From: Matt the Enraged Endorphin (mpkundert@students.wisc.edu)
Date: Thu Oct 10 2002 - 14:51:13 BST
Davor,
As I said, it was only a suggestion.
I certainly didn't want to sound as though clear, open, and useful
discussion doesn't already occur on political and moral topics. It was
merely a thought to provoke more clear, open, and useful discussion.
You're certainly right about the foundation of the building, which I take
to be our final vocabularies (rather than a foundational metaphysics).
What I was suggesting mirrors Rorty's suggestion in keeping the private and
public spheres seperate. When we argue about public policy, Rorty suggests
that we don't need to elaborate and bring in premises that others disagree
with. For instance, say two conversants agree about the need for brotherly
love. They only need to agree on that as common ground, rather than go
into the premises of where they got it from (say, one from the Cosmic
Christ and the other from their 3rd-grade teacher).
Likewise, I was suggesting that we keep different kinds of threads
seperate. In one, we debate various narratives as they apply to concrete
situations. In the other, we debate the premises of the narratives. This
means that, while one type of thread might only have narratives applying to
political and moral situations, the other might have all kinds of
discussion going on because, as you say, our political and moral
discussions are likely to give rise to premises discussions. I'm simply
suggesting that we try to keep them seperate to a certain extent.
Obviously, it would have to be self-enforced because this is an open forum,
but we do have available the former MoQ Focus. It could be possible to
turn that into a political and moral forum and leave the MoQ Discuss as the
more free-ranging forum that discuss all kinds of things, including
premises left hanging from the political and moral threads. But, like I
said, these are suggestions, not cure-all answers.
As for treating the MoQ as a "a metaphysics that splits the world into
discrete ontological kinds," I did assume that some people thought that
based on my reading that Pirsig kinda' implies this in Lila and my readings
of people's posts. But, I certainly could be wrong, and this is certainly
one of those premise things that could balloon up into a discussion with
everybody's interpretation. I was simply trying to bring out one of the
areas that I think is causing so much vehement disagreement. I wouldn't
think that people would get so excited about such things if they were ad
hoc suggestions, rather than distinct metaphysical kinds. But, we've all
seen weirder things.
Matt
p.s. The Rortyan thought on Heidegger in China is that this means that the
Chinese are trying to become anti-metaphysical. It doesn't necessarily
mean anything political at all.
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