[DMB] One of the objections sometimes raised (against an intellectually guided society) is that some ideas are bad ideas. Intellectual static patterns of low quality should be trumped by social patterns, they might add. But, again, we can never discern the difference between good ideas and bad ideas without intellect. That's what we mean by intellectual values. It's not that we're supposed to love every idea just because it's an idea.
[Arlo] The irony, of course, is that the same people who condemn 'intellect' on the grounds that some ideas are bad, and the same people that, on those grounds, demand that social patterns dominate intellectual patterns... these are the same people that turn and say that all 'interpretations' of Pirsig are equally valid, that there is no way to discern who is right and who is wrong, its all just a matter of opinion. Witness John who continues to not only dwell in ZMM's problem space, but he has naturalized it into the way things are. Its no longer a problem, people are either 'classical' or 'romantic' and rather than unite these into one the best we can do is help classical people think a little more 'artistically' and help romantic people think a little more 'logically'. But (for John) this is an entrenched distinction, not one to be overcome, but one that just IS. And, of course, he can claim that this represents Pirsig's ideas because, after all, its all just opinion and interpretation. "The answer is Phædrus' contention that classic understanding should not be overlaid with romantic prettiness; classic and romantic understanding should be united at a basic level." (ZMM) "In each case there's a beautiful way of doing it and an ugly way of doing it, and in arriving at the high-quality, beautiful way of doing it, both an ability to see what "looks good" and an ability to understand the underlying methods to arrive at that "good" are needed. Both classic and romantic understandings of Quality must be combined." (ZMM) This is the solution, "a fusion of classic and romantic quality" (ZMM), that continues to evade John, despite his reliance on slippery sophistry. Because, as you correctly pointed out, it contradicts the notion that intellect is *inherently* SOM (and its correlate that 'art' is confined to 'the romantic'). And THAT, of course, is like a frustrating cancer that the anti-intellectuals continue to propagate. [DMB] It's the quality of the idea that matters, of course, and that's why we're supposed to care about things like clarity, coherence, consistency with the evidence, honesty, precision is the use of words and the relations between concepts. These aren't arbitrary demands or oppressive rules used to squelch dissent or anything like that. They are just some of the most common marks of intellectual quality. Ideally, you want to raise this to an art form and those will be some of the likely ingredients. The art of rationality requires intellectual quality and then some. [Arlo] This is worth repeating. Its the outcome of overcoming the problem of the classical/romantic schism. "Reason" is an art, with its own markers of Quality. Just like motorcycle repair, painting, dance, music, welding, or anything else. It requires a fusion of both an understanding of the the long freight-train of constructed knowledge and an awareness/appreciation of that leading-edge of the train. 'Artful' motorcycle maintenance (aka high-quality motorcycle maintenance) requires both a thorough understanding of all the constructed knowledge pertaining to the motorcycle and an appreciation/awareness that the motorcycle is not a separate 'object' but a pattern of values that are in harmony with you and everything else. As Pirsig says in ZMM, ""Sometime look at a novice workman or a bad workman and compare his expression with that of a craftsman whose work you know is excellent and you'll see the difference. The craftsman isn't ever following a single line of instruction. He's making decisions as he goes along. For that reason he'll be absorbed and attentive to what he's doing even though he doesn't deliberately contrive this. His motions and the machine are in a kind of harmony. He isn't following any set of written instructions because the nature of the material at hand determines his thoughts and motions, which simultaneously change the nature of the material at hand. The material and his thoughts are changing together in a progression of changes until his mind's at rest at the same time the material's right." ... "Sounds like art," the instructor says. ... "Well, it is art," I say." (ZMM) Of course, for John, unable to see that a fusion of this "artificial interpretation superimposed on reality" (ZMM) requires and unites both modes of this schism, replies by asking me if I'd want a sculptor (implying one with no knowledge of motorcycle repair) repairing my motorcycle. As Pirsig says, "there's a beautiful way of doing it and an ugly way of doing it, and in arriving at the high-quality, beautiful way of doing it, both an ability to see what "looks good" and an ability to understand the underlying methods to arrive at that "good" are needed. Both classic and romantic understandings of Quality must be combined." (ZMM) This is what Pirsig offers, "a complete structure of thought capable of uniting the separate languages of Science and Art into one." (ZMM) 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
