Re: LS static and Dynamic

From: David L Thomas (dlt44@ipa.net)
Date: Tue May 11 1999 - 05:34:54 BST


Charly-David B

> Regarding the debate over static patterns being a real external reality
> or an invention of the intellect, Roger provided this quote from
> Pirsig...
>
> "In the MOQ, experience is pure Quality which gives rise to the creation
> of intellectual patterns which in turn produce a division between
> subjects and objects. Among these patterns is the intellectual pattern
> that says 'there is an external world of things out there which are
> independent of intellectual patterns'. That is one of the highest
> quality intellectual patterns there is. And in this highest quality
> intellectual pattern, external objects appear historically before
> intellectual patterns... But this highest quality intellectual pattern
> itself comes before the external world, not after, as is commonly
> presumed by the materialist."

[Dave T]
Glove, and I discussed this very quote a while back in the 99% Solution thread
(3/28-30) and I'm still scratching my head. I was trying to get some insight
into this issue when I quizzed Kevin about the neopragmatic concept of "anti
foundationalism". There I posted:
 
> Here is a blurb on it from an essay by Richard Bernstein.
>
> " Anti-fondationalism" is not an expression that the pragmatists used [ Here
> he is not talking about the neopragmatists like Rorty but Peirce,James,Dewey
> etc.] They certainly did not mean what is sometimes meant today when "
> anti-foundationalism" is polemically used to attack the very idea of
> philosophy. Yet I do not think there is an important argument in the
> anti-foundational arsenal that was not anticipated by...Peirce in 1868. Peirce
> presents a battery of arguments directed against the idea that knowledge rests
> upon fixed foundations, and that we possess a special faculty on insight or
> intuition by which we can know these foundations....Peirce advocated that we
> displace the "foundation" metaphor with the metaphor of a "cable". In
> philosophy, ..we ought to... trust rather to the multitude and variety of its
> arguments than to the conclusiveness of one" Its reasoning should not form a
> chain which is not stronger that its weakest link, but a "cable" whose fibers
> may be ever so slender, provided they are sufficiently numerous and intimately
> connected"
[David B]
> The foundation and walls have to be constructed before the
> roof can be built. Otherwise you've got slate tiles and a gutter system
> floating in thin air, if you know what I mean. (And incidentally, this
> is what I mean when I say that our normal perceptions are MEDIATED
> through all the levels of static patterns, and are therefore indirect
> and imperfect perceptions of reality.) Carmen pointed to this same idea
> when she made reference to the fact that our ideas are imbedded in the
> mythos, which is essentially the same as the social level. The Logos
> requires the Mythos. Ideas require language.
[Dave T]
But the question is: Upon what does the foundation bear? Like is dirt
externally really real or not?

The more I read of the pragmatic tradition the more I think Pirsig answers: MU

There are all kinds of philosophical reasons but the really real reason it
matters not a whit if there is or isn't a foundation is because the fallable
nature of human sensory and mental faculities are such that even if there is a
really real out there our individual and collective construct(s) of it will
not be a direct correspondence. So like writing a metaphysics, if you say
"static patterns are real external reality" you'll make a different million
enemies and still have zero friends.

So we need (and IMHO have in the MoQ) a system which fulfills Wilfrid Sellars
claim " empirical knowledge, like it sophisticated extension science,is
rational, not because it has a foundation, but because it is a self-correcting
enterprise which can put any claim in jeopardy.."

A third point Bernstein makes in his "Pramatism, Pluralism, and Healing of
Wounds" piece may speak directly to what we do here.

"If we are fallable and always limited in our perspectives then we
individually cannot reasonably hope to attain the ultimate philosophy which we
pursue; we can only seek it, therefore, for the community of philosophers."

As you've undoubtedly heard before: Sorry Charlie!

Dave Thomas

MOQ Online - http://www.moq.org



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