialecticians. And in the second book he frames thought and language in terms of social and intellectual static quality.

"Definitions are the FOUNDATION of reason. You can't reason without them." (Emphasis is Pirsig's. ZAMM, page 214.)

"A metaphysics must be divisible, definable and knowable, or there isn't any metaphysics." (Pirsig in Lila, page 64.)

I wonder if my complaints about Marsha's incoherent and contradictory statements have anything to do with this line of defense, Ian? I suspect so. It's true that I have been complaining for a long time. This is how I put it about a year and a half ago....

"Definitions are the FOUNDATION of reason but Marsha "reasons" with her own private definitions. In her world - and what a lonely place it must be - static patterns are not static and they are not patterned. In open defiance of all the dictionaries, she imagines them as ever-changing clouds. To torture and abuse the english language in this way is to remove oneself from reason and intelligibility, to cut oneself off from communication with others and can only end in confusion, isolation and unhappiness."

Now, has anyone ever said - or even implied - that dictionary definitions are the end point for the MOQ or anything else. No, of course not. This is a straw man, one that interprets the basic of demands of intellectual quality (coherence, logical consistency, etc.) as something that's beneath them. The implied claim, it seems, is that the contradictory use of terms is not a very basic failing but quite the opposite. It is above and beyond words, Ian claims, because "evolution involves people using the language beyond existing understood explicit meanings". 

You see how that works? The use of contradictory word salads isn't a problem or an error to be criticized, it's above all that stupid static stuff like definitions and metaphysics. Only a pedant is interesting in stuff like that, right? Nope, I really that that's just ego-driven nonsense wherein those accused of very basic errors reply with a transparently self-serving dismissal of the criticism. 

Another weirdly bogus response to these complaints is to pretend that the basic demands of logic and language are something I've invented and arbitrarily imposed on poor Marsha. "I don't care what you think," she'll say, or "that's just your opinion". Then, when I quote Pirsig, an encyclopedia or dictionary to show that it's not just my opinion, she'll pretend the textual evidence is meaningless too. What could be more unreasonable? 

This anti-intellectualism would make a certain amount of sense IF one equates the MOQ's intellectual level with SOM. I suspect that's one of the main (and bogus) planks in Marsha's negative stance toward static intellectual quality. So, instead of getting an expanded rationality, one that puts DQ at the center, we get intellect construed as a contemptible prison. 

It's really sad that hardly anyone sees that this is not only wrong but totally undermines Pirsig's project of repairing the intellect. The idea is to improve the way we think by making rationality subordinate to Quality, not to trash rationality or reject it. Of all the place in the world where one should take care of words and ideas, a philosophical discussion group has got to be on the top of the list. That's just common sense.

Does anyone really think they are too deep, too mystical or too special to be bothered with the basic demands of intellectual quality? You're too evolved to be bothered with definitions? That sounds like the ego is doing the talking, not intellect.