Steve said:
... I have given my reasoning for why I think that notion is incompatible with
other aspects of Pirsig's philosophy. Again, I am asking for YOUR reasoning or
your understanding of Pirsig's reasoning for how it could be possible to be out
of touch with DQ. Here is my reasoning again in case you want to engage with
it: (1) DQ is primary experience, the leading edge of experience (2) To say
that I am not in touch with DQ then is to say that my experience does not have
a leading edge. (3) How can that be when I am a set of static patterns left in
the wake of that leading edge of experience? If I begin where DQ ends, how can
I be out of touch with it?
dmb says:
(1) The first premise seems fine but I don't see how it leads to the second
premise.
(2) Since DQ is just another name for the leading of experience, to say one is
not in touch with DQ is to say one in not in touch with the leading edge of
experience. Your unstated premise seems to be that one can't be out of touch
with experience simply because it's experience. Why? How do you figure? I don't
see any reasoning at all, just a naked claim that defies the obvious. I mean,
haven't you ever heard about being comfortably numb or out of touch with your
own feelings or being oblivious to clues or people who can't take a hint?
People are blind, insensitive and oblivious in a million different ways.
Haven't you ever heard about the tragedy of living in the past or living for
some future goal, as opposed to being in the moment? How do you figure DQ has
some built-in guarantee about it? Just like all these other common complaints,
to say one is out of touch with DQ is to say we should be more sensitive and
more responsive to experience as it's felt and lived through, as
opposed to our thoughts about and interpretations of experience.
(3) These statements (disguised as questions) are completely bogus. Where did
you get the idea that you begin where DQ ends? DQ is your own primary
experience, the immediate flux of your life, not some external or objective
reality. The static patterns of which you are composed will include those SOM
glasses, which is your culture's habitual way of interpreting experience. You
are both. I mean, the MOQ's description of the self includes both so that one
is a complex forest of static patterns with the capacity to respond
dynamically. And there is no guarantee on either side. Your complex forrest can
be full of sickly little bushes or it can burn down and your capacity to
respond dynamically can be beaten out of you, so to speak, by the culture. One
can be stunted, warped or retarded in either realm.
I think your "reasoning" is based on a fundamental misconception of the MOQ's
basic ideas and operative terms. That why I keep quoting Pirsig and the other
philosophers, each of whom explains central terms like DQ and it's relation to
thought, it's relation to those interpretive glasses. And those glasses are the
problem; that's what creates the blind-spot to DQ. The glasses we wear were
forged by Plato, Aristotle, Descartes and 25 centuries of rationalism and
vicious intellectualism. We're talking about the Apollonian imbalance of
Nietzsche's complaints, the hipsters complaints about suits and squares,
William James's pragmatism as a mediator between the classic and romantic
thought styles and his radical empiricism as a move away from vicious
intellectualism and a return to the empirical earth of things. We're talking
about the disenchantment of the world and ll of my intellectual heros have
identified this problem one way or another, including the intellectual hero
whose w
ork is about heros, namely Joe Campbell. This is not just epistemology. It's a
cultural criticism that comes in many excellent flavors (I've only mentioned a
few of my favorites) and it doesn't even have to be identified by way of
philosophy. What really kills me about your denial is that Rorty's
anti-Platonism is basically aimed at the same basic problem. That's why it's so
inappropriate to use Rorty's against Pirsig. It's literally a matter of using
anti-Platonism against anti-Platonism.
In other words, I think Pirsig's claim about our culture's blind spot is well
supported and elaborated upon by a wide range of top-notch thinkers, even if
they don't discuss it in Pirsig's terms. I think the meaning of Pirsig's
complaints are deeply enriched by these other voices, especially because they
are NOT just singing in unison from the same hymn book. The basic theme is
obsolescence. We're operating with ways of thinking that were built for a
different time, a different culture, a different world. We've outgrown them and
things are getting mighty cramped. They don't necessarily use the same
metaphors as Pirsig, but they all are saying we need new glasses. Ironically,
this is true even with respect to Rorty's campaign against ocular metaphors.
Do you have any idea what I'm saying? To put it politely, I'm skeptical.
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