Hi Bo,
Matt said:
You're taking a definite stand, on both the ill-fated nature of the ambiguity
(which, if I'm not mistaken, Pirsig deliberately wanted) and the way out (it
was a mistake to have two terms at all). But your mode of enunciating your
position has almost always, and here I take comfort in what seems to be a
majority opinion, been very weird and difficult to understand.
Bo said:
The Copernican cosmology's premises was "very weird and difficult to
understand" from the Ptolemaian cosmology's premises. This argument is invalid.
Come Matt, you have cast yourself in the arbiter's role as elevated above out
petty argumentation. Now I call upon you to be the jury
Matt:
Mmm, you are mistaken about my intentions. Many people do take
non-understanding to be a rhetorical weapon to wield against one's opponent,
but I haven't been one of those people in a long time. In philosophy, the
inability to understand should really only be taken to be the inability to
understand, not the by-itself-measure of the badness of an idea. Copernicus,
as you say, might be an example.
No, what I said wasn't an argument. I don't think I've ever condemned your
view because I didn't understand it. What I offered was an explanation. Of
why I cannot be counted on to be your counsel, judge, jury or court reporter.
I try not to be overtly rude, particularly to people who are already being shit
on (even if they do occasionally invite it on themselves), but you're pretty
much demanding I be explicit: I have better things to do than spill energy into
understanding thoroughly your philosophical stance. Life is about choice, and
my time and energy, I think, are better served with other things.
For instance, you say I must have some will _not_ to understand, which is an
odd thing to say, I would think, to somebody that has given a more or less good
faith effort. Understanding is a two way street. I understand your gesture to
the diagram, I understand you wish to eliminate the inherent ambiguity between
Quality and DQ. What I don't see, largely, is the reason why I should adopt
such surgery, not in the sense in which many don't, because they too wish to
repair and extrapolate a philosophical system out of Pirsig's writings, but
because I have a very different understanding of philosophy, the history of
philosophy, and their uses than you and other system-builders. I just don't go
in for system.
Bo said:
What do you think is the logic behind the ambiguity of a Quality different from
Dynamic Quality?
Matt:
I think Pirsig wanted to have an unfolding monism that, on the one hand,
eliminated the Platonic sense of a reality that had intrinsic joints that
needed to found, but on the other hand dealt with Parmenides' denial of
change--this monism evolves. The ambiguity is induced to suggest a basic, dual
perspective with which we can view the world--we can view it as all one thing
for certain purposes, the main one of which is to help remind us that the
current plurality we view the world for most common day purposes might be
shaped differently.
Matt
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