[MD] Julian Baggini: This is what the clash of civilisations is really about

[Dan Glover]

John,

On Sat, Aug 1, 2015 at 10:32 PM, John Carl <ridgecoyote at gmail.com> wrote:
> Hey Dan,
>
>> >
>> > Jc:
>> >
>> > As RMP pointedly says:  "How can you tell the degenerates from the
>> > messiahs"?  I think that question illustrates the point that not ALL
>> > social deviation ends you up in an asylum.  Sometimes you end up
>> > founding a religion or writing a best-seller.
>>
>> Dan:
>> In which case you're no longer considered a deviant. In ZMM the
>> narrator makes mention of recanting:
>>
>> "What I am is a heretic who's recanted, and thereby in everyone's eyes
>> saved his soul. Everyone's eyes but one, who knows deep down inside
>> that all he has saved is his skin."
>>
>
> Jc:  hmm.  So soul is a social construct but skin is a biologically
> grounded being.  I like that.  what it means, to save your soul, by
> everybody who uses the term is save your reputation.  I'd say Phaedrus's
> reputation was certainly saved!

Dan:
Was it? Possibly. But I'd beg to differ that soul and reputation are
synonymous, at least in the way Robert Pirsig uses the term in the
quote I offered.

>
>
>>
>> >JC:
>> > I think that looking at the levels as indiscrete, is more useful than
>> > looking at them as pristine.  In fact,  it seems obvious to me that
>> > every level above, is inclusive of all the levels below, but with
>> > something more, a new level of patterning.
>> >
>> > But... that new level in no way obviates or eliminates the lower
>> > patterns.  For instance, all social patterns are creations of
>> > biological human beings, and in a 1st level, material world (not that
>> > the whole world is material, but at least a large part of it is!)
>> > Thus understanding the way the levels work together, helps us in
>> > making better quality decisions about what to intellectually endorse.
>> >
>> > Now, it's hard to endorse, what you don't hear.  Thus most of the 4th
>> > level, is a sort of individuation of choice - the individual reacting
>> > to what she perceives as "the DQ move"  the move toward betterness.
>> > This puts the MoQ on solid ground with pragmatism and personalism
>> > both, and seems also, more importantly, "the most true to me".
>> >
>> > See?  I'm thinking about what seems better to ME.  And that "ME" is a
>> > social composite of all my past experience,  seeking a unity that is a
>> > kind of ultimate good - (as it seems to me)  Thus my person is not a
>> > unique or metaphysically significant entity - it is a mere mode of
>> > information that has been informed and selected by many sources,
>> > including you yourself.  So you are me and he is she and we are all
>> > together... right?
>> >
>> > But at the same time, there is that still small voice, which whispers
>> > whether any idea or concept or communication is good or is not good,
>> > and that occurs on an individual level, but gets resonance socially,
>> > or it fades and dies.
>> >
>> > As best as I can see and understand it, that is the way the MoQ levels
>> > help me to understand (codify) my experience.
>>
>> Dan:
>> My problem with this is that it seems to allow everyone to codify the
>> MOQ on their own terms thus nullifying any real meaning to the
>> framework it offers us.
>
>
> Jc:  Meaning is found in experience rather than abstractions from
> experience.  The MoQ is an abstraction from experience and should not be
> confused with the Quality it talks about.

Dan:
It appears to me that your first sentence contradicts the second. In
Lila, Robert Pirsig writes that the metaphysics of quality could just
as well be called the metaphysics of meaning. Meaning is found in
abstraction, after experience.

>JC:
> The fact that there are individuals with different experiences, who find
> the MoQ meaningful to them, should be praised and celebrated rather than
> frowned-upon and quashed.

Dan:
I'm not frowning. Just making a point. See? :-) No frown here!

JC:
> But nowhere would I endorse saying just any old thing that comes to mind,
> in a slip-stream-of-consciousness way-waving back and forth like the tide.
> but more on that later...
>
> Dan:
>
>
>> I don't see that I'm being dogmatic when I
>> point out certain nuances of the MOQ. Rather, my goal is to help
>> better elucidate what Robert Pirsig is saying and not my
>> interpretation of it, though to a certain extent we all filter
>> everything we know through our cultural lens.
>>
>>
>
> Jc:  The crux of the matter, indeed.  A community of interpretation is all
> anybody gets.  I admit it is a tricky dance,m at times - this floating
> between static objectivity and dynamic and artistic flow -

Dan:
Perhaps. But we have the MOQ as outlined in Lila to guide our
interpretations. By failing to take advantage of that, we essentially
discard the entire framework in favor of whatever we think it is.

>JC:
> What a shame if the MoQ should evolve into some ridiculously rigid
> orthodoxy!
> What a shame if it devolved into a degenerate orgy of ideas, going nowhere
> in a thousand directions at once.
>
> Sounds like a case for the middle way, to me.

Dan:
Sure. As I've been saying, we need to focus our attention on what
Robert Pirsig is saying, not on what we think he is saying.

>
>
>> > Jc:  A bit of of conjecture on your part.  The way we are headed, it
>> > might be that by the time she reaches adulthood, we'll be back to the
>> > horse and buggy era.  A change which I won't bemoan, if it happens.
>> > Very few people have been killed by drunk horseback riders.
>>
>> Dan:
>> Actually no, it isn't conjecture on my part at all. Self driving cars,
>> buses, semi-trucks, and even jet planes are just around the corner.
>> But really my point was how hard it is to foresee such radical changes
>> before they happen.
>>
>>
> Jc:  Well, all that might come true, and the world will be speaking
> Chinese, the way things are going...

Dan:
And is there something inherently wrong with that?



>> >
>> >
>> >> Dan:
>> >> The MOQ states that idealism and materialism are both right in their
>> >> own limited perspectives.
>> >
>> >
>> > Jc:  That strikes me as a bit facile.  Idealism and materialism both
>> > vie for metaphysical dominance equally  and neither will allow the
>> > slightest bit of overlap.  If it's all information - then the
>> > idealists win.
>> >
>> > Of course, I don't see the MoQ as successfully negotiating any sort of
>> > bridge between the two. I see the MoQ as a species of Pragmatism -
>> > which is in fact, a neo-Kantian, non-Hegelian, Idealism!
>>
>> Dan:
>> Well then, you're basically throwing out half the MOQ to suit your own
>> purpose.
>>
>
>
> Jc:  I don't see that.  "My own purpose" isn't biased toward any tangible
> goal on my part.  I like philosophy and a certain amount of philosophy IS
> philosophology - seeing where different philosophical ideas, fit into other
> systems.
>
> Pirsig himself says in Lila that when re-reading James, (with his own
> system - The MoQ) in mind, he found fit after fit after fit.  It
> dovetailed.  That's an incredibly important confession.  My reading of
> Wilshire's book, weaves these threads into a tapestry of thought that
> started with the interplay between the natives and the Europeans and was
> codified in the philosophy of Franklin, Emmerson, James, Peirce, Dewey and
> Whitehead.   Seeing this weaving, it's a beautiful thing.  I can't un-see
> it, just because you say it doesn't fit.  Show me how, it doesn't fit.

Dan:
That would take way more effort than I'm willing to commit. I tend to
believe lots of people lump the work of Robert Pirsig into many other
philosophers in order to say: there... I've got it. This is what he
means... just the same as Emerson, Dewey, James, Whitehead, and on and
on. To me, that is a grave mistake. But then again, that's just my
opinion.

>>
>> >JC:
>> > When you say the MoQ simply dodges the whole debate, it's kind of a
>> > code for RMP dodges the whole debate and that is true.  Pirsig never
>> > claimed to be a premium philosophologist.  He stuck to HIS path, and
>> > that was the right thing to do for him.  But that doesn't mean the
>> > effort to map his path comparitively with others and point out the
>> > various similarity of routes... is undermining his way.  I'm sure he'd
>> > agree.
>>
>> Dan:
>> Maybe. But neither did I say we should abandon efforts to compare the
>> MOQ to other philosophies. My advice is to get the MOQ right first.
>>
>>
> Jc:  Well, I've said it before.  I don't think the MOQ is that hard to
> get.  Pirsig as a great thinker, writer and teacher presents us with a work
> that fleshes out a skeleton of a metaphysics.  He then stops publishing,
> and steps back and "allows" the evolution of a community of interpretation
> to "get it right".  I've been part of this community, for a long long time,
> and I've read Lila's Child, which fleshes out the edges of the MoQ quite
> nicely.  If I don't get it by now, there's no way I ever will.  But as a
> pretty bright guy, devoted to learning a work, who is also a bit lazy, I
> don't think I'd have even taken this work on, if it wasn't deeply
> accessible to me.

Dan:
I guess I'm not all that bright. It's taken me the better part of two
decades of work to get a grasp on the MOQ and even now I'm pretty sure
there are nuances that I'm missing. That doesn't mean I'll never get
it... just that I have to keep on keeping on.

>JC:
> The issue is this:  The meaning of any system is constrained to the context
> which surrounds it.  For instance, "christianity" has a completely
> different meaning if you're in a college classroom, than it does if you're
> in a muslim village.   Because the cultural expectations and definitions
> differ so broadly, from person to person (especially in this digitally
> fragmented age) that misunderstandings and misinterpretations occur, which
> are then construed as "mistakes".

Dan:
Yes but we are in a forum devoted to the work of Robert Pirsig,
specifically Lila. The way I see it, if someone wishes to expand that
to include other authors like William James, Josiah Royce, etc., it is
up to them to to full elucidate those connections. It isn't my
intention to deny those relationships so much as it is to illuminate
what the MOQ states, plain and simple. As you say, we have a wealth of
information on hand to back up those claims, to throw water on the
commonly held mistakes that continually crop up here year after year,
but most people caught up in that misinterpretation refuse to
acknowledge they are mistaken. Instead, they keep on spouting the same
inane remarks over and over until people get pissed off about it.

>
>
>
>> Dan:
>> I'd say pragmatism (a set of intellectual patterns) was born of social
>> values. If that is what you're saying, then we agree.
>>
>>
> Jc:  Well, this might seem heretical to you, but all intellectual patterns
> are born of social values.  The old social double-bind, which a Zen master
> uses to force his pupil to make an upward leap, or just a very frustrated,
> very bright kid who gets hung up on an idea that puts him into conflict
> with authority.  Great Ideas are  born of  great social conflict.  If
> science didn't have peer review, and social competition, it would fall
> apart.

Dan:
Why would that seem heretical to me?

>
> Dan:
>> Well, yeah. That's pretty much what I do... what we all do. Only a few
>> of us are more blatant about it than others. But how does lying to
>> each other bring about a transition to a higher state of
>> consciousness?
>>
>>
>
> Jc:  I don't know if it's possible to express yourself without lying, just
> a little bit.  We lie to ourselves, more than anybody tho so, instant karma.
>
> But I think I probably am more honest in dialogue, written dialogue like
> this, than I am in any other venue.    I perceive a commonality of value,
> maybe.  Or it's just something that has taken a lot of time.
>
>
>
> Dan:
>> So you're saying because you get a rise out of dmb you continue to
>> push the idea of the absolute... is that right?
>>
>>
> Jc:  No.  I really think Royce's use of the term blocked us from
> understanding him sooner.  It certainly blocked James, in their
> communication.
> I think intellectual assessment should rise above petty ego competitions or
> rivalries.  I think getting into the meat of a definition to understand
> what an author means
> by a term is a good thing to do, in a metaphysical discussion.  I think
> allowing one's prejudice to blind one to possibilities of harmonizing
> Pirsig with other great thinkers, is a shame, really and would be glad if I
> could offer a convincing demonstration.
>
>   Pirsig's own words, equate the term absolute with quality.  He says
> "synonym."  It's no big leap on my part alone!

Dan:
I think it depends upon the context in which the term 'absolute' is
used. To use it as Royce seems to do, in relationship to an omnipotent
god, is not what the MOQ is all about.


>> >
>> >
>> >>
>> >> Dan:
>> >> You seem to be assuming language is a collection of intellectual
>> >> patterns.
>> >
>> >
>> > Jc:  No... I think intellectual patterns are collections (patterns) of
>> > language.
>>
>> Dan:
>> Ah. That's an interesting take on things. My objection would be that
>> often times I find I'm stuck on an idea (intellectual pattern) that
>> will further my writings (language). After a multitude of efforts at
>> breaking through the barrier, after exhausting myriad possibilities
>> yet finding no satisfactory answer, I give up.
>>
>> I take a break. Maybe I'll go to my day job and perform some sort of
>> meaningless and menial manual labor. Maybe I'll take a run. Maybe I'll
>> sit in zazen for a while. All of a sudden, the solution appears,
>> seemingly out of nowhere. It isn't that I'm talking to myself... that
>> eternal internal dialogue that goes on inside my head. Rather, I've
>> quit talking to myself. In doing so, the ideas prowling around the
>> periphery of my consciousness have an opportunity to make themselves
>> known.
>>
>> So no, I'd have to disagree with you. Language might be (in part)
>> composed of intellectual patterns, but intellectual patterns are not
>> to be equated with language.
>>
>>
>>
> Jc:  What is an idea, apart from words?  Sit in zazen with that for a while
> and get back to me.

Dan:
Cute play on words. Anyway...


>>> Dan:
>>> I think what's being said in the quotes you offer would make much
>>> better sense framed within the hierarchy of the MOQ.
>>>
>>
>> Jc:  Dan!  You've become a dogmatist!  You sound just like people in
>> church who argue against the points I make to them, " I think what's
>> being said in the quotes you offer would make much
>>  better sense framed within the hierarchy of the Bible."
>
> Dan:
>> Take for example this sentence from the quote you offered:
>>
>> "The body not only eats, excretes, copulates, but it breathes as well,
>> and this breathing is a bridging into the thinking and feeling that it
>> also does."
>>
>> Doesn't the MOQ with its four levels offer a more expansive point of
>> view? For one thing, the author is completely disregarding cultural
>> influences.
>
>
> Jc:  No, I think he's going a bit deeper and describing how cultural
> influences are formed.  I am willing to go into this more deeply with you,
> but for now I'm constrained by time.

Dan:
In other words, forgetaboutit.

>
> dan:
>
>
>> The jump is made directly from biological breathing to
>> thinking... to intellectualizing. This is of course the common way of
>> categorizing such things
>
>
> Jc:  !.  I guess it depends upon which commons you frequent.  It is certain
> in tune with the Buddhist view, that is for certain.

Dan:
Really? How so?

> Dan:
>
>
>> so I can't blame the author. But, and I say
>> it again, the MOQ offers us a better hierarchy in which to frame such
>> statements. I see nothing dogmatic about that.
>>
>>
>
> Jc:  As any tool, it depends largely upon the user.  You can, for instance,
> use the MoQ to denigrate "lower" social orders such as the Muslims (or the
> Indians) with ego-centric white intellectual prowess, but I don't see
> anything better about that hierarchy.  In fact, as a whole, I find
> hierarchical thinking to be facile and bankrupt.  I realize that the MoQ
> has been presented as hierarchical, but I believe the proper understanding
> of that hierarchy has been lacking.  It's led us to an anthropocentric
> stance, which cannot withstand the slightest critical inspection.

Dan:
So you throw out the four levels without ever forming a proper
understanding with them?


>> >JC:
>> > But I do basically agree with you.  It's just that as I'm reading, I'm
>> > making an internal interpretation into the vocabulary of the MoQ and
>> > I'm swelling up with happiness - it fits!  It all fits.  This was
>> > Pirsig's reaction when he re-read James, in his more mature
>> > reflections and he saw how it all dove-tailed.
>>
>> Dan:
>> To a point, yes. But if I'm not mistaken, Robert Pirsig was reading
>> James after he developed the MOQ. And I'm pretty sure he offered the
>> same advice that I did... that the writings of James would make more
>> sense seen through the lens of the MOQ.
>>
>>
> Jc:  of course!  James was writing to a 19th century audience, and Pirsig,
> a 20th.  Different styles completely.  And yet, a very similar message, no?
>
> "For William James this division (subject/object)  is artificial and
> stultifying. As we saw, all meaning and truth are a species of goodness,
> and this is the fruitful building out of the past into the present and
> future. Meaning-making and truth are essential features of being vitally
> alive and centered, of fully being, and philosophy is meant to nurture and
> feed us ecstatic body-minds. "
>
> ibid:)

Dan:
My reading of James is admittedly limited. Pretty dry stuff, that. So
I'm probably not the best judge.

>
>
>
>> >JC:
>> > That's because there is a certain "perennial-ness" to the Good.  It
>> > pops up, unexpectedly.  DQ is always a surprise.  Otherwise it'd be
>> > just good ole SQ.
>>
>> Dan:
>> Everything we see and know is static quality. Even the surprise of
>> Dynamic Quality.
>>
>>
>
> Jc:  Interesting take.  I hadn't thought of it that way.  I find I am
> thinking of the DQ/SQ split, these days, more in terms of it as a
> time-process.
>
> All past is SQ.

Dan:
Everything we know is static quality.

JC:
> That was what Royce meant by "Absolute".  The past is
> absolute.

Dan:
Not at all. The past is in constant flux. Every time new ideas arise
the past changes to suit them.

JC:
> But the past is not all there is.  There is also the future, and
> our ideas about the future can influence our present actions so as to
> achieve or realize, if not our ideal, at least something "different".  What
> occurs to me, is that we conceptualize all wrongly.  The past doesn't
> "cause" the future, the future causes the past!

Dan:
In the MOQ, everything begins with experience. The past and the future
are static quality representations, not objective realities.

>JC:
> It's an amazing thought.  I have to sit with it a bit, myself.  I don't
> know what "zazen" is, really, but sitting still with big ideas seems about
> right to me.

Dan:
I don't know what zazen is either. But I do know it isn't about ideas,
though great insights can and do arise in response to the stilling of
the internal discursive dialogue.

Thank you,

Dan

http://www.danglover.com