Justin asked:

What is the flaw in Robert Pirsig's metaphysics of quality?

Is he just another idealist? maybe the linguistic and cognitive vagueness of his writing fooled me, but I
thought he was convincing enough to at least justify his belief.

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Having read both Zen and the Art of Motorcycle Maintenanceand LilaI share your liking for Pirsig.
And it's absolutely the right thing to do, once you've read something persuasive, to turn about for
competing views that help one mull things over and come to a view that's really one's own. And I've a
couple of suggestions there, if you follow me to the bottom of this. All the same, I wonder if the way
you put that here is a bit hard on Pirsig, maybe even on Philosophers in general.

First off, why speak as if you were looking for some damming 'flaw'? Of course we all talk in terms of
flaws in arguments and so on, but the application here to a philosopher's belief system as a whole is
a metaphorical one that is pushing a certain picture of how philosophy is, or ought to be — and that
brings with it problems. Literally, a flaw is a line of weakness in a material along which it will break
when put under stress. That's fine for metals in aeroplane wings where the job that the thing is
supposed to do is agreed upon: controlled flight. But in Philosophy it's often precisely this sort of thing
that is up for debate: i.e. it is the task of philosophy, and so also what would constitute its failure, that
is up for debate. What is philosophical reasoning, and what is it for? These are themselves two
important topics of philosophical thought. So, there will very often be room for disagreement about
whether something is a 'flaw', if only because there is unclarity about what job an 'unflawed' piece of
philosophy must do, and about what kinds of stress it may legitimately be required to withstand
without fracture. So the imagery of 'flaw' is a bit stretched here. For that reason, I suggest that it may
be better to speak of philosophical failures not as 'flaws' but, more precisely, as being variously:
factual inaccuracies, contradictions, unclarities, loose ends, imaginative failures and so on, whichever
may happen to apply.

It's true that professional academics have been sniffy about Pirsig's work, to varying degrees. One of
the philosophical failures likely to be identified in Pirsig is that he hasn't properly read all the great
books or the current journals, and so isn't writing from a position of knowledge about the traditions of
the past or the controversies of the day. In defence of Pirsig on this count, I'd say first that while
studying philosophers is extremely helpful for tackling philosophical questions, I'm not convinced by
the position taken by some that it must be actually impossibleto do original and interesting
philosophy out with a directed study of the tradition — just difficult and unlikely. Second, I'd say that
while Pirsig's retelling of the history of Philosophy is polemical and has huge gaps, he does show
evidence of having read understood and inwardly digested in a rather interesting way at least two
important figures, namely, Plato and William James. Whether you think Pirsig's unexpected and
innovative attempt to integrate Platonism and American Pragmatism makes up for inadequacies in
philosophical understanding elsewhere may depend upon your own philosophical judgements and
interests. In my case, I happen to like both James and Plato, and this has something to do with my
appreciation of Pirsig when I discovered him.

The three kinds of philosophical failure which can perhaps justly be laid at Pirsig's door are:
ambiguity, leaving loose ends, and failing to tackle some questions of interest to philosophers (pick
your question of interest). You might want to call some of this "linguistic and cognitive vagueness",
except that such things are both relative (Pirsig is a lot less linguistically and cognitively vague than
most of what passes for news) and widespread (most philosophers accuse other philosophers of
vagueness). There are certainly a good quantity of loose ends and ambiguities in Pirsig's work to be
getting on with, and one sign of this is the continuous round of disagreement between folk who think
of themselves as Pirsigians. For which see http://www.moq.org. There you will also find some
competition between views, all the better to form your own. Two good plans to run in parallel are: (1)
visit the fractious http://www.moq.org, and (2) read lots by and about both Plato and James and all
the philosophers in between. For the latter you may usefully call on the help of a Philosophy
Department, who can help you to identify important books and questions, give you a sounding board
and an audience for your developing thoughts, and generally introduce you to all kinds of
enlightenment and fun.

David Robjant

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