Arlo said:
All discourse communities have topical boundaries, some very narrow and some
quite broad, but it is this topical idea that defines the boundaries of the
community. Typically, this is self-enforced, but when self-enforcement fails
there is usually some authority to reenforce these boundaries. (If you go into
an PTA meeting and the everyone is talking about their sexual liaisons from the
weekend, some authority will have to move the group back into its topical
domain).
Krimel replied:
I am not at all sure what "topical boundaries" one could put around a
metaphysics. Isn't that a term that includes, well, everything. One could argue
about tone and context of course which is what seems to be happening but I
don't see how topical boundaries apply to either metaphysics or Quality.
dmb says:
Our topic is Pirsig's MOQ and metaphysics covers everything so there are no
topical boundaries for MOQ-discuss? Is that your argument? I think this
reasoning is specious. There's probably a latin name for that particular
fallacy, but I don't know what it is. It would probably be something like
"defining the finite as infinite", except in latin the phrase would be
sing-songy and humorous. But it is true that the MOQ is very broad and since it
is presented in narrative form, with lots of specific comments about sex,
politics, religion, history and cultural differences, anyone should be able to
find something that's within the boundaries, relevant to the topic, AND
interesting to them personally. The philosophical picture that Pirsig paints
could be brought to bear on just about anything, so there really is no excuse
for being irrelevant.
Krimel replied to Arlo:
...I think your analogy of AA and PTA meetings is flawed. What you say might
apply well to face to face meetings of people who are trapped in direct contact
with each other and for whom time is an immediate concern. While virtual
communities do mimic real life communities I think some of the "real" life time
constraints don't apply here. Deleting and ignore posts is not time consuming
and is hardly the problem it is in real world meetings.
dmb says:
I think the point is that organizations like AA and the PTA have a particular
purpose and the boundaries are drawn to serve that purpose. This is true of our
little "discourse community" too, of course. Maybe some kind of philosophical
organization would make for a better analogy. The whole profession is one big
discourse community and each of the scholarly journals is basically a more
specific sub-conversation, a community within a community. This forum is very
analogous to a particular journal, except it's much more casual and we don't
have to worry about professional standards and footnotes and all that. Its
purpose is not so broad as the discussion of philosophy in general, although
it's hard to think of a philosophy that couldn't illuminate the MOQ in some
way, by contrast if nothing else. But this is a philosophical community, not a
fan club or a social club. People can't stop being people and there's nothing
wrong with being friendly. As Pirsig sees it (and James), you
r philosophical views are always going to largely determined by your
perspective. In that sense, our personal biographies can never be separated out
of our philosophical views. But the purpose of this community is primarily
intellectual because, obviously, a particular metaphysics defines the area of
discourse.
On this analogy, we get a new issue of the journal everyday. (Let's call it
"The Quality Quarterly") And every time we open a new issue we find that only
some of the articles are philosophical and only some of them are about the MOQ.
Some days it's hard to find anything on the topic. If you tore out every
off-topic page, there'd be nothing left. If it were a publication, you'd
scratch your head and wonder how long it's been since those writers read their
own mission statement. You'd think those authors had forgotten the purpose of
the publication.
I'm gonna start a new publication: "Me Magazine". It'll be by me, for me and
about me. Wanna guess who will grace the cover? Hope it goes better than my
last project. I tried to start a chapter of Narcissists Anonymous but it failed
miserably. Who could have known they'd hate anonymity so much? I had a huge
mailing list but nobody showed up. Hey, I wonder if those narcissists would be
interested in a magazine about me. Where did I put that list?
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