[MD] Post-Intellectualism

[david]

John said to dmb, Dan:


I* agree, of course [That reason and evidence are supposed to have authority on the intellectual level].  Reason and evidence are wonderful things. ...But the issue is far more aggravating, because you can't use Pirsig's authority to support your arguments when I'm critiquing an aspect of Pirsig's thought or word.  I KNOW that's what he said.  But I disagree with him and here's why...  etc.  Do you understand how "yeah, but Pirsig sez..." to me (0r even worse "you don't get what Pirsig is even saying.")  gets old after a while and isn't actually to the point?

dmb says:
Yea, this gets old very quickly. You keep insisting that you know what Pirsig says but you keep disagreeing with things that he does not say. You even attribute ideas to him that he actively opposes and you keep doing this no matter how many times I give you reasons and evidence to the contrary. And then you carefully avoid the point and otherwise pretend that these arguments don't exist. Let me show you another example from this new post, where you've done this yet again. You post was full of errors but let's look at just one of them.


John said:
...Here's a big problem, I have.  Where's art?  Where does art fit in?  You can say "intellect" but when you make intellect the arbiter of all reality, it tends to decide for itself what is art and what is not and that is a very bad idea. I don't misunderstand Pirsig on this subject, you dolt.  I argue with him.  And if you don't think it's permissible to argue with authority, in philosophical discussion, then you are in the wrong field completely my friend.


dmb says:
This is NOT Pirsig's view and in fact Pirsig makes quite an effort to dispute the view you are pinning on him. This is not a matter of disagreeing with Pirsig but a matter of misunderstanding Pirsig - and in a very big way too. We see the very opposite view in LILA wherein the code of art is the highest moral code of all, wherein the pragmatic theory of truth holds intellectual patterns to be a species of the good, a particular kind of art, and Pirsig's objection to the view you're attributing to him is one of his primary motives. Here's one piece of evidence showing that Pirsig does NOT think that intellect gets to "decide for itself what is are and what is not". Pirsig is quite explicit about reversing the priority so that theory is always secondary or after the fact.


>From chapter 18 of ZAMM:

There's an entire branch of philosophy concerned with the definition of Quality, known as esthetics. Its question, What is meant by beautiful?, goes back to antiquity. But when he was a student of philosophy Phædrus had recoiled violently from this entire branch of knowledge. He had almost deliberately failed the one course in it he had attended and had written a number of papers subjecting the instructor and materials to outrageous attack. He hated and reviled everything.
"It wasn't any particular esthetician who produced this reaction in him. It was all of them. It wasn't any particular point of view that outraged him so much as the idea that Quality should be subordinated to any point of view. The intellectual process was forcing Quality into its servitude, prostituting it. I think that was the source of his anger.
He wrote in one paper, "These estheticians think their subject is some kind of peppermint bonbon they're entitled to smack their fat lips on; something to be devoured; something to be intellectually knifed, forked and spooned up bit by bit with appropriate delicate remarks and I'm ready to throw up. What they smack their lips on is the putrescence of something they long ago killed."
Now, as the first step of the crystallization process, he saw that when Quality is kept undefined by definition, the entire field called esthetics is wiped out -- completely disenfranchised -- kaput. By refusing to define Quality he had placed it entirely outside the analytic process. If you can't define Quality, there's no way you can subordinate it to any intellectual rule. The estheticians can have nothing more to say. Their whole field, definition of Quality, is gone.
The thought of this completely thrilled him. It was like discovering a cancer cure. No more explanations of what art is. No more wonderful critical schools of experts to determine rationally where each composer had succeeded or failed. All of them, every last one of those know-it-alls, would finally have to shut up. This was no longer just an interesting idea. This was a dream."


And there are many pieces of evidence showing that art is not to be confused with the fine arts, as Arlo so patiently and fruitlessly tried to show you. The following passage can be found a few pages from the end of chapter 22 of ZAMM…

“Poincaré then hypothesized that this selection is made by what he called the “subliminal self,” an entity that corresponds exactly with what Phædrus called preintellectual awareness. The subliminal self, Poincaré said, looks at a large number of solutions to a problem, but only the interesting ones break into the domain of consciousness. Mathematical solutions are selected by the subliminal self on the basis of “mathematical beauty,” of the harmony of numbers and forms, of geometric elegance. “This is a true esthetic feeling which all mathematicians know,” Poincaré said, “but of which the profane are so ignorant as often to be tempted to smile.” But it is this harmony, this beauty, that is at the center of it all.”


Whether you realize it or not, John, this little argument of mine has completely defeated your criticism. I have provided evidence showing that your complaint has no basis and no merit. It shows that Pirsig's view is the opposite of what you say it is. It shows that your claim to know what Pirsig says is also quite false. We have no reason to believe what you're saying and lots of reasons not the believe it. 

Sigh. But you'll probably just keep saying it anyway. This same thing keeps happening over and over again because you cannot or will not learn anything from arguments, reasons or evidence. Thus my complaints about your disregard for arguments, reasons and evidence. You have repeatedly proven that my complaint is valid and this is just one more example. Do you really not see this? Do you really not get that my complaints are an appropriate and reasonable response to your misconceptions and baseless criticisms? I'd complain about that kind of nonsense no matter who said and if they kept saying it even after countless corrections I'd get just as irritated.

When are you going to take responsibility for your own claims and your own conversational behavior? I think you really need to entertain the possibility that your thinking and your deeds are both genuinely and thoroughly worthy of criticism. It's very low quality stuff on both counts, which is to say you are quite wrong about Pirsig AND you're being a huge dick about it too.