Krimel said: Thanks Marsha, that really was a simple and concise explanation. I hope you will notice that I am almost always talking about systems.
Marsha replied:Sometimes you do, and sometimes you don't, sometimes you can seem to talk from both perspectives in the same post. It can be frustrating, and you almost never tie it back to the MoQ perspective unless it is to disagree with something RMP has written. If someone asked if you were a reductionist or a systems thinker, I'd answer: a reductionist. That's how experience your posts. ...It's not enough to mention systems now and then, System Theory is a very different approach. dmb says:Right, some of Krimel's remarks are crudely and obviously reductionistic. It would be quite a trick to make a coherent view out of those remarks AND a professed love for systems theory. Or so the systems theorists would have you believe. They think they're not reductionists and that systems thinking is an answer to reductionism but really is just the plural form of reductionism. Instead of reducing everything to the small part, the system theorist wants to focus on the functional organization of the parts. But it's still reductionism insofar as it's based on traditional empiricism and materialist assumptions. Instead of reducing everything to "it", systems theory reduces everything to organized its. Remember Pirsig's critique of Margaret Mead and the other early 20th century social scientists? He criticized their attempts to study culture "objectively" and suggested that cultures have to be understood from within the culture itself. You can observe a tribe's rituals and try to determine how it functions to hold the society together but the dimension that's missing is the values. They don't get at what the ritual means to the participants themselves only how it functions as viewed from without. Mead was a systems theorist and it certainly didn't prevent her from suffering from the reductionism of scientific objectivity. Krimel said:...Notice what the guy says about engines and spark plugs. He says, "What would you say if I told you I knew all about spark plugs but nothing about engines?" This I think is what Dave is accusing me of; focusing on spark plugs. But I don't see how anyone can claim to know about engines if they know nothing about spark plugs. We can know a lot about engines and what they do and how to operate them without mentioning the parts involved. But to gain a deeper understand not only of how to operate an engine but how it works and how to fix it we are going to have to look at the parts. dmb says:Once upon a time I said your reductionism was LIKE trying to describe a road trip in terms of gas mileage. Spark plugs and engines are much more related than are adventures and gasoline. In any case, nobody is making a case that we should ignore spark plugs. Nobody is saying that part don't matter. I'll assume your aim is to win some kind of prize for propping up the most absurd straw man. It's a bet with your virtual friends or something, I suppose. But more to the point, "what the guy said" is just common sense. Spark plugs only make sense in the context of engines. Who'd argue otherwise? Krimel said:From the point of view of the engine operator the parts are irrelevant, as long as the engine runs. When it stops running we have to look for another point of view. It seems wrong to me to claim that the operator's point of view is "better" because it is holistic and a mechanics view is wrong because it is reductionistic and riddled with philosophical error. After all mechanics can run the equipment too. There is nothing about their knowledge of engine detail that stands in the way of their holistic understanding of the value of engines. In fact the holist view of the engine helps them tune the parts to make it function and function better. dmb says:Again, you're disputing what nobody has asserted. The mechanic and operator are just two perspectives, not necessarily two different people, and they are best when integrated. The narrator of ZAMM shows us what that looks like, obviously. But notice how your example is focused on engine function and equipment? Notice how the "road trip" part of my original analogy has disappeared, only to be replaced by spark plugs. Seems like it always goes that way, toward an explanation of underlying material structures, the observable physical structures. Seems like interior reality, experience as seen from within, always evaporates as soon as you touch it. You're like the King Midas of reductionism. Even the experience of meditating monks is reduced to brain activity. Human perception is reduced to transduced energy. It's all about functioning parts. And Quality is just better functioning parts. Etc., etc.. Brother, this is not the MOQ. The MOQ is a hostile, negative, revolutionary response to this very square junk. Krimel said:This, I think, is the whole point of ZMM and Pirsig's take on the romantic/classic split. The romantic may enjoy driving an elegantly designed motorcycle but they will always be dependent on someone else to keep it running. The classist can not only keep his cycle running but can write a book about how all those motorcycle parts relate to everything from the open road to western philosophy. dmb says:"Yea, right", he said sarcastically. The point of Zen and Art was to condemn art and teach us all to be mechanics. Right, the motorcycle isn't to be taken as a metaphor for yourself. It's a book about machines. Any tool can see that. Romantics are incompetent mechanics and that's what's wrong with the world. But seriously, putting your ridiculous, self-serving distortions aside in favor of the actual topic, reductionism as a stance can and has seriously interfered with so many of our debates because it inherently ignores the interior dimension and radical empiricism is all about that dimension. It begins and ends with experience whereas you always want to explain things in terms of the physical structures and processes as science describes them. This stance is based on the very premise that radical empiricism rejects as it's premise. So round and round we go. By the way, the method of analyzing a machine in terms of its parts and their relations is used approvingly by the narrator early on in the book. But later in the book, when Phaedrus goes to the University of Chicago and discovers that Aristotle is the originator of this method, he finds great evil in it. This style and attitude, it's revealed, is actually ground zero for everything Phaedrus hates. It's also the point where the metaphysics of substance gets started. Phaedrus called him a smug asshole and threatened to "rub him out", as they used to say in Chicago. Again, the voice of the narrator is not Pirsig's. The author learned about the literary device known as the unreliable narrator from a Henry James novel. It was a ghost story wherein the narrator, an insane nanny, told the story from her perspective so that her insanity was not quite apparent to the reader. When Pirsig himself learned this, he didn't even believe it. Then he read it again. It's kind of kick in the head when you realize it. And this works especially well in Pirsig's story because of the way Phaedrus is supposed to be the ghost of an insane man. In the end, of course, the narrator turns out to be the bad guy. Near the end the narrator is suicidal, thinking of checking himself into a mental hospital and despite all his talk about doing quality work and having a feel for the materials, he has no clue how to connect with his son in any meaningful way. He's a distant, cold bastard and Chris is miserable until Phaedrus finally re-emerges. Anyway, I wouldn't put too many chips on that number if I were you. Philosophically and otherwise, the narrator is not to be trusted. Your use of him as a defense of squareness is about like Platt's use of him as a defense of political platitudes. _________________________________________________________________ Windows Live™ SkyDrive™: Get 25 GB of free online storage. http://windowslive.com/online/skydrive?ocid=TXT_TAGLM_WL_SD_25GB_062009 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/
