[Ron to Marsha] AHHH your true intention is revealed in your baited question. What your point to Horse, IS, What is considered philosophical is subjective and relative And he can go pound sand....
[DMB] How [this quote] is being used by Marsha, however, is not at all clear. [Arlo] Well, its obvious even its unclear. Its a direct reply to Horse's chastising her: "Why don't you engage in philosophical (or at least vaguely intellectual) discussion on a philosophy mailing list." Interestingly, there are several ways to interpret her response of "is this quote philosophic?". "Is discussing this quote an example of philosophical discussion?" While it would still remain dependent on the content of said discussion, Marsha might be attempting to uncover 'permissible' topics upon which she hopes to engender the philosophic discourse that Horse has demanded. "Are quotes philosophic or non-philosophic?" In this case, Marsha might be asking whether paragraphs of text can be said to be philosophic or not through example. The question presumes "philosophic" is a quality of the text, making some quotes 'yes' and some quotes 'no'. "Is my posting this quote an example of philosophic discussion?" I toyed with this one, because (like you) it seemed Marsha's response was directly sarcastic to Horse's charge. Something like "[Sneer] Am I being philosophic now, you twit?" As you probably deduced yourself, it's possible a sly attempt to try to back Horse into admitting that because (1) the Tao cannot be named (2) the "sloppy thinking and poor reasoning exhibited by [Marsha] and others... [and her] response to most reasoned and reasonable commentary is this sort of inflammatory rubbish" should count to Horse as "philosophic discussion". [Ron] It has nothing to do with the subjectivity of what is philosophical at this point... [Arlo] In that same vein, suggesting a 'quote' can be 'philosophic' regardless of how it is used, by her own recent comment, means every 'quote' is philosophic, there is no such thing as a non-philosophic quote because its all relative- philosophic to me, not philosophic to you- therefore a 'philosophy' discussion group really is just a 'whatever' discussion group. In other words, "Hey, Horse, as long as I, Marsha, say something is philosophic, then its philosophic, so bugger off." But let's get back to the parallels between "is this quote philosophic?" and "is this paint artistic?" and "is this note musical?". In many ways (if not in all ways), this question is identical to the question "is this art?" Same question. Could apply to text, paint or music. Right? But is this a question Pirsig would ask? Do the arguments presented in ZMM/LILA bear out a question that directly implies that 'art' (or 'philosophicness') is a characteristic of an object? I'd say absolutely not, quite to the contrary. The question may be, where does the quality of 'philosophicness' reside? In the text (as Marsha's question implies)? Or, given Marsha's anticipated retreat into relativism, in it-is-because-I-say-it-is? Or in the deployment and artfulness of the activity (as I suggest)? I surely must be pointing out the obvious when I offer this from ZMM. "And so: he rejected the left horn. Quality is not objective, he said. It doesn't reside in the material world. [In the text] Then: he rejected the right horn. Quality is not subjective, he said. It doesn't reside merely in the mind. [In relativistic it-is-because-I-say-it-is]" I'd add that Pirsig goes on to say: "Quality is not a thing. It is an event." [the deployment and artfulness of the activity] As DMB pointed out, in ZMM Pirsig carefully and artfully deploys quotes from the Tao Te Ching to improve the Quality of the dialogue, to enrich the intellectual patterns he is crafting, to expand one's understandings of 'experience'. In this context, the dialogue is superbly philosophic, and the quotes serve (like paint or notes) this effort very well. In this example, as in Pirsig's own reasoning, the Quality of the quotes is neither 'in the text' nor 'in relativistic it-is-because-I-say-it-is', but in the EVENT, the crafting and deployment of the text and ideas. Now, go back and reread this entire thread. Do you see any similarity between the way Pirsig deploys the quote and the way its been deployed here? [Marsha] You might call that 'contextual', or possibly 'relative' or 'subjective'. [Arlo] YOU might. I would not. Moq_Discuss mailing list Listinfo, Unsubscribing etc. http://lists.moqtalk.org/listinfo.cgi/moq_discuss-moqtalk.org Archives: http://lists.moqtalk.org/pipermail/moq_discuss-moqtalk.org/ http://moq.org/md/archives.html
