Matt said to dmb:
..I wonder whether you think I successfully dissolved raised hackles.
dmb says:
If I follow your thinking, intellectual patterns out of the natural sciences
tend to have a "flavor" of pre-existence. (People tend to think that a lot of
the stuff in "nature" was around before we personally were.)" As Dan said, this
is where "you seemed to be saying that certain intellectual patterns pertaining
to natural sciences hold a higher value on account of 'stuff in nature' being
around before we personally were". That's what raised his intellectual hackles.
You "used 'flavor' to try and suggest the idea that there wasn't anything
better about intellectual patterns that extend in this way," you said, because
you "don't want to suggest that the natural sciences have better patterns or
something. It's just a different taste," you said, "like people who like
chocolate on their pancakes, but butterscotch on their ice cream". My approach
to the issue was very different in that it heavily emphasized the empirical
basis of common sense and the natural science. If two rival
visions are equally supported by empirical evidence and there is no other way
to decide the issue, then it becomes a matter of taste but your version seems
to ignore the empirical dimension. To say that scientific truths are just a
matter of taste is to present a very different, very un-empirical vision, one
that lives right next door to solipsism. This is Rortyism, not the MOQ. It's
like the difference between no empiricism and radical empiricism. It's like the
difference between truth as a compliment we pay to sentences and truth as
agreement with reality. You're always talking about the MOQ in terms of Rorty's
view and this is almost always a philosophical train wreck.
dmb said:
Dan has made it pretty darn clear that he doesn't do philosophological jargon,
so Matt's concluding sentences seem intentionally obscure. [Matt had said
Pirsig is "a post-Kantian, quasi-Hegelian empiricist, which is pretty close to
just saying he's a Deweyan pragmatist".]
Matt replied:
Well, I don't know--should those of us, like yourself and I, who know a little
philosophology stop alluding to the philosophological context when others don't
care about it? I'm not sure why. I doubt Dan skips those parts in ZMM and
Lila just because he doesn't care for them. (I'm, of course, imputing this to
Dan based on Dave's view of Dan, not my view of Dan.) And besides, as Dan
knows since he always addresses all of his posts to everyone, our posts are
read by more than just the person we are seemingly directly engaged with, and
so I'm not sure why writers should just limit themselves to one audience member
only at all times.
dmb says:
Seriously? You really don't see why obscure jargon is a problem? Is there
ANYONE here who is going to find such labels helpful? I seriously doubt it.
Without any explanation as to the meaning and the relevance of such
philosophological categories, your response to Dan is just pretentious
name-dropping. I think Dan is a very intelligent dude who understands the MOQ
as well as anyone and I'm sure he's perfectly capable of understanding the
ideas behind those labels. Phrases like "post-Kantian, quasi-Hegelian
empiricist" can work as a neat form of shorthand if you're talking to those who
are familiar with such jargon but that's not who you're talking to. At best,
using that kind of jargon makes it look like you don't care about being clear
in your communications and I even suspect that your aim is to be baffling and
obscure. From here, it looks like a smug evasion tactic. What's more, I'm not
even sure this jargon makes sense as jargon. "Isn't it oxymoronic to even say
"Hegelian
empiricist", I asked.
Matt replied:
I don't think it's oxymoronic. Like I said, I'm thinking particularly of
Dewey, who was deeply impressed by Hegel's historicism and holism. Think of it
this way: pre-Kantian empiricism is loaded down with the Myth of the Given.
Pragmatists are, in some fashion, empiricists who are not so loaded. That
means something purified empiricism of that Myth. I think Hegel is someone who
can do that purification. Was Hegel an empiricist? Well, only in a
post-Kantian sense, following out Kant's claim that the only one who can be an
empirical realist is a transcendental idealist. But I'm not really interested
in what pigeonhole Hegel really falls into, only with the philosophical
traditions he played an important role in initiating (historicism and holism).
dmb says:
It's not quite apparent or obvious but once again you are trying to convert
Pirsig into some kind of post-Analytic neo-Pragmatist. There is a group of
Analytic philosophers (your heros Wilfred Sellars and Robert Brandom among
them) and they have tried to revise "absolute empiricist philosophy in the
light of Hegel". Everyone who did philosophy in James' and Dewey's time was
influenced by Hegel. It was all the rage among English-speaking people
everywhere, from St. Louis to Oxford. But their (James and Dewey) sensible
emphasis on the cultural and historical context of knowledge becomes a kind of
unhinged relativism in the hands of the post-structuralists and the new
historicists. I mean, people draw very different conclusions about the extent
and meaning of contextualism. The similarities between Pirsig and these other
neo-Pragmatists is mostly just a superficial resemblance based on some common
enemies. But, following them, you've landed in a very different place. Their
Hegel
ian revisions are mostly a matter of exorcising their own demons, of
disavowing the assumptions and projects of their own quasi-Postivistic
tradition.
Think about this way; when Pirsig gets around to the point where he is
explicitly identifying his MOQ with James's radical empiricism, with mainstream
American Pragmatism and Instrumentalism, he also thinks it's worth mentioning
Hegel in order to rule him out as saying something comparable. Why do you
suppose he felt the need to deny Hegel at that point? The comparison to Hegel
isn't crazy because Phaedrus was some kind of Monist and the MOQ is a Monism in
some sense, among other things. It's plausible enough that Pirsig feels the
need to explicitly deny it just as he's identifying with pragmatism.
"The MOQ is a continuation of the mainstream of twentieth century American
philosophy, It is a form of pragmatism, of instrumentalism, which says the test
of the true is the good. It adds that this good is not a social code or some
intellectualized Hegelian Absolute. It is direct everyday experience." (Lila
366)
dmb asked:
.., who are the critics? Who sees the specter of solipsism?
Matt replied:
They might be fictions of my imagination. However, ...a wrong turn could have
landed Pirsig in this or that philosophological quandary. ...
dmb says:
So the "aggressive critics" turn out to be vague and distant memories (or even
fictions) who are concerned about hypothetical turns that could have been
taken. Dude, sometimes I think you're just making this stuff up. If a statement
and claim is going to be that vague and flimsy, maybe you ought to think twice
about posting it. I mean, you've got to know that people are going to ask
questions. That's just the nature of a discussion group, don't you think?
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