Hello everyone
On Sun, Oct 2, 2011 at 9:27 PM, Matt Kundert
<[email protected]> wrote:
>
> 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--
Dan:
Yes I see what you mean... although I took a form of "backtrack" from
your previous post which I mistakenly attributed to Steve. Yet, his
"backs off" indicates a kind of backtracking on the part of RMP with
his statement to the tune that stating Dynamic Quality is affirmative
is unwise.
Matt:
> but indicating however the directions he sees the
> several passages pointing. Steve's rhetoric was of inquiry, not
> judgement.
Dan:
As I intended mine to be... I didn't mean to be judgmental... I was
attempting to point out my own thoughts on RMP's statement from LC
(which although I haven't penetrated as deeply as perhaps I'd like
I've still given some thought to it over the years) and how it relates
to Dynamic Quality as not this, not that.
Matt:
> 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.
Dan:
I would be interested in knowing how you came to that conclusion. It
was my hope and intention not to dissolve the problem by glossing away
any of RMP's conceptual positioning but rather expanding on them. I
appreciate what Steve is saying. In fact, when I first read RMP's
response to my query I read it much the same way... that RMP was
backing off his earlier statements about Dynamic Quality. But after
going back re-reading our exchange a couple hundred times I came to
see (perhaps wrongly) that he isn't backing off so much as he is
expanding on his previous comments.
>Matt:
> 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.
Dan:
Fair enough. The point I was attempting to make is that we don't
always intellectually know what's better. Sure, we know that it is
better to look both ways before crossing a street and it is better not
to eat food that smells bad and it is better not to drink water that
tastes of gasoline. I always thought that is why RMP hammered so hard
on the hot stove experience... that it illustrates for us a direct
experience that most all the time we cover over with intellectual
knowing. We come to believe our way of intellectually valuing
experience is the only way. But knowing it is better to leap off a hot
stove isn't a matter of intellectual knowing... it is a Dynamic
knowing that gets us off.
The way I see it, the problem of Dynamic Quality as betterness is the
insistence that we always intellectually know what's better. That
comes later though. Direct experience is devoid of conceptual knowing.
I've always kind of thought that's where Joe is going with his Dynamic
Quality as emotions thesis... we don't really know intellectually that
we are in love... we just feel it. We know it directly. No one has to
tell us. In fact, if we intellectually examine the feelings of love
they are quite irrational.
>Matt:
> 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.
Dan:
Of course. But note the term "intellectual argument." The difficulty
(as I see it) resides in pointing to that which comes before
intellectual argument and evaluation. I agree that the experience of
sitting upon a hot stove is a negative experience. As far as I can
see, and as you say, that is quite uncontroversial. But that negative
experience isn't what gets the person off the hot stove. That comes
later.
> Matt:
> 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.
Dan:
Really! I'm a bit taken aback. I'm certainly not attempting to revise
the MOQ... I am merely pointing out what seems to me a logical
conclusion in my reading of Robert Pirsig, both in his two novels as
well as his subsequent writings in LILA'S CHILD and his ongoing work
with Ant. And of course I could well be reading RMP wrongly... it
could be that I am the one reading him poorly. I certainly didn't mean
to insinuate others were doing so.
Thank you,
Dan
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