ELEPHANT TO STRUAN AT FANTASTICALLY SUCCESSFUL PARTY:
Struan, can too much Monty Python can be bad for you?
Of course not.
Well now, do you recognise the argument:
1.witches are made of wood
2. wood floats
3. ducks float
THEREFORE
4. you can tell it's a witch 'cos it weighs the same as a duck
("it's a fair cop guv")
Do you? Good.
I think we are making progress, because I'm beginning to picture the scales
in which you judiciously weigh Prisig's SOM metaphysics witch against this
SOM dichotomy duck/herring thing (the very latest in fashionable gene
splicing/cognitive science counter examples).
STRUAN WROTE TO ROG:
> For the last time, (honestly), I am not 'continuing to deny
> these commonly shared characteristics of Western philosophy'. I am continuing
> to deny that they constitute either a metaphysics or a family of metaphysics.
> Have I really not been crystal clear on this?? Am I not saying for the
> umpteenth time that I affirm the subject object dichotomy? And, incidentally,
> your mother was a hamster and your father smelt of elderberries.
ELEPHANT:
Crystal clear. What is less clear it is that you think a firmly held
dichotomy would have to have before it became a firmly held metaphysics. I
suspect that what it would have to have, in your veiw, is the label
"metaphysics" attached to it by a bit of string, or, failing that, the
British Academy.
Look, Struan, why don't you make the whole matter "Crystal Clear" by telling
us just exactly what constitutes a 'metaphysics', in your veiw, such that
the subject-object dichotomy rejected by Mystics is not a 'metaphysics'?
Presumably you have some exemplar cases of both metaphysics and
non-metaphysics in mind? In my experience, what someone calls
non-metaphysical tells us alot about their whole philosophical veiw-point,
and, indeed, their metaphysics!
In fact, I'm particularly keen to hear your account of this because of your
confession to empiricism. I've not met any empiricists who understood Iris
Murdoch before. I have some well developed expectations about what an
empiricist (as opposed to a radical empiricist) is likely to call
'metaphysics', and I'm dead keen to have it out with you on this topic. You
will find me a ready listener, and, who knows, perhaps we will drop the
chatty tone and get down to some serious philosophical discussion. Lord
Knows, there's precious little of it in the journals these days.
So, tell us that special something which constitutes a metaphysics and which
SOM lacks. We are all dying to know.
Pseudo Pzeph
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