Hi Ian, Ian said: OK, "ism" is a name I can see applying to "a philosophy" (a school of thought, a "system", a metaphysics, etc.) But "isms" sounds like a collection of such systems, that make up the whole tapestry of philsophy and philosophical actvity. So to clarify what I though I had agreed / understood. I'm happy with (I see value in) a system metaphor for a philosphy (an ism). I don't see value in a system metaphor for a philsophy itself (a collection of isms).
Matt: Fair enough. Now--I'm _specifically_ making a distinction between the rhetorical use of isms and that of system. So--in my terms--I'm unsystematic (in the way I'm specifying). The easiest way being, I don't have a "catechism," as Pirsig put it in Lila, to throw at people, I just have a set of fairly routine reactions I have to familiar situations. I'm not going to say that there's a huge difference here (do I not consult Rorty--or really, a growing pile of others--as others consult Pirsig?). But I do want to say there's a difference in orientation. A few more distinctions: _A_ metaphysics--that's a system. _Metaphysics_--that's a genre of writing within philosophy that one can be systematic about (by creating a metaphysical system) or unsystematic (by kibitzing about odds and ends--like Rorty being anti-metaphysical). "A school of thought" is more like what I mean by the unsystematic ism, though I take ism to be sloppier and more ad hoc than a "school"--there are many examples of such "schools" through-out history (Plato's Academy, Thomism, Oxford Philosophy), some of which are literally schools, but also in the figurative sense I'm using it--there is a research program that has fairly well-defined characteristics of committments, problems, solutions, and methods. (And don't let names fool you: the "Yale School" of literary criticism--Harold Bloom, Geoffrey Hartman, Paul de Man, J. Hillis Miller, and sometimes Derrida--is notorious for being an oxymoron. They taught in the same department for a while, and they had similar anti-New Criticism attitudes, but the similarities quickly begin to erode after that.) Classical pragmatism, for instance, is a notable example for why it _doesn't_ count: this was clearly a group of people that appreciated each other, but were doing their own thing--they clung together occasionally because they sensed similarity, but all three classicals were very different. Peirce was more systematic, and hated that James had even included him as a pragmatist. James wrote brilliant essays on various topics, including solidarity essays between himself, Peirce, Dewey, and the Englishman Schiller, but his "method" was an attitude. Dewey was more systematic than James, less than Peirce, but also much more interested in historical change, and he also wrote solidarity essays, but his also had a greater sense of _historical_ solidarity, and the twists and turns of history that supply us with conceptual resources and tales of danger and caution. It is the Dewey that I refer to when I say that an "ism" is an ad hoc label made up (like Robert Brandom when he calls his philosophy of language "inferentialism") or appropriated (like when someone calls themself an "empiricist") by a person for their own purposes, for reasons to do with historical solidarity. In empiricism's case, one would identify as an empiricist to establish continuity with Locke and Hume, though one could certainly extend backwards to Aristotle. And it doesn't mean you agree with everything said by these other people--nobody thinks an empiricist believes, with Locke, that God undergirds real essences or human rights. They _might_, but each empiricist selects highlights of his forebears. Take a made up ism, like inferentialism or radical empiricism--doesn't that seem to more be like the contention that an ism is a system? Sure, but look at how, e.g., DMB uses radical empricism--he uses it to historically sort predecessors, whether they used the term (like James) or not (like, if I'm not mistaken, Dewey). It's a rhetorical technique for historical solidarity, a mode of creating a _tradition_, the term I oppose to "system." I say an ism is diachronic, because it is a technique for creating links through history. I say a system is synchronic, because it is a technique for creating links throughout a single person's web of beliefs. Ian said: (BTW whilst I'm doing that, talking of closing down d iscussion - which I'm clearly not - have you read Hilary Lawson on "Closure" ? Any apparent closure is always temporary, for an immediate pragmatic purpose.) Matt: I absolutely agree about closure. That's the kind of thing Derrida was punting around in the 70s, and Rorty wrote about a bit in Consequences of Pragmatism, I think. I tend to think that people need to indulge in a little more ad hoc closure, going off into their own corners to think, lick their wounds, heal their feelings, and sort out what they actually _think_ rather than things they spouted off in the moment. The spouting is certainly dynamic, but there's not enough static latching work (so I think). Ian said: In fact (as you know from other channels) I very much see the evolution - from tradition - in anything useful - think MacIntyre ? That's why I like (sorry to mention it) the MoQ - that is precisely the kind of system / ism it is. In fact it is more than that - it "contains" its own history, as well as the processes for evolving ongoing history. MoQism. It has a narrative traditional coherence as well as systematic coherence (to me). Matt: Uh hunh, I know. And the thing that got this whole thing rolling was the pat on the back people give the MoQ for it "containing" its own history--I think that's a pretty lame pat. Because the fact of the matter is that a prior, primary point of agreement between all Pirsigians is the fundamental individuality of each philosopher--and as individual philosophers, as _individuals who live their own lives_, we already know quite well that we "contain" our own history and are an ongoing process evolving through history. Being explicit about the matter is great--that was historicism that began with Hegel. But my point about the "weird monster" is that as we became more self-conscious about historicism, and what it meant, shouldn't we also see that, for instance, it was just the idea of system inherent in Plato and explicit in Kant, that obscured all these years a proper appreciation of history, of narrative? That all this focus on synchronic _theory_ and logos was obscuring the equally fundamental conditions of diachronic _narrative_ and mythos? One might say that _narrative_ is primary--without the narrative of life in ZMM, there would have been no theory to arise and help. With narrative, it seems an easy thing to include theory. With theory, it seems easy, too, until you use the system metaphor to organize your theory as an all-embracing totality that includes _everything_: you get a self-transcendent system, a system that includes itself and it's death, itself and its progeny and its parents, a no-boundary boundary. It's the paradoxical nature of saying that your system includes itself and its not-itselfs, but that this isn't totalizing though it does include _everything_, that produces what I called a "weird monster." It's a rhetorical position that seems silly and needless--if I was starting to feel pushed in that direction, I'd head them off at the pass by saying with Steve that, "well, let's understand here that by 'Metaphysics of Quality' I mean a cavalcade of philosophical positions develped first by Robert Pirsig, as finite and contingent a being as the rest of us, and that I've chosen to pick up and develop further--I'm not talking about a hypostatized, static Form, just a series of assertions to be tested and refined." Which I take to be Pirsig's response when Baggini pressured him on just this point: BAGGINI: I was struck by an uncomfortable tension in LILA between the way in which the MOQ was presented as a static philosophy and the idea of dynamic quality. I think this tension was heightened by a tendency to present the MOQ as a complete system that you had totally worked out. For example, a phrase you often use, with many variants, is, “The Metaphysics of Quality says” as though the MOQ was a kind of philosophical Rosetta Stone and once you had it you could simply read off what it has to say about whatever philosophical problem confronts you. Do you think you made a mistake in presenting the MOQ in such static terms in LILA? PIRSIG: The alternative to “The Metaphysics of Quality says,” would be “I, Robert Pirsig, says,” and that repeated many times sounds worse to me. I don't understand this objection to a complete metaphysical system that someone has worked out. It seems to imply that some kind of confusion is preferable. It also seems to be an objection to the rhetorical style of the Metaphysics of Quality rather than a discovery of any falsehood in it, and in philosophy rhetorical styles are supposed to be irrelevant to the truth. If the term, “static” is being used here as it is used by the Metaphysics of Quality itself, then the answer is, “All metaphysical systems are static intellectual patterns. There isn't any other kind of metaphysics.” This is so because the MOQ describes intellect itself as a set of static patterns. Matt: I'm not _objecting_ to the Metaphysics of Quality because of Pirsig's choice in rhetorical presentation, but notice how Pirsig himself seems to obfuscate the fundamental point of ZMM, that rhetoric precedes dialectic-the-truth-grinder. All I perceive myself as doing is reapplying the point of ZMM to Lila, to reassert rhetoric, and then to assess the rhetoric of Lila. It seems to me that the point of ZMM was that synchronic Truth/logos was secondary to diachronic Rhetoric/mythos. Assuming that's the case, one can read me as clarifying Pirsig's above answer by eliminating his eristical misstep: "in philosophy rhetorical styles are supposed to be irrelevant to the truth." Wasn't the Good supposed to be _primary_ to Truth? I would further assert that it is the metaphor of _system_ that may in part play a role in his misstep: reading his answer, one might get the impression that from within the MoQ, intellect itself is a metaphysical system (by the properties of transference appropriate to "are" and "as" in the two separate statements). But why would we want to say that? I don't think Pirsig thinks that, but why all this mucking about with systems anyways? You, Ian, see a gain--I don't. I see missteps by Pirsig, by other Pirsigians, by pragmatists, and I see a reading of the history of philosophy as a story about the thrusting off of system in favor of tradition. I'm not objecting to the Metaphysics of Quality, I'm objecting to Pirsig's presentation, which as Pirsig notes, is a different thing altogether. However, I am trying to show its relevance to Pirsig's philosophy. Ian said: Are you simply saying that the "ism" words emphasizes the historical - evolved from tradition - nature of a philosophy (however "systematic" that philosphy is ?). Matt: Yeah, sure, that's "simply" what I'm saying. I know you like brevity, Ian, and tease me about how much I write, but I prefer to read philosophy that says stuff to digest, so I typically try and write that way, too. And you're extraordinary brevity, I might add, can be something of hindrance occasionally, too--there's little evidence for the reader to latch onto when they're attempting to suss out what you're saying. I will without a doubt admit that my style isn't always the most appropriate communication model, but I hope I say a lot more than your summary summations often suggest, because otherwise I'd think I spend a lot of time on nothing. 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