Platt,
Platt Holden wrote:
> Hi Scott:
>
> You asked:
>
>
>>[Scott:]But how does the individual "determine truth"?
>>
>
> [Platt:]I agree with Pirsig's answer. I suspect you do, too.
>
> "Then one doesn't seek the absolute 'Truth." One seeks instead the
> highest quality intellectual explanation of things with the knowledge
that
> if the past is any guide to the future this explanation must be taken
> provisionally; as useful until something better comes along. One can
> then examine intellectual realities the same way he examines paintings
> in an art gallery, not with an effort to find out which one is the
"real"
> painting, but simply to enjoy and keep those that are of value."
Yes.
>
>
>>[Scott:]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.
>>
>
> [Platt:]I wonder what criterion Rorty relies on to suggest his
philosophy (and
> objection) is better than the alternatives. I also wonder how he would
> define "work well." If this means pragmatism, it's a social value in MOQ
> terms.
Rorty is a pragmatist like Pirsig (minus the mysticism), and I think he
would go along with the quote you gave above. So criteria are relative
to the question at hand. I imagine he has no clearer definition of "work
well" than anybody does. A hammer works better than a sponge at driving
in a nail. Liberal democracy works better than totalitarianism at
providing opportunity for creativity. Science works just as well, if not
better, without the belief that science is to be judged based on how
well it represents an observer-independent reality.
Is there an arch-criterion here? I doubt it. What is your criterion for
rejecting this approach, if you do?
>
>
>>[Scott:] 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".
>>
>
> [Platt:]What is added is a denial of the belief that nothing exists
unless I
> observe it.
>
>
>>[Scott:] 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.
>>
>
> Now you say Quality, unlike stars, does exist independent of your
> observation. How come Quality can exist without observers, but stars
> cannot?
What I am trying to say is that, when I put on my metaphysical hat,
Quality is Real, and nothing else is, by which I mean to say something
like: take anything you can perceive, think about, ponder, etc., and it
will show itself to be contingent, its form dependent on the perceiving,
the thinking. I assume, unlike a secular postmodernist, that all this
contingency is not ultimately purposeless, and the word "Quality"
provides a center, or something, for that assumption, and which is why I
call it (metaphysically) real.
Also, I said that it is the thingness of stars (their
space/time/mass//energy-ness) that occurs only when observed (and I do
not restrict the ability to observe to humans. The stars may be
observing themselves for all I know). I would say that it is unnecessary
to say either that they exist or do not exist when not observed. Your
answer to this seems to be that it is necessary to say that they exist
when not observed, since otherwise one would be saying that they do not
exist when not observed. I fail to see what value this has.
Now, you may ask, why do I think it is important to point out the
non-importance of having an answer. The answer is that I think that the
notion of "independent objective reality" is harmful in that it requires
the concomitant notion of a self-existing subject, and so it enforces
the separation of subject from object -- that is, our Fallen state.
>
>
>>[Scott:]In sum, I think unless we reject both, we are not rejecting SOM.
>>
>
> [Platt:]Like Pirsig, I don't reject SOM. It has value. It is
necessary for survival in
> "adopt or die" reality--the reality of tigers, bears, icebergs and
radical
> Islam.
Barfield's book also makes the point that the passage through SOM was
necessary, in that it isolated the intellect (and in so doing lets us
think more dispassionately, and so think better quality thoughts). But
in doing so it also completes our separation from Quality (to put it in
MoQ terms). We must now overcome that separation, and to do so it helps
to drop the metaphysical notion that subjects and objects absolutely
exist as such.
As I said in a recent post to Wim, in my everyday behavior, I act under
the rules of this contingent reality, one that is S/O dualist, and avoid
tigers and so forth. I imagine that Zen masters avoid tigers as well.
The Buddhist term for this situation is the Doctrine of Two Truths. I
think it is a good doctrine.
>
> [Platt:] My acquaintance with Rorty is second hand so would
appreciate the
> reference where he said liberal democracy is superior to
totalitarianism.
> Unlike some other postmodernists, it would seem he does have some
> "absolute criteria" on which better alternatives can be discerned.
He has criteria, but I am sure he wouldn't call them "absolute". Do you
know of any criteria for political preferences that can be characterized
as absolute -- that can be applied in any conceivable circumstances?
As I recall he discusses this mostly in "Contingency, Irony, Solidarity"
and in his most reason collection whose name I forget, and neither of
which I have available right now.. But here's a passage from the
introduction to "Objectivity, Relativism, and Truth" (pp. 12-13) that
bears on this, and is fairly typical (stuff in square brackets is my gloss):
"My principal motive is the belief that we can still make admirable
sense of our lives even if we cease to have what Nagel calls "an
ambition of transcendence" [of transcending our "subjective" viewpoints
to an objective view]. So I try to show how a culture without this
ambition -- a Deweyan culture -- would be preferable to the culture of
what Heidegger calls "the onto-theological tradition". I try to show how
we might throw away a set of ladders which, though once indispensible,
have now become encumbrances.
"The lead essay in this volume -- "Solidarity or Objectivity?" --
announces a theme which is repeated with variations in most of the other
essays. There I urge that whatever good the ideas of "objectivity" or
"transcendence" have done for our culture can be attained equally well
by the idea of a community which strives after both intersubjective
agreement and novelty -- a democratic, progressive, pluralist community
of the sort of which Dewey dreamt. If one reinterprets objectivity as
intersubjectivity, or as solidarity, in the ways I suggest below, then
one will drop the question of how to get in touch with "mind-independent
and language-independent reality". One will replace it with questions
like "What are the limits of our community? Are our encounters
sufficiently free and open? Has what we have recently gained in
solidarity cost us our ability to listen to outsiders who are suffering?
To outsiders who have new ideas?" These are political questions rather
than metaphysical or epistomological quaetions. Dewey seems to me to
have given us the right lead when he viewed pragmatism not as grounding,
but as clearing the ground for, democratic politics."
- Scott
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