Bo, Elliot, All,
> I understand that the pragmatic part means a lot to you.
My interest in the pragmatic tradition is that Pirsig claims the MoQ is
an "continuation" of this "mainstream". If higher levels of value
evolve from lower by subsuming (extending and transcending) them, it
just seems reasonable to me to try and understand just what is being
extended and transcended.
Or, if as you put it;
> the Q-onion gets another value layer
... and if the MoQ is this new, fragile, translucent, outer skin of
pragmatism, is in not reasonable to suggest that many of the whole
"onion's" qualities or values are rooted, in part, in the underlying
layers ? The same, yet different? A new layer on an old form ? How is it
the same? How is it different?
So when you say things such as ....
> ..which says that the social
> movement does not mean any metaphysical shift into the heads of
> people,
> There is no particular
> human or - worse - mental component to it (that is reverting to SOM)
> the social development could have found its vehicle with some other
> life form,
... you reject both pragmatism and Pirsig.
Though we both in our own ways are uncomfortable with the way Pirig
related S and O to the MoQ levels, whether we agree with him or not,
Pirsig's recent comments in Dan's annotated "Lila's Child" with reguards
to the social level make it abundantly clear that he feels "the social
level" and subsequently "the intellectural level" are exclusively human.
That they are exclusively mental, residing only in human mind, is not
that clear, nor is it IMHO that important.
What is important is that in the MoQ "man is a measure of all things"
and this is a continuation of one of the primary tenents of both
pragmatism and empiricism. Once this is said there soon follows the
cries of "idealism" and "subjectivism" like your....
> A sinking feeling engulfs me ...of being
> back on familiar ground where everything is "intellct" - words - hot air.
> No please, this CAN'T be the MOQ that I know.
A current reread of "The American Evasion of Philosophy-A Genealogy of
Pragmatism" by Cornel West refutes this claim like this:
"My social reading of Jame's pragmatic theory of truth avoids the common
misunderstanding of it. This theory [either pragmatism or the MoQ] is
not a recapituation of subjectivism or positivism (or their flip side,
skepticism) for it rejects all forms of epistemological foundationalism
yet preserves a realist ontology." [my addition]
I believe that the MoQ likewise preserves "a realist ontology". In
addition all values in the MoQ are equally REAL. Thus, "truth as a
species of good" says it's "good" or "true" that my thoughts and that
tree outside are equally REAL. Even though that tree and my thoughts are
each subject to different laws or moral orders, one is not priviledged
as being more REAL than the other. But like the title of Hillary
Putnam's book , under the MoQ, human reality based on human experiece is
best described as "Realism with a Human Face." Thus as much as 'human'
science, for instance, would like to be "objective", devoid of any
'human' social or cultural "subjective" values, an honest appraisal of
past experiences indicates that this is not possible. Thus from a
pragmatic perspective splitting the "subject" from the "object" is not
only not possible, it is not "good", as it leads to unresolvable
paradoxes. So both Pragmatism and the MoQ while acknowledging this split
is a possiblity, rejects it, as not leading to what is worth while ,
good , or real from a human perspective.
3WD
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