Hi Scott:
Glad to see you reconnected. (-:
> Just for clarity, can we call these the myths of scientism, rather than
> science? That lets me respect science for what it is good at, and denounce
> scientism for its bad myths.
Good point. Let's call them "myths of scientism" for the reason you cite.
> (To Platt:) You are misunderstanding Rorty's point here, I would guess (not
> being sure of the context this was stated, but from my general
> understanding of Rorty). He is not placing all areas of culture and all
> periods of history as of equal value, but rather trying to say that
> "closeness to reality" is a metaphysically faulty way to make evaluations.
> If you want to find out things like the chemical composition of stars, or
> how far away they are, then astronomy is the way to go. If you want to
> understand people then astrology might be the way to go (I have my doubts
> -- I prefer the Enneagram). "Reality" is -- in SOM -- an additional, and
> unnecessary metaphysical complication.
Well, Rorty does argue that truth is relative to communities who
establish a commonly accepted reality. So in that sense you are right.
He is what I would call an advocate of "groupthink." According to Rorty
we see "reality" through a conceptual framework imposed by the
community of which we are a part or to whom we grant authority, like
the medical profession. For Rorty there is no independent reality "out
there" to be discovered as science postulates. Truth is a matter of
"subjective"social values and can vary from group to group. Pirsig
comes close at times to a similar position, but saves the day by putting
the responsibility for determining truth squarely on the individual
because only an individual can "perceive or adjust to Dynamic Quality."
> You (Platt) have said that you like the MOQ because (in part) it
> identifies reality with Quality. So do I like the MOQ for this reason, but
> in part, because Quality is beyond definition. So this identification does
> two things: it denies the SOM-ish myths you decry (as do I), AND it
> prevents the identification of reality with objects: like
> stars-as-studied-by-astronomers. The astronomy does not change a bit
> whether stars are "really" "out there" or "products of consciousness", or
> anything else. They are what astronomers measure, and what I see when I
> look up at night.
I agree. What we can say, however, is that the belief that stars remain
"out there" whether I look at them or not is a higher quality intellectual
pattern than the pattern which says that nothing exists unless I observe
it (regardless of what some quantum physicists would have us believe).
> As I've indicated before, I regard MOQ as postmodern, because it denies the
> "metaphysics of substance", that reality IS something ponderable.
Idealism as proposed by Berkeley and others in the 18th and
succeeding centuries also deny the reality of substance. In that sense,
the MOQ isn't postmodern at all. But, in the sense that it is new and
novel it is postmodern (but not to be confused with the postmodernist
philosophers such as Michel Foucalt, Jacques Derrida et al who cannot
show that liberal democracy is superior to the Stalinist Soviet Union.)
>I find a lot of good thinking in postmodern writers
> (and a lot of bad thinking as well).
Mostly bad in my view.
> But,as I said a while back, I think it
> is a transition stage, more a reaction to modernism than a going forward.
> As such it is necessary. I think the MoQ has more promise, because of the
> Quality idea, though -- also as mentioned before -- one can get good
> mileage with a Reason-based metaphysics (like Plotinus'), mutatis mutandis,
> as well. In both cases, we are hinting at (non-theistic) God.
You are more generous to postmodernists than I, but when it comes to
the superiority of the MOQ ("superiority" being a term postmodernists
would like to banish except when it comes to their own beliefs), I agree
with you most whole-heartedly.
Platt
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