From: Patrick van den Berg (cirandar@yahoo.com)
Date: Tue Oct 15 2002 - 17:49:33 BST
Dear Platt,
Finally we disagree on something ;-)
> If you look up the meaning of ad hominem you'll find something along
> the lines of the following, from "Introduction to Logic" by Irving M.
> Copi:
>
> "It (an ad hominem attack) is committed when instead of trying to
> disprove the truth of what is asserted one attacks the man who made
> the assertion. The personal character of a man is logically irrelevant
> to
> the truth or falsehood of what he says, or the correctness or
> incorrectness of his argument. The way in which this irrelevant
> argument
> may sometimes persuade is through the psychological process of
> transference. Where an attitude of disapproval towards a person can be
>
> evoked it may possibly tend to overflow the strictly emotional field
> and
> become disagreement with what that person says. But this connection
> is only psychological, not logical. Even the most wicked of men may
> tells the truth or argue correctly."
>
> In other words, Pirsig's bout with insanity and anger at the loss of
> his
> son is irrelevant to the truth or falsity of the arguments he presents
> in
> Lila, Chap. 24 (or any other chapter for that matter).
In the quote you gave above, an ad hominem attack is 'psychological, not
logical'. But is a metaphysics that puts Quality at bottom of all,
logical? You are fond of quoting a certain passage of Lila where Pirsig
discusses 'truth', in that the MoQ says that there could be multiple
truths, that are judged according to the intellectual or pragmatical
value they bring. And although the term 'psychological' is framed in a
SOM-perspective, isn't that term about our experiences, which go hand in
hand with values (or morals, for that matter)?
Holding in mind Pirsigs connection between multiple truths and values, I
quote John B (recent post) here: "I find Pirsig does quite a good job of
pointing out the close connections and significant differences between
insanity and deep involvement in dynamic quality."
Dynamic quality is at the basis of truth, according to my understanding
of the MoQ. Logic and arguments about truth or falsity are static
qualities, but aren't they secondary to dynamic quality? To quote
William James: "Instinct [DQ] leads, intelligence [sq] does but follow."
(The part on political correctness I didn't quite follow, maybe because
I'm tired; I hope that I didn't miss an essential part of your point of
view)
Greetings, Patrick.
__________________________________________________
Do you Yahoo!?
Faith Hill - Exclusive Performances, Videos & More
http://faith.yahoo.com
MOQ.ORG - http://www.moq.org
Mail Archive - http://alt.venus.co.uk/hypermail/moq_discuss/
MD Queries - horse@darkstar.uk.net
To unsubscribe from moq_discuss follow the instructions at:
http://www.moq.org/md/subscribe.html
This archive was generated by hypermail 2.1.5 : Fri Nov 01 2002 - 10:37:58 GMT