Krimel said to Carrie:
...Nietzsche's chief complaint against science was that after having
disposed of the theological Absolute, science was doing nothing more than
building a new set of Absolutes in the form of the "Law of Science."
Nietzsche thought this was absurd because every Absolute formulation did
little more than answer questions asked in a purely human voice.
Carrie said to Krimel:
yes, well, he was operating from a subject object perspective, was he not?
Just because an absolute is human, is not proof that it's non-existent. In
fact, rather the opposite. The law of gravity could equally be called the
absolute of gravity. As it's the bedrock of our understanding of the way
the physical universe flies. Maybe one day there will come a unifying
theory, and then we'll have a new absolute. I'd have no problem with that.
But then, I have no problem believing in ghosts, either.
Krimel replied:
I don't know that Nietzsche was an SOMer or that it really matters. I think
his point was that theology claims to provide universal absolutes but in
fact they are just human inventions to satisfy human ends. He was equally
critical of what the sciences had become. He saw the doing exactly what you
describe, replace one set of imaginary absolutes for another. As long as we
keep trying to substitute one absolute for another we are just spinning our
wheels. This is part of my objection to some peoples notions of what the MoQ
is all about.
dmb says:
No, he wasn't a SOMer and yes, it really matters. His rejection science as
the new absolute is a rejection of scientific objectivity. That's what
rejecting SOM is all about. Carrie alludes to the earliest version of this,
when the road trip has just begun and Pirsig tells his ghost story about
gravity. The SOMer doesn't know it's a ghost. He thinks Newton discovered
the law of gravity but Pirsig says that Newton invented the law gravity.
That's the difference between an absolute and a human convention, which is a
mighty big difference. The law of gravity is Newton's ghost, not a
pre-existing objective reality. (Thanks, Isaac. Your law is extremely
useful.)
[Krimel]
I think Nietzsche would approve of Pirsig's ghost story. As he puts it in
the Cause and Effect section of the Gay Science, "We call it "explanation,"
but it is "description" that differentiates us from older phases of
knowledge and science."
A little later he adds, " Cause and effect-there probably never is such a
duality. In truth, a continuum stands before us from which we isolate a
couple of pieces, just as we always perceive-a motion only as isolated
points-that is, we really do not see it, but infer it." It is this notion of
duality highlighting aspects of continua that Nietzsche shares with Pirsig
and Lao Tsu.
Pirsig sees the classic and romantic united in the perception of Quality.
The continua of subject and objects he unites as experience. Seeking a
duality that illuminates this central term he, like the latter-day Taoists
selects the active and passive. But in each case his approach is the same.
It is what makes what he is doing a metaphysic at all.
Nietzsche's chief target is Platonic dualism or the view that experience is
a shadow of some higher reality. The triangles we draw on our slates are
poorly made copies of some absolute and perfect triangle. His objection to
science is that it does not deny that absolute realm so much as it tries to
access it through successive approximations. Rather than rejecting the
Platonic ideal out right, it holds it out as a limit or a target to aim for.
Nietzsche rejects this as teleology. He would also reject Pirsig's claim,
"Neither is there a quarrel between the Metaphysics of Quality and the
'teleological' theories which insist that life has some purpose."
Krimel said To Carrie:
Nietzsche thought the "universe" the entire cosmic order was meaningless and
purposeless. But he thought that eventually people could come to understand
how liberating and joyous this could be.
dmb says:
Well, not exactly. The rejection of absolutes, theological or scientific,
doesn't destroy all meaning so much as it forces a "revaluation of all
values". The rejection of universal values isn't quite the same as a
rejection of any and all values, but it does mean you have to have some
serious re-thinking to do.
[Krimel]
Yeah, so far so good. I would add this is what makes Nietzsche one of the
fathers of existentialism. The accepting and rejecting of values is for the
individual to decide and Values are not some externals waiting to be
discovered. It is also what links Nietzsche to the phenomenologists who
attempt to bracket their assumptions so as to avoid letting them serve as
absolutes.
[dmb]
I like Stanford's description here because the common misconception of
Nietzsche as a nihilist paints him as a destroyer who's going around
indiscriminately smashing everything to pieces with his hammer. But if the
hammer is a diagnostic tool, an instrument to increase the physician's
sensitivity or perceptivity, then Nietzsche is not a destroyer of values but
a concerned expert. He's looking for what's hollow and what's not. Pirsig
uses no hammer metaphors but I think he takes up a very similar position.
Instead of tapping to find out what's hollow and what's still intact, Pirsig
calls for a fair dusting off and an impartial re-examination.
"...the Metaphysics of Quality concludes that the old Puritan & Victorian
social codes should not be followed [or attacked] blindly . They should be
dusted off and re-examined, fairly and impartially, to see what they were
trying to accomplish and actually did accomplish towards building a stronger
society. ...These moral bads and goods are not just 'customs'. They are as
real as rocks and trees."
[Krimel]
The portrait of Nietzsche as a nihilist is hardly unfair or misleading.
Nietzsche identifies three kinds of nihilism. The reactive kind, which is
really what you are talking about above, it is the knee jerk reaction of the
priests and followers of the status quo. He sees a transitional nihilism in
which the old static ideas are in shambles and nothing has been found to
replace them. He calls this phase a "pandemonium of free-spirits." This
transitional phase ushers in the final phase of active nihilism, the age of
Zarathustra and the ubermensch.
Nietzsche certainly taps a passel of idols with his hammer and finds them
mostly wanting. But much of what he does embrace is hardly peaches and
cream. He wants to adopt the master mentality and a kind of machismo. He
proposed the idea of the eternal return and the will to power.
The Pirsig quote you present above is more in keeping with Gadamer, who
argues that the static qualities of tradition society often work toward our
benefit and promote our thriving as individuals.
Krimel said to Carrie:
...In part what he [Nietzsche] was about was having people stop looking up
to authority, custom or the cosmic order to tell them how to live their
lives. Whether the universe has a purpose or not is really none of my
concern. I have purposes and projects of my own. Even if the cosmos has no
purpose what-so-ever, I do and I hope you do as well.
dmb says:
"And what is good, Phaedus, And what is not good - Need we ask anyone to
tell us these things?"
Nihilism is actually a product of the world view these guys are rejecting.
Not the view they advocate. These guys are talking about the genealogy of
morals, the evolution of values. Not absolute standards, universal morals or
objective truths but the varieties and strains and conflicting forces in a
complex jungle of developing values. Nihilism means no values at all, so
that's not the right word. That label does not comport with the content of
their work. Not that they were working together, of course, but this can be
said about both of them. Nietzsche's hammer would be quite pointless if
nothing were left in tact and everything was hollow. And there is nothing
new about the view that all values are hollow anyway. That's the problem,
not the solution. Roughly speaking, Krimel has it backwards.
[Krimel]
I might agree that Pirsig would reject nihilism but Nietzsche is another
story. His nihilism does not mean as you put it "no values at all." If means
that values are not to be found in external absolutes like, Gods, scientific
laws, or Platonic Ideals. As he puts it, "After Buddha was dead, his shadow
was still displayed in a cave for centuries-a colossal, horrible shadow. God
is dead. But as is the way of human beings, there may still be caves for
millennia in which his shadow is displayed. And we-we must still defeat even
his shadow!"
This nursing of shadows is what priests do. It is the response of
fundamentalists of every sort. And I fear it is what you would have Pirsig
doing, replacing the dead God with a shadow of meaning, purpose and values
that are external. Values are not in the world they are in life and the
living that we inject into the world though our meaning giving activities.
[dmb]
"From the perspective of subject-object science, the world is a completely
purposeless, valueless place. There is no point to anything. Nothing is
right and nothing is wrong. Everything is just functions, like machinery.
There is nothing morally wrong with being lazy, nothing morally wrong with
lying, with theft, with suicide, with murder, with genocide. There is
nothing morally wrong because there are no morals, just functions."
As Carrie rightly points out, "...'meaningless and devoid of purpose' is
exactly how science looks at nature. And the laws of cause and effect
having an objective reality..." It seems to me that Krimel is pretty good as
an inadvertent spokesman for the sort of this scientific nihilism. But as a
spokesman for Nietzsche or Pirisg? Not so much.
[Krimel]
As noted above I don't think you are characterizing Nietzsche well at all.
In fact it is in large measure as a response to his nihilism that
existentialism arose as a way of reasserting meaning and purpose back into
life. Meaning and purpose are not externals that arise within us or goals to
which we can aspire. As I said previously, whether the cosmos has a purpose
or not is irrelevant to my personal life and projects.
Krimel replied to Carrie:
Those weren't his examples so I am sorry if they sounded that way. I may be
stretching Nietzsche to the breaking point here but the way I see it. In a
great many situations realism works really well. Why not adopt it as a
perspective when it is? In other situations it doesn't and I become all
idealistic. Really I think that is what Pirsig' gallery is all about. My
appreciation for any particular painting on the wall is largely a matter of
how I feel at the moment. We are capable on many moods and many
perspectives. Why should we feel the compulsion to cling to only one?
dmb says:
Interesting you should put it that way because "perspectivism" is the
epistemology position shared by Nietzsche and pragmatists like Pirsig,
James, Dewey, etc. That's what Pirsig's gallery-of-truths analogy
illustrates so well. Stanford says the third essay in his book "On the
Genealogy of Morals", "contains one of Nietzsche's clearest expressions of
'perspectivism' - the idea that there is no absolute, 'God's eye'
standpoint from which one can survey everything that is. Dewey brilliantly
mocked this "God's eye" view by simply giving it a nickname: "immaculate
perception".
But stretching Nietzsche's (or anyone's) intended meaning to the breaking
point is NOT a different perspective. Getting his idea backwards or turning
it upside down is NOT a different perspective. It's just a distortion of
somebody else's perspective. I mean, perspectivism does NOT say that nobody
can be wrong about anything. It doesn't mean that all opinions are equally
valid. It just means that there are multiple truths and that those truths
can't be universally applied, have limited applications, and can never
exhaust the number true things that could be said about whatever it is
you're looking at. It certainly doesn't mean we can toss a salad of words
and call it a perspective, call it my truth, of whatever. These guys want to
loosen things up in a very dramatic way but they are not THAT
epistemologically promiscuous. They still have standards. They not going to
get in bed with just any old concept. Nietzsche really was a certain kind of
elitist, after all, and in his own way Pirsig is very interested in what's
best too. Apathetic nihilists they are not.
[Krimel]
Nietzsche perspectives are ways of looking at things. That is what a picture
in a gallery is. It is a point of view framed in a certain way. It is
meaningless to say that this one does not belong or that one doesn't belong.
Your version of Pirsig offers the MoQ as a perspective hanging there on the
wall in a frame. I would say instead the Pirisg offers a description of the
gallery. By showing the way that opposites can be united, he shows us why
these picture are hanging in this gallery. For Nietzsche there is no fixed
set of values that can guide us in the interpretation of any of the
pictures. Each is appreciated in its own terms.
He says, "How far the perspectival character of existence reaches, or even
whether existence has any other character; whether an existence, without
Interpretation, without "sense," becomes precisely "nonsense"; whether, on
the other hand, all existence is not essentially an interpreting
existence--this cannot be figured out and rightfully so even by the most
diligent and painfully conscientious analysis and self-examination of the
intellect since in this analysis the human intellect cannot help seeing
itself under its own perspectival forms and only in them."
A little later he adds, " But I think that today we are at least far from
the laughable presumption of decreeing from our corner that one is allowed
to have perspectives only from this corner. Rather, the world has once more
become "infinite" for us-inasmuch as we cannot exclude the possibility that
it contains infinite interpretations."
You might consider clipping that last one out and taping it to your
refrigerator.
Krimel said to Carrie:
Pirsig highlights the affinity, I would say identity, of DQ and chaos when
he says, "To cling to Dynamic Quality alone apart from any static patterns
is to cling to chaos." A quote that lies outside the orthodox cannon of the
MoQ.
Carrie replied:
.. well that is interesting. not just the quote, but there's an orthodox
cannon. Sounds religious! Is the creed and practice of the MoQist online
somewhere? Or is the knowledge bequeathed in levels, like with scientology?
(jk)
dmb says:
Well, Carrie, Krimel is probably talking about me. I've repeatedly
criticized Krimel (and Marsha) for misunderstanding and misusing the key
terms of the MOQ.
{Krimel]
As I have challenged your claim to a monopoly on them.
[dmb]
Having said that, I'm pretty sure that Krimel's equation (DQ = chaos) is a
mistake. And if he doesn't denounce it by dawn, he shall be excommunicated,
drawn and quartered, and the scattered quarters shall be left for the wolves
to eat.
[Krimel]
As I said elsewhere it is clear Pirsig doesn't think much of the term
either. But rejection of a term is not the same as rejecting what it
signifies. My argument has always been that what Pirsig describes as the
dynamic aspect of Quality is chaotic. That is not the only term I would
apply I would add analog, irrational, heuristic but these are not to be
taken as definitions. They are descriptions. For example take this one:
"Biological evolution can be seen as a process by which weak Dynamic forces
at a subatomic level discover stratagems for overcoming huge static
inorganic forces at a superatomic level."
If you politely ignore the personification and anthropomorphism, this IS a
statement of deterministic chaos, the Butterfly Effect.
[dmb]
But seriously, the fuller context of the quote would make it very clear that
Pirsig is not equating DQ and chaos. He making a case for the necessity of
static pattens. If I represented an orthodox interpretation of the MOQ, this
quote would be the John 3:16 of my canon. I've fired it at Marsha many, many
times.
[Krimel]
One hardly needs to make the case for the necessity of SQ. If anything
Pirsig might have spent more time waxing on about its virtues. As it stands
he mentions SQ and its forms, 37 times in Lila as opposed to 93 references
to DQ and more than 100 uses of the word Dynamic, which he always
capitalizes, by itself.
[dmb]p
As I read it, the idea is not to equate DQ with chaos but to say that we
need static quality. Life without static quality will degenerate into into
chaos. The DQ isn't the chaos so much as the ALONE part, you know?
[Krimel]
Uh, no, it's what you get when order is removed.
[dmb]
That's largely what Lila is all about, the static pattens. ZAMM ends with a
metaphysical system consisting of one undefined term.
[Krimel]
And that term is Quality.
Both ideas, static and dynamic as introduced as modifiers.
Krimel said to Carrie:
...It is pretty clear that Pirsig doesn't understand chaos the way Nietzsche
and the chaos theorists do, he shares your confusion and you can hear it
when he says, "It doesn't make sense."
dmb says:
I'm pretty sure you're using the term in a scientific and mathematical
sense, but that's not how Pirsig or Nietzsche would use it unless they'
actually talking about physics or maybe the philosophy of science. But
philosophy is not science and these guys are philosophers, not scientists.
And this is a philosophical discussion group, not a science forum. If anyone
is to be blamed for using "chaos" in a confusing and inappropriate way, I
think it's Krimel. How does Krimel figure it's okay to describe Pirsig's
undefined mystical entity (DQ = chaos) in terms of chaos theory or coin
tosses? Does that strike anyone else as totally absurd? Like putting money
in the bank of a river, the wrongness of Krimel's misconception is funny and
tragic at the same time. Imagine cash floating toward the open sea.
[Krimel]
Actually I was using the term in Nietzsche's sense. Is it ok to quote him? I
thought that's what we were talking about.
"Chaos not in the sense that it lacks necessity, but rather in the sense
that it lacks order, articulation , form , beauty , wisdom , and whatever
else our aesthetic anthropomorphisms might say. As judged by our reason, the
unlucky casts of the dice are by far the rule, the exceptions are not the
secret purpose."
But what you say above is the sort of thing that makes it hard to talk to
you. It shows a first class arrogance grounded in second rate thinking. It
is really annoying. My problem with your approach is that it focuses
entirely on the "lucky casts."
Carrie said to Krimel:
...But while quality is defined as undefinable, we all do have an idea of
what it means to do good. And what it means to just randomnly do any old
thing. We have common understanding of the terms that seems to say they are
opposite one another.
Krimel replied:
...the issue of definition is important. I think widely over stated and
misunderstood. I think the problem is not confined to Quality. As I said a
while back in another thread. The dog that can be named is not the constant
dog. Definitions are never absolute. They are always fuzzy. They indicate
they do not prescribe.
[dmb says:]
No, that's just a weird application of your scientific nihilism and it has
nothing to do with Pirsig's refusal to define the MOQ's central term. Using
"dog" interchangeably with "Quality" or the "Tao" would be provocative and
edgy if it made any sense at all.
Let me see if I follow your reasoning here, Krimel. As I read it, you are
saying,
A) Dogs and everything else, including definitions, cannot be defined any
more than the indefinable, mystical reality can.
B) Therefore, you are not required to use words correctly or otherwise make
sense when discussing philosophy.
Is that about right?
[Krimel]
B does not follow from A. But where is Craig when you need him.
Definitions are always fuzzy sets. The fuzz on their edges varies in
permeability. In the language of mathematics terms are invented to minimize
permeability. In poetry language is used to maximize it. Philosophy lies
somewhere in between. But communication of any sort is always a gamble. The
always remains the possibility of misunderstanding. You cannot define this
away. Any word you substitute for Tao applies. The name is never the thing.
In Saussure's semiotics he is clear that "signifiers" (words) always refers
to a "signified" which is an internal state not an external event.
Signifiers slide. Meanings are not fixed by them but always negotiated. That
is what dialogue it for. It is a cybernetic system of approximation and
negotiation of meanings. The static words of Lila are meaningless. We refer
to them here as a starting point for dialogue; a process of sharing the
meaning each of us has created in response to what Pirsig has written.
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