Hey DMB, DMB said: I think you've raised a crucial point here. Its a good example of the sort of unwarranted charge that invariably comes up whenever the topic is somewhere near mysticism. It's pretty clear that Pirsig's distinction between direct and indirect comes only after he's rejected the representational theory of knowledge. The difference is between two categories of experience, neither of which is any less "real" than the other. If memory serves, Dewey made the distinction between "had" experience and later reflection. He insisted that cognitive knowledge was not more real than the initial experience. This would be more or less the same as the difference between dynamic and static or direct and indirect. As Pirsig points out, the German language has two words for "knowing" that reflect this same distinction. One refers to a basic familiarity, something you "know" from experience even never deliberately think about it, like riding a bike, your grandmother's face, walking through a doorway. And then there is cognitive knowledge, where you "know" the principles of geometry or law. I think these guys are emphasizing the non-cognitive, pre-reflective mode of experience not because they think it is more real but because it has traditionally been ignored and excluded by philosophy. Pirsig traces it back to the Platonic demand for intelligibility, the one that tried to turn truth into a fixed, rigid thing. So I see Pirsig's distinction between static and dynamic as a move against Platonism and a rehabilitation of the non-conceptual "knowledge" he denigrated at every opportunity.
Matt: Well, my unwarranted charges, I don't think, have had anything specifically to do with mysticism, just certain formulations of...anything, really. As you said, I can find Platonism anywhere. In this case, in your recapitulation of the Dewey/Pirsig stance, I don't think Dewey ever talked much about mysticism, but I would still have quibbles with the way he, and Pirsig, are making their point. I didn't understand for a long time what Pirsig was after because of the way he formulated it and, partly, because of his interpreters. (Which could be your problem with Rorty.) But I'm getting a better idea of what the root is, and I still think there are better ways to formulate what his point is. But these are quibbles under overall agreement. For one, I'm not sure how "ignored and excluded" these kinds of knowledge have been, or, granting they have, how pernicious it has been. I see the main sources of badness coming from other directions. For another, probably related to the first quibble, I still don't like the "direct/indirect" or "pre-intellectual/reflective" formulations or the formulation of it as "two categories of experience." But hey--just not my cup of tea. Matt _________________________________________________________________ Give to a good cause with every e-mail. Join the i’m Initiative from Microsoft. http://im.live.com/Messenger/IM/Join/Default.aspx?souce=EML_WL_ GoodCause 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/
