Greetings,
HORSE:
"I did, however, fail to specifically include "for the purposes of knocking
down the position that has been set up" although as I did include this in my
final paragraph I would have expected the link to have been made, so the
fault, also excuseable, appears to be, at least in part, due to your own
misinterpretation and misreading of my position."
But mainly due to you not explaining your position properly, Horse. With
that inclusion, my comments become entirely warranted - I never did claim
the 'emotive' terms to be _necessary_ to all manifestations of the strawman,
but in this case they are accurate. Indeed, they are not even emotive terms,
but, as I used them, descriptive:
Cleverly = skilful
Twisted = a distortion or bias
Insubstantial = lacking solidity
Simplistic = oversimplified to conceal or distort difficulties
Caricature = a poor imitation
Actually, I am quite proud of how they sum up the essence of Pirsig's
strawman perfectly.
Also, for you to claim that you mentioned the 'knock down' aspect in your
last paragraph is facile. You clearly differentiate between the strawman and
the knocking down; unless you are simply being tautological of course, but
what is the point in that?
Next, my reading of Pirsig is as accurate as it can be, given that his
writing is fundamentally confused. All of my points took Pirsig's
description of SOM exactly as he presents them. As a summary of what I have
written many times before, elaboration was not necessary. It is all in the
archives, lest anyone think that I haven't done a thorough job of
refutation. That is a poor critique and you know it.
And so, yes you are being deliberately bloody-minded and on the verge of
being pedantic, as am I now, so I shall stop.
Folk psychology? You would have to tell me what you mean by 'valid'. My
initial response is that it is valid. In the philosophical sense, and as it
stands, it is not valid as it isn't an argument - as I am sure Warburton's
book will confirm.
Re: Chris Lofting's posting. I didn't realise that it was a refutation of my
position and was quite happy to read it.
Re: Elephant. I would be here all day picking out each and every
misunderstanding and I don't have the time. One example only, and I choose
his most recent post as it is in front of me.
ELEPHANT IS PUZZLED:
Struan, in (1) you cite gravity to argue that nobody holds SOM. In (2) you
argue that SOM has identifiable characteristics which Prisig has
misreported. Please explain, because I'm rather puzzled. How can Prisig be
talking 'rubbish' about what SOM involves if nobody beleives SOM?
In 2 I argued no such thing. I quoted Pirsig, then gave examples to show
that he was wrong. To claim that I 'argue that SOM has identifiable
characteristics' is so far removed from what I actually did that the mind
boggles. Clearly my argument is this:
'If we accept, for the sake of argument, that SOM exists (and I don't), you
say that it has these characteristics, but those people to whom you ascribe
SOM actually think like this'.
This reminds me of the infuriatingly similar techniques employed by David
Buchanan and Elephant's first posting was riddled with similar examples,
which would take an age to unravel. I have no interest in doing so.
Finally (to Elephant), to say that Iris Murdoch was met with silence is
simply wrong. She is, in England at least, widely considered to be one of
the greatest English thinkers of the century, is praised by everybody who is
anybody in moral philosophy today, is considered indispensable to almost
every moral philosophy course from AS level to degree level and will
undoubtedly go down in history as having an important influence upon moral
thought. She also happens to be my favourite moral philosopher. Having
spoken to her on a couple of occasions, I consider your parallels between
Murdoch and Pirsig to be superficial and fruitless.
Struan
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