dmb replies Krim/Matt:
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.
DM: That seems OK to me. But Rorty and Matt are right to question whether
experience is a form of knowledge, as it is not linguistic or
propositional. But DMB and David Hildebrand are right to say that Rorty (in
opposition to bad Dewey, Rorty also has a good Dewey)
underplays experience. Experience and experiment are key to life and wisdom
and practical undertakings and science. Experience
does not give us certain knowledge but it is the subject matter of
knowledge, it is what our knowledge is about. It is because of
our experiences and the trouble and delights and problems they give us that
we want to try and make sense of our experiences, experiences
that are sometimes individual but are often shared.
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