Steve, DMB,
I can see the distinction is generating some energy, no less also displaying
some of the different styles people write with. The object under discussion
seems to be so small that everyone's answers are almost identical, with the
variance then almost entirely given to orientation. For instance, Dave, your
initial statements were of the usual kind of matter-of-fact,
this-is-pretty-easy-obvious-stuff-so-I'm-not-sure-why-I-even-need-to-say-it
that you often use in the MD, but Steve's comments were the exact opposite
color--this isn't obvious, and quite important to understanding what's going
on. You both agree on the content, but I take it that Steve wins out in
whether the matter is at all obvious--the issue is something of a lightening
rod for some of the more radical differences among us (thinking of Bo here).
It does turn out to help focus my difficulties, too, though it wasn't clear to
me initially until we focused some attention on it. The empirical/historical
perspective distinction has something of the same impetus and problem-solving
designs as Paul Turner's suggestion between epistemological and metaphysical
perspectives (which went off like a firecracker in the MD, sharp and bright
before fading from view in, I think, November 2005). But where the latter
distinction makes some sense to me, the former only serves to punch up an
underlying disagreement I have with Pirsig's philosophy.
Pirsig himself, I don't believe, ever makes something like the
empirical/historical perspective distinction (though matters would certainly
become clearer if one surfaced). So for now, I take it that this is either A)
an implicit shifting in the texts or B) an interpretational device we need to
import to make sense of Pirsig, or even save him from incoherence (the line
between A and B being pretty small).
I find the need for an interpretive device to demarcate sharply between
"empirical" and "historical" strange and upon reflection, it may rest on my
problems with the notion of a "cutting edge of reality." The second of my two
softening questions was "wouldn't viewing the world as experiential commit one
to viewing it as an historical sequence of experiences?" Seeing now that
"empirical perspective" is stand-in for, roughly, the first-person point of
view and "historical perspective" for, roughly, the subject of history, I think
I can formulate my qualms as follows:
The first thing one might notice is the non-parallel nature of the distinction
at this stage: we have on the one hand a point-of-view and on the other hand
one discipline amongst many. The two have something in common, however:
time--a concept I believe has come up a time or two recently. So we might
formulate the distinction as between the first-person point of view on time and
the third-person point of view on time (which I think, roughly, we could agree
is "history").
The trouble for me comes when we notice that in times past this would have been
the distinction between Subjective Time and Objective Time. Our Pirsigian
instincts are supposed to break down the S/O distinctions, but of course we can
always reformulate (one of my favorites being first-person/third-person). The
trouble for this distinction, between empirical and historical, as it was
deployed is that it is being deployed to _make sense of_ Pirsig's philosophy,
without which perspective on DQ would become muddled and self-destructive
(concepts listing into each other like battleships without rudders). In other
words, I brought up a supposed problem--the diffuse nature of DQ--and I was
told, nah, its just two different perspectives on DQ. When pressing whether
two different perspectives is just the problem I was suggesting--diffuse rather
than unitary--the perspectives were again forwarded with further articulation,
and they came out as roughly the S/O distinction.
Everyone should want to deny it, but think about this: the problem with the
S/O _distinction_ is that it is taken to be a _dichotomy_. The former is a
heuristic (dispensable for different problems), but the latter is metaphysical
in the sense of one side not being able to break down into the other (_no
matter perspective_). I was asking how to make sense of a unitary DQ, and if
the only way to do it is to foward something like the S/O distinction, then
that means, I take it, that the empirical/historical distinction cannot be
broken down into each other (as we would normally break down the S/O
distinction) _without losing focus on DQ_. But doesn't that give us two DQs?
And if the distinction can be broken down (like a good distinction should be
able to do), why wasn't the non-dual, fuzzy DQ given as the unitary DQ?
This is simply a conversational difficulty to ponder, a fan of the proposed
distinction can then think about their next choice of venue (if they take
seriously the above argument at all).
>From my point of view, the whole thing is suspicious for the very reason that
>Henri Bergson, the 19th-century French metaphysician that William James
>admired, once railed against the distinction between Subjective and Objective
>Time, or as Ian put it, "immediate" and "historical." Bergson suggested that
>time is not like that, it is not a category that pops up later like Kant said
>(or as Steve suggest with "time itself is not a given but derived from
>experience"), but something that is experienced, _though not like the edge of
>a knife_. He called it "duration," an enveloping field a little bit into the
>"future" and little bit into the "past" (both concepts being a little weird
>once we dispense with the notion of the _present_ as an edge that one can only
>fall on one side or the other, past or future). I think Pirsig even talks a
>little like this in Lila, at least with reference to Whitehead and DQ as "dim
>apprehension," but maybe elsewhere, too.
Ever since reading a footnote in one of Rorty's early papers, I've had an
increasing feeling that the issue of time was perhaps the most important
difference between the way I perceive the way forward and Pirsig: "... time
cannot be taken seriously until one ceases to think of the present as a
knife-edge and begins to think of it as an extended duration." (from "Matter
and Event") The paper was on, roughly, Whitehead's superiority to Aristotle
(people forget that Rorty began, roughly, as a Whiteheadian) and people have
often noticed the kindred spirit of process philosophy and Pirsig.
After becoming convinced of Robert Brandom's philosophy of language, I see now
that if we construe "pre-intellecual" as "pre-propositional," that half of
Pirsig's famous formulation, "Dynamic Quality is the pre-intellectual cutting
edge of reality," needn't concern me. The working of the distinction between
know-how and knowing-that (and the latter resting on the former) has become
clear to me, and how that's what Dewey meant when he was redescribing knowledge
and breaking down the praxis/theoria dichotomy. The "cutting edge of reality,"
however, doesn't appear to me to be what Dewey meant by his immediate/mediate
distinction, and it continues to look like what Sellars attacked as the "Myth
of the Given."
I've talked some about time in the last year, though mainly in little papers on
novels/literary theorists.
On Dewey/Pirsig:
http://pirsigaffliction.blogspot.com/2007/03/notes-on-experience-dewey-and-pirsig.html
(nothing really happens until the big block quote six or seven paragraphs down)
I took a class on time in literature and literary theory (i.e., philosophy)
last summer, and in the back of my head was Pirsig the whole time. In fact,
every kid had to do a little presentation on a book of their choosing and
(mainly because I was lazy) I chose Pirsig. Pirsig's distinction between
classic and romantic did wonders for helping the bafflement almost everyone
felt in reading T.S. Eliot and Wyndham Lewis, two centerpieces of modern
criticism. If one is bored, one might trail through the six short papers I
wrote successively for the class (under the "Lit Crit" heading in my sidebar,
begin with "James and Woolf" at the bottom and trail up to "Longing for the
Apocalypse"). Every piece takes up topics that are of pertinence to Pirsig,
from "stream of consciousness" style to Bergson to (sort of) schizophrenia.
They might produce some sidelight, angles on Pirsig that might help spur
further exploration. Eventually I'll get up my final for the class, "Narrative
and Making Sense," which to me was simply the first step to writing about what
Pirsig's ZMM helps highlight in the dance of Western philosophy--the
interrelationship between theory and narrative (which we might also call, logos
and mythos).
Matt
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