In a message dated 12/1/2007 4:46:15 P.M. Eastern Standard Time, [EMAIL PROTECTED] writes:
Matt: I think you've picked up on a subtle point I only became attuned to later on in my thinking about Pirsig. I think it is important to emphasize it: in Pirsig's philosophy, Quality is synonymous with the making of distinctions, in any kind of distinguishing. In other words, the functioning of the "analytic knife" from the beginning of ZMM is a direct function of there actually existing Quality. (He brings up this point again in Lila when he talks about babies and differentiation.) That makes sense, but then the exercise in which he asks his students to rank the papers becomes somewhat meaningless, correct? He might as well have asked them if the two texts were the same paper. In that context, "quality" is somewhat trivial. >Pirsig's just trying to point out how commonsensical the existence of what he's talking about is. It's a >beginning point. His more controversial points require different arguments. That argument is a softening up >move before the more interesting stuff about Plato. Ok, so he's just saying that humans have the capacity to differentiate between items? You can't really assume that in all cases. Carrying that idea to its extreme; I present you with two glasses of water that look equally full, but one is actually very slightly lighter. You might say that there's no real difference, while someone equipped with a scale might say otherwise. > I have a lot of difficulty also with Pirsig's assertion that we already know what Quality is, but I'm not sure if he isn't saying that we already know how to identify Quality, we already know how to distinguish higher from lower value because doing so is _the_ basic feature of living life. Assuming that humans can indeed accurately distinguish between items (doing so without bias?), there's still no real justification for thinking that there is even a "higher" value and a "lower" value. We might assign higher priority to action "A," but maybe that's only the result of our society's influences on us. >If you are looking for definitive answers to _any_ question, let alone traditional aesthetic questions, you are >looking in the wrong place if you are looking some place other than what you yourself think. That's Pirsig's >point. It is a philosophical individualism that begins with each person. Granted, it doesn't end there, which >I don't think Pirsig emphasizes enough in ZMM, but it has to begin there. "Trust yourself?" I'm a great believer in the power of instinct or intuition (whatever you wish to call it, whatever scientific hangups one might have about it), but I'm not sure I can trust what I think. Anyone's thoughts are going to be impacted by the effect his culture has on him. No one is truly "individual." >But I also think you're going at it in the wrong direction, which is in looking for a proof. Granted Pirsig's the >one that brought it up, but while the first question might be, "Is his argument successful and on what >grounds?" the second and more important question, given his revaluation of the relationship of dialectic to >rhetoric, might be, "Why would Pirsig forward this argument the way he did?" First of all, it doesn't make sense that Pirsig can present his theory and then claim that, because of the nature of his theory, no proof is required. It's similar to "You cannot question the Bible, because it is the word of God." >Right, the objective criteria set down by the literary world, which is what a community of individuals agree >to. But even there you get into some discrepancies. The "objective criteria" of the literary world is always in flux (witness the constantly changing MLA guidelines, and lest we forget, "Moby Dick" was panned when it was first published). >Pirsig is eliminating the pernicious subjective/objective distinction in order to undermine the notion of "these (arbitrary) literary criteria" so that we can instead see any sort of criteria that might be set forth by a community as set forth by individuals, though none the worse for it because _anything_ set forth is set forth by _somebody_, every view the product of the far end of the movement of an individual's brandishment of the "analytic knife." Ok, but again, wouldn't that individual's use of the knife still be affected by his cultural bias? His actions would still reflect at least some part of the literary world's judgment. < Pirsig would certainly object to the notion that a critic's opinion is more "valid," but that does not destory the notion of authority derived by communal attention, for instance the authority granted to specialists, like physicists. With art, more people have the chance to be specialists (unlike physics, where people are less likely to have a chance with an electron machine). But that still doesn't mean we can't allow for different ways to appreciate a text. Some literary critics (not all, only the worst--who are the source of Pirsig's distaste) may think that their way is the only way, but that view is as bad as Plato's. But if there is indeed an absolute Quality, then a well educated (or experienced) critic would have more knowledge when approaching a text and, theoretically, should be able to discern its elements that ultimately reveal Quality. If there is an absolute Quality, and an absolute way to reveal that Quality, then there is a definitive way of constructing and reading a text. >But doing so will be one more view set forth by an individual. For instance, Harold Bloom has done so on >occasion to enunciate why he doesn't enjoy one particular poet but isn't about deny the poet's place in the >Western canon. All we have to do to get a distinction like that is to distinguish liking a text for highly >idiosyncratic reasons and placing it in high esteem because of its originality. Well, then you could ask, why value originality itself? Isn't that a "Quality" judgment? >if we take God to be coextensive with existence itself, then yeah, God must exist because existence exists. But what kind of argument is that? It's not, but we should instead wonder why Pirsig would make it. The pernicious view that he is trying to surmount is that there are objective criteria or things or whatever that exist outside of what anybody thinks of them, which then sets as pejorative anything that _does_ have to rest on what people think of them--things like aesthetic judgments. Pirsig's trying to help us reconceive our view by showing how judgments sit at the very bottom of things. So he's employing a flawed argument simply to spark discourse and thought? Or is he using the argument just to spark a certain theory, which one then has to take on faith? **************************************Check out AOL's list of 2007's hottest products. (http://money.aol.com/special/hot-products-2007?NCID=aoltop00030000000001) Moq_Discuss mailing list Listinfo, Unsubscribing etc. http://lists.moqtalk.org/listinfo.cgi/moq_discuss-moqtalk.org Archives: http://lists.moqtalk.org/pipermail/moq_discuss-moqtalk.org/ http://moq.org.uk/pipermail/moq_discuss_archive/
