Hi Dan,
Dan said:
I don't know that I was attempting to avoid the problem so much as
I was attempting to show the problem doesn't exist if one takes the
time to go back and read the entire exchange in LILA'S CHILD
between RMP and DG. Rather than taking one sentence and using it
to oppose what Ron is saying and to say Robert Pirsig is backtracking,
it seems better to look at the more expansive picture: anytime we
talk about Dynamic Quality in static quality terms others may take
what is said and oppose it. So... ultimately... isn't it better just to see
for ourselves?
Matt:
I previously slid over your actual perception of Steve's response, so
let me say now that I think there might be a difference between your
"backtracking" and Steve's formulation of "backs off" (egged on, I
might emphasize, but Pirsig's words themselves, I hasten to remind).
I think Steve was trying to pose a problem in neutral
language--rather than a polemical phrasing like "backtrack" which
you attribute--but indicating however the directions he sees the
several passages pointing. Steve's rhetoric was of inquiry, not
judgement. And further, your interpretation of what Pirsig was
saying seemed only to coincide with what Steve was saying it said.
The difference, however, is that Steve (and I for that matter) sees a
problem that you don't. My intervention tried to bring out how I think
you dissolved a problem only by glossing away some of Pirsig's
conceptual positioning.
I can't see how you exactly engaged with that point, though, so I'm
unclear on how to further this angle of the conversation. When I
suggested that you wiped out valuing from DQ, you responded: "I'd
say that within the MOQ intellectually valuing reality isn't our
connection with reality. Dynamically valuing reality comes first." This
might be a typical Pirsigian formula, but I don't see how it helps with
the problem of DQ-as-betterness, which is what was at issue.
To help focus the problem, I can't figure out how to square your
correct remark about Steve ("[Steve] seemed to be bringing negative
value into the hot stove experience") with Pirsig's remark in the hot
stove passage: "Any person of any philosophic persuasion who sits on
a hot stove will verify without any intellectual argument whatsoever
that he is in an undeniably low-quality situation: that the _value_ of
his predicament is negative" (Mass Market ed., 75). I thought Steve
was saying something quite uncontroversial.
I suspect you have a subtle view on how DQ and static patterns hang
together (something along the lines of valuing without value), but I
hesitate to say that the problem of those who have failed to see
things that way yet is one of poor reading of Pirsig. In fact, what I'm
reading of you seems quite revisionary.
Matt
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