Platt:
Platt Holden wrote:
>
> 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.
Right here I've got to repeat: science does not need this postulate,
only scientism does.
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."
But how does the individual "determine truth"? Rorty does not deny that
we all have the potential to disagree with the various "groupthinks"
around us, and would certainly applaud an honest attempt on the part of
the individual to come up with better alternatives if the existing ones
don't work well. What he (Rorty) objects to is the notion that there is
some absolute criterion according to which the better alternatives can
be discerned. Indeed, if there were, and we knew them, there couldn't be
any creativity.
>
>
>>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).
I reject both beliefs. The "out there" because nothing of value is added
to "I am looking at the stars" by the phrase "I am looking at the stars
which exist in space and time independently of my looking at them". And,
I believe, that is not entirely the case. Their spatio-temporal form is
a consequence of my looking at them. Their thingness is also a
consequence of my looking at them.I am aware of stars, not photons.
Space, time, and mass are, in my opinion (and no I certainly can't prove
this), the way Quality happens to people of this age, and need not be
the only forms by which Quality happens.
I reject the claim that nothing exists unless I observe it, since
Quality exists with or without me in this human shape. Also, because the
pattern "I observe X" is also contingent: it is S/O dualism.
In sum, I think unless we reject both, we are not rejecting SOM.
>
>
>>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.
No, Berkeley denied the reality of material substance, but affirmed
mental substance (I think, I may be wrong on this). In any case, he was
a SOM-ite.
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.
As I mentioned a while back, I disagree with secular postmodernists
(including Rorty) over their secularism, but I think the deconstruction
they do is necessary to get us beyond SOM. Not that one needs these
folks in particular. One can also get the same deconstructive effect
from Madhyamika Buddhism.
>
>>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.
I don't know much about Foucault, and my acquaintenance with Derrida is
mostly secondhand -- in particular I don't know what his political
beliefs are, so I'll stick with Rorty. Rorty thinks that liberal
democracy is superior to totalitarianism, because not only does it
result in a better standard of living, but also it provides more
opportunity for individuals and groups to be creative in finding new
ways to deal with the environment (inorganic, biological, and social,
though he may not cut it up that way), and it provides more scope for
individuals to work on developing their "authentic selves". What more do
you ask for?
- Scott
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