Marsha said to dmb:
'Shop Class as Soulcraft'? I've read Kant, Nietzsche, Hume, Descartes and
others when I was taking philosophy classes as an undergraduate student and
many others since, am I going to need to read 'Shop Class as Soulcraft' too?
dmb says:
Crawford's book is well worth reading but I posted a quote and offered an
explanation of it simply to make a point. I also think it's pretty neat that
the Crawford quote refers to a point Pirsig made in his book. I'd be happy if
you simply read the post and got the point. This is a simple matter of joining
a conversation, a matter of grappling with some common ideas, ideas already in
circulation. I'm sure others have made the same point too and in a very real
sense it hardly matters WHO said it or WHERE it was said. Your job is simply to
understand WHAT is being said. This is just as true if you're a waitress, a
mechanic or a philosopher. Since you have apparently missed the point - again -
I'll repeat it.
"Pirsig's mechanic is, in the original sense of the term, an idiot. Indee, he
exemplifies the truth about idiocy, which is that it is at once an ethical and
a cognitive failure. The Greek idios mean 'private', and an idiotes mean a
private person, as opposed to aperson in theior public role - for example, that
of a motorcycle mechanic. Pirsig's mechanic is idiotic because he fails to
grasp his public role, which entail, or shold, a relation of active concern to
others, and to the machine. He is not involved. It is not his problem. Because
he is an idiot.This still comes across in the related English words 'idiomatic'
and 'idiosyncratic', which similarly suggests self enclosure. For example, when
a foreigner asks him for directions, the idiot will reply idiomatically, rather
than refer to a shared coordinate system. H ealso lacks the attnetive oopeness
that seeks thing out in the shared world, as when Pirsig's mechanic 'barely
listened to the piston slap before saying, 'Oh yea
h. Tappets'. At bottom, the idiot is a solipsist." (Matthew Crawford, "Shop
Class as Soulcraft", page 98.) dmb explained: Rather than refer to a shared
coordinate system - for example the english language - the idiot will respond
with idoisnycratic meanings and defintions of her own. She might, for example,
define 'patterns" as "amorphous" or use "static" to mean "ever-changing". This
is a cognitive failure as well as ethical failure. Plus it's really annoying
and it's likely to draw unflattering comments from anyone who sees this idiocy.
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