Hey Ian, Matt said: What this local creation of "one use of DQ" from Pirsig cries out for is a systematic supplementation of a laundry list of uses, thereby moving us forward in "what Pirsig means."
Ian said: I like the "laundry list" idea. Anything too systematic or definitive would destroy it (the ineffable DQ), but archetypical examples would be useful. Matt: It might be worth saying that perhaps part of the reason for the queasy feeling people have towards too much systematicity of thought in interpreting Pirsig can be attributed to not making a distinction between Dynamic Quality and "Dynamic Quality." For example, if one makes that distinction, it makes no sense to say that one could destroy Dynamic Quality by systematizing Pirsig's use of "Dynamic Quality," because it immediately shows one how the thought cuts against the grain of what Pirsig intended--which was never the thought that _he_ was evacuating the full meaning of DQ. (This distinction between DQ and "DQ" may perhaps catch Joe's distinction between the "metaphysical description DQ/SQ" and what he took to my abandonment of it in favor of the "laundry list." I hope this and what follows suggests why I do not take the issue of abandonment to even arise.) You, Ian, didn't intend to say that, but I think you can see the slip between the two senses now between what I said and then you said. And I think this is a common slip for many, one too often (if, as I sincerely think, almost entirely unconsciously) used to cover against having to do the hard work of excavating in long chains of argument and close reading "what Pirsig means." It's easier just to "groove on it," to use the hippie DQ-lingo. There is, indeed, nothing wrong with just grooving on Pirsig's text. But grooving does not an interpretation make, not in the sense that is linked directly to knowing, and showing that one knows, "what Pirsig means." We don't all have to have that as our goal in life. It is, centrally, a goal in life for that lebensform called "academia," but amateurs set their own agendas, and grooving is a perfectly responsible way of discharging that responsibility, though _not_ if one also claims to static-pattern-know "what Pirsig means." As Marsha's supplied passage from the Oxford DVD suggests, we must distinguish between the cage of Pirsig's texts and the pastures of thought they open up. However, if there is to be any truth to the idea that _Pirsig's cage_ does open up beautiful pastures, then we indeed need to understand what that cage entails and does not entail. Otherwise, there's no sense in saying that these are beautiful pastures made possible to us _by Pirsig_. I think the joy gained out of Pirsig's epithet "philosophology" almost always comes from a reverse-snobbery that is as bad as the snobbery of the academics that preceded it in one's personal history. In the last few years, I've tried to exemplify through my behavior how one can have "philosophological knowlege" without the snobbery (at least, that was the idea); can both laud and uphold the standards of academic behavior and procedures without illegitimately overstepping and claiming that amateur philosophy is bunk and its practitioners merely bad academics. I think we in the MD should think more about what we each consider to be good amateur philosophy, because I think that one _does_ need to have a _separate_ sense of what that is alongside what professional philosophy is to make sure that one _isn't_ merely doing bad academics. So what I'm saying about DQ and "DQ" is that we should be fully able, as intellectuals, to supply a systematic representation of Pirsig's philosophy, and that this is in fact the necessary possibility presupposed by the use of the phrase "what Pirsig means." If one wants to defend the idea that they know "what Pirsig means," then it is on the basis of having a sense of a consistent line of reasoning in Pirsig's texts and words. This is a consistency that can be made explicit if one so chooses. However, this systematic consistency that undergirds the possibility of him having a coherent, non-contradictory philosophy that "means something," does not in any way cut against any of his insights about DQ or irrationality or madness. I think it is wrong to infer from the "ineffability of DQ," as Ian termed it, to the perniciousness of systematic thinking or scholarship and academia. I would again repeat my "let a hundred flowers bloom" approach to amateur philosophy. I would again emphasize how I do _not_ want to suggest that every member of the MD should have a responsibility to writing long prose on "what Pirsig means." I would now make explicit how one _can_, I think, in fact get Pirsig right in "what Pirsig means" when one is just grooving on him. However, if one can't also produce those long chains of reasoning, then while one might be right, one might also be wrong. The conventional way of showing the difference between the two is through those long chains. This, however, does _not_ also mean that people who _can_ produce those long chains ipso facto win the title of "I'm right about what Pirsig means." This would be tantamount to "I must be right since you might be wrong." What they have done in producing the long chain, however, is lend a kind of plausibility to their claims that is lacking in the goover's claims. And as a matter of static-pattern-knowing, the long-chain producers should eventually win because the idea is that good ideas eventually get good latching (and, on the flipside, the inability of good latching to appear should tell against it being a good idea). I think long chains are an important part of philosophy, but I also think there are a lot of other important parts to philosophy. What we shouldn't confuse is doing philosophy and figuring out "what Pirsig means." In the MD, we often just bundle it all up together. That's common practice in academia, too. But we need to be able to distinguish between the different claims in our contributions and the different kinds of things that would tell against them. Matt Moq_Discuss mailing list Listinfo, Unsubscribing etc. http://lists.moqtalk.org/listinfo.cgi/moq_discuss-moqtalk.org Archives: http://lists.moqtalk.org/pipermail/moq_discuss-moqtalk.org/ http://moq.org/md/archives.html
