Gents, I'm not changing the subject. But I'm going to approach it from a
different angle and dispense with the polemics for a change too.
Up to a point, there is an affinity between James's image (the human snake
coils over everything), the neo-pragmatic slogan (it's language all the way
down), and Pirsig's sand sorting analogy:
"To understand what he was trying to do it's necessary to see that PART of the
landscape, INSEPARABLE from it, which MUST be understood, is a figure in the
middle of it, sorting sand into piles. To see the landscape without seeing this
figure is not to see the landscape at all. To reject that part of the Buddha
that attends to the analysis of motorcycles is to miss the Buddha entirely.
... About the Buddha that exists independently of any analytic thought much has
been said - some would say TOO much, and would question any attempt to add to
it. But about the Buddha that exists WITHIN analytic thought, and GIVES THAT
ANALYTIC THOUGHT ITS DIRECTION, virtually nothing has been said, and there are
historic reasons for this. But history keeps happening, and it seems no harm
and maybe some positive good to add to our historical heritage with some talk
in this area of discourse." (ZAMM, p. 83 (Emphasis is Pirsig's))
dmb continues:
The Buddha that exists WITHIN analytic thought. This is what's interesting. In
Lila, this notion will become the operation of Dynamic Quality within the
scientific process itself, the co-operation of DQ and intellectual static
quality. But in ZAMM Pirsig is not yet using such terms and yet his central aim
to to expand and improve rationality by re-integrating "Quality" into it from
the ground up. This Buddha talk is not aimed at converting anyone to Buddhism
anymore than his comparisons between "Quality" and the Tao. What he's trying to
do is expand rationality or intellect.
"No, he did nothing for Quality or the Tao. What benefited was reason. He
showed a way by which reason may be expanded to include elements that have
previously been unassimilable and thus have been considered irrational." (ZAMM,
p. 257)
"Quality is the Buddha. Quality is scientific reality. Quality is the goal of
Art. It remains to work these concepts out into a practical, down-to-earth
context, and for this there is nothing more practical or down-to-earth than
what I have been talking about all along - the repair of old motorcycle."
(ZAMM, p. 276)
"I want to show that that classic pattern of rationality can be tremendously
improved, expanded and made far more effective through the formal recognition
of Quality in its operation." (ZAMM, p. 278)
"The difference between a good mechanic and a bad one, like the difference
between a good mathematician and a bad one, is precisely this ability to SELECT
the good facts from the bad ones on the basis of quality. .. I think that it
will be found that a formal acknowledgment of the role of Quality in the
scientific process doesn't destroy the empirical vision at all. It expands it,
strengthens it and brings it far closer to actual scientific practice." (ZAMM,
p. 281-2)
"... Dynamic Quality [is] the value-force that chooses an elegant mathematical
solution to a laborious one, or a brilliant experiment over a confusing,
inconclusive one ... Dynamic value is an integral part of science. It is the
cutting edge of scientific progress itself." (LILA, p. 366)
dmb resumes:
I take these examples literally. The mechanic, the mathematician, the scientist
and philosophers are all working within systems of rationality. They're all
doing intellectual work within the limits of language and reason. But Pirsig is
keen to get at "the Buddha that exists within analytic thought, and gives that
analytic thought its direction". This move solves a whole slough of
philosophical problems, but I think the main idea here is to improve actual
mechanics, scientists and philosophers. It's about bringing all your faculties
to bear and a deep engagement with whatever you're doing. It is aimed at down
to earth stuff, which a lofty and worthy goal. It's also exceedingly sane,
because that's where we live; practical, everyday reality.
And that, gents, is why I object to the neo-pragmatic slogan. Pirsig agrees
that our understanding of the world is a pile of analogies BUT he also says
that Quality is the generator of this mythos, guides the train that pulls the
boxcars full of analogies. The important idea here is that this central term
(Quality in the first book and Dynamic Quality in the second book) is outside
of language and outside of the mythos. This value-force is pre-intellectual and
yet he's asserting "the formal recognition of Quality" within intellectual
operations. That's what radical empiricism does. It makes the dynamic a crucial
phase in the overall cognitive process. It explains the relations between the
dynamic and static phases of experience as aspects of a single, co-operative
process. This "formal acknowledgment of the role of Quality in the scientific
process doesn't destroy the empirical vision at all. It expands it, strengthens
it and brings it far closer to actual scientific practice
."
Again, I take the slogan to be a negative epistemological statement. It doesn't
say the universe is made of words. It says that we can't get outside of
language in an epistemological sense. It says our truths can only be justified
within language and by language. But Pirsig is saying there is something
outside of language that IS epistemologically important, that is the generator
of language and this is a part of experience too. One of the ways he uses to
show that Quality is real by showing how the world can't function normally
without it and trying to effect a repair job on a mode of rationality that
functions badly without it. Rationality itself is the bike he's working on and
fixing it entails a formal acknowledgment of the role of Quality in the overall
cognitive process.
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