Hey Platt and everyone,
PLATT
Your statement brings up the frightening prospect of renewing the Communist
practice of "erasing" certain persons from photographs due to their suddenly
revealed treason and of other "politically correct" rewrites of history.
RICK
Yet, another specious strawman.
Of course 'erasing' persons from photos for political purposes is
frighteningly immoral. I'd expect we'd all enthusiastically agree with
that. But what's at issue is instances in which an Intellectual pattern is
replaced with a higher quality Intellectual Pattern and the replacement is
brought about because of the latter's higher Quality (ie. Better agreement
with experience, more economic in explanation, more logically consistent,
etc). Your example only addresses instances in which the replacement is
coerced by an oppressive, anti-intellectual social pattern.
But that a lower pattern controlling higher pattern is (usually) immoral
is Metaphysics of Quality101. The advanced point in the quote was that
truth is provisional. You (correctly) point out that this provisional
quality is open to abuse by society and can lead to Intellectual
degeneration, but what you seem to miss is that the eraser on Pirsig's
Intellectual pencil is Dynamic Quality acting on truth. The eraser in your
strawman is Social patterns acting on truth.
PLATT
...my contention that many truths are absolute....
RICK
And in exactly what post did you 'contend' this? I think you're
backpedaling. However, I would be very happy to hear your theory on how
'many truths are absolute' and test it for logical consistency, agreement
with experience, economy of explanation, and semantic circularity.
rick
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