From: Matt the Enraged Endorphin (squirrelfriend@hotmail.com)
Date: Thu Sep 30 2004 - 20:22:27 BST
I just wanted to point out that DMB has never sounded more like a pragmatist than he
did in his last post to the MF. Despite tremendously obscuring animus, in the last year
I've been coming to the conclusion that DMB and I aren't that far apart philosophically
(at least, not as far as should be supposed given the boisterousness), and the last post
pretty much cinches it. And, though Glenn and I (I'm pretty sure) come from opposite
directions on this point, DMB and my differences can pretty much be summed up by
Glenn's gloss and then question, "Apparently scientists are not privy to such
wonderfulness as Tao trueness, Quality glue, and Kosmos currents and must accept a
second rate kind of truth that depends on the acceptance of their culture. Please
explain."
I agree with Glenn on this point because I see Pirsig as doing to philosophy what Luther
did to Christianity. I see Pirsig as attempting to take away the special authority and
special relation to reality that scientists have thought of themselves as having ever since
the New Science's spectacular success at predicting the movements of the planets in
the 17th century. From the pragmatist's point of view, scientists assumed the mantle that
the priests held in the Middle Ages and then lost after Luther told us that we were _all_
connected to God. From Glenn's point of view, he's saying that we shouldn't take away
Dorothy's Ruby Slippers and give them to some false idol, but the way I see his remark
that scientists must have a "second rate kind of truth" because they have what Pirsig
has called "tin ear," is that, once we take away Dorothy's Ruby Slippers, we should
wonder why we should give them to _anybody_, since belief in Oz seems to swing free
from success in moving about the world.
Glenn's criticism comes from indignation over the scientist being de-frocked, whereas
DMB's animus towards me comes from his belief that I've castrated Pirsig. I see both
Glenn and DMB as thinking that _somebody_ has a special relation to reality, be it the
scientist's special method or the Buddha's enlightenment. I see both as trying to
maintain a cultural pedestal for some kind of priest caste. Rather than this, I see
everyone as being as connected up to reality as anybody else. The differences between
people and professions is simply a matter of what people are good at dealing with,
where "good" is dependent on the internal rhythms of a tradition of dealing with the
subject material (this last formulation is actually kind of misleading because the
"tradition" and the "subject material" are interdependent, but that would require too much
space to cover). The difference as I see it is that Glenn and DMB would like to assign
"has Knoweldge of Reality" to somebody specifically, whereas I'm content to hand out
less pretentious and more specific things like "has knowledge of rocks," "has knowledge
of cells," "has knowledge of bovine migratory patterns," "has knowledge of politics," "has
knowledge of 17th century French literature," "has knowledge of the history of
philosophy," and "has knowledge of the Dao De Ching." For pragmatists, "knowledge of
reality" doesn't mean anything if it doesn't mean smaller things like the above.
Matt
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