Walter,glove et all
[Walter]
> Ps Where is everyone? Are they giving away fish for free somewhere?
[Dave]
Sorry for the dropout LS selected my suggestion on power & MoQ which provides
an inroad to the comparison of pragmatism and MoQ which I felt obligated to
address. I haven't seen you over there Walter so I'll repost my first post
here given your interest in P.
> Great posts, . My interest in this quote,
>
> "the crude issue of power... is always the last of the realities that
> sensitive and reasonable men can bring themselves to face".
>
> stems from a recent reading of a book on the history of pragmatism which
> contends:
>
> "The pragmatists' preoccupation with power, provocation, and
> personality...signifies an intellectual calling to administer to the confused
> populace caught in the whirlwinds of societal crisis, the cross fires of
> ideological polemics, and the storms of class, racial, and gender conflicts."
> West P5
>
> Being by nature a "Tao Ting Thomas" ;-) this quote coupled with Pirsig's claim
>
> "The Metaphysics of Quality is a continuation of the mainstream of twentieth
> century American philosophy" [pragmatism] p366 Bantam Lila
>
> led me to ask, First,is his claim valid? Second, If true, how do MoQ and the
> pragmatic tradition correspond/differ? Third, If power, is one of the central
> issues of pragmatism, What does MoQ have to say about power?
>
> A caveat. This perspective on power and pragmatism is primarily from a single
> source on pragmatism by Cornel West who's principle objective was to tie his
> "prophetic pragmatism" to what he admits is a selective reading of the
> genealogy of pragmatism.
>
> I will try to quickly share my observations on the first two issues before
> moving on to power.
>
> >From Emerson to the neo-pragmatists their "word bites" on reality have a high
> degree of correlation to MoQ's, for example:
>
> "fundamental way of the world is..congenial and supportive of moral aims",
> "basic nature of things is...incomplete and in flux," "scientific method as a
> value-laden..activity" "contingency and revisable social practices" " no
> obstructive dogma" "reconciliation of extremes" " truth is a species of good"
> " test of.. present and immediate experience" "wisdom is a conviction about
> values" "dynamic universe..untamed, streaming, provisional" "We cannot isolate
> the world from the theories of the world" "myths give meaning and value.. if
> [they] are taken symbolically, dramatically, and poetically"
>
> That being said there are also some striking discords between the two. The big
> one is that by and large, pragmatism has either rejected or at the very least
> avoided METAPHYSICS.
>
> This seems to stem from three basic sources their evasion of epistemology,
> religion, and "the frontier mentality" pervasive during pragmatism's
> development in America. From a
> religious perspective metaphysics (basis of reality) is a matter of faith, God
> did it, end of discussion. From a frontier perspective: We ain't got time for
> any of that lily livered, mamy pamby, tea sipp'n, is it really real stuff.
> Fo-in-stance, 'member the time ol Whitey's hos throwed him in high country
> outta Bozeman...and end'd up hav'n to chaw off is left hand. It's ACTION that
> counts. John Dewey's " Act first, think afterward" is still alive as
> indicative in a recent "Wired" interview of an Internet CEO who's successful
> corporate philosophy is quoted as "Ready, Shoot, Aim" Metaphysics is seen as
> an impediment to experience, or practically dealing with experience, a
> distraction from reality.
>
> On to power, In this first post rather than trying to establish correspondence
> with between power in MoQ and pragmatism I'm just going to snip some quotes on
> power from pragmatist's history for all to contemplate. They range from the
> mid 1800's to 1980's.
>
> Emerson: [Glorious Power]
> First..his view of power is multileveled; it encompasses and distinguishes the
> power of the nation, the economy,the person, tradition, and language. Second,
> he celebrates the possession, use, and expansion of certain types of power,
> especially transgressive acts of the literate populace that promote moral aims
> and personal fulfillment. Third.. power accentuates.. the dynamic elements
> in human relations and transactions with nature.
>
> Pierce: [Negative Power]
> "1 We have no power of introspection, but all knowledge of the of the internal
> world is derived by hypothetical reasoning from our knowledge of external facts.
> 2 We have no power of intuition, but every cognition is determined logically
> by previous cognition's.
> 3. We have no power of thinking without signs.
> 4 We have no conception of the absolutely incognisable."
>
> James: [Big Power]
> " I am against bigness and greatness in all their forms, .. So I am against
> all big organizations as such, national ones first and foremost; against all
> big successes and big results; in favor of the eternal forces of truth which
> always work in the individual.."
>
> John Dewey [Social Power]
> " The greatest educational power, the greatest force shaping the dispositions
> and attitudes of individuals, is the social medium in which they live."
>
> Sidney Hook [Limited Power]
> " " a temper of mind that acknowledges the inescapable limitations of human
> powers and the reality of piecemeal losses"
>
> C. Wright Mills [Loss of Power]
> " Never before have so few men made such fateful decisions for so many people
> who themselves are so helpless.
>
> W.E.B. Du Bois [Black Power]
> " that the whole set of the white world in America, in Europe, and in the
> world was too determined against racial equality to give power and
> persuasiveness to our agitation."
>
> Reinhold Niebuhr [Christian Power]
> Neibuhr appropriated Jame's notion of " a moral equivalent of war" ..The
> ethical duty of the Christian church was to provide " adequate moral
> substitutes for war" and enable " the heroes of moral struggles to take the
> places of the heroes of war in our own halls of fame"
>
> Lionel Trilling [Reasonable Power]
>
> "The everlasting question..is how to place power and reason in the same agent,
> or how to make power reasonable; or how to endow reason with power. Clearly a
> state-which implies power- is required because some classes or individuals
> refuse to conform to reason and must be coerced for the good of the rest..."
>
> W.V. Quin, Nelson Goodman, Wilfred Sellars,[Word Power]
>
> >From the early 19OO's until the 60's the power of American pragmatism declined
> primarily under the predominate forces of linguistic centered paradigms
> centered around logical positivism. The major effect of logical positivism was
> to turn attention away from historical consciousness and social reflection to
> logic and physics.
>
> Rorty [Resurrecting Power]
>
> "Rorty..virtually singlehandly succeeded in..resurrecting pragmatism in
> contemporary North Atlantic philosophy.
> "For Rorty, the Western philosophical tradition can be overcome by adopting
> Dewey's strategy of holding at arms's length the ahistorical..notions of
> necessity, universality,rationality, objectivity and transcendentally. Instead
> we should speak historically about contingent practices, transient
> descriptions, and revisable theories."
>
>
> Enough, it's understandable why Pirsig pulled a Lao Tzu and rode off into the
> Eastern sunset.
The above cavaet still applies to this snip from West's book which might shed
some light on the Idealist/Realist issue from a pragmatic perspective.
"This is why he [Dewey] has no one ontology. Does this make Dewey and
idealist? Surely not, for an idealist indeed has an exclusive ontology of some
sort, usually the contents of consciousness. But he surely is no realist. What
then is he? He rests outside the realist/idealist polarity, for he rejects the
terrain on which this polarity is grounded. This is why he is a pragmatist-"
If as Pirsig claims he is a pragmatist it would seem that we could substitute
Pirsig for Dewey in the above and resolve the issue.
Dave Thomas
MOQ Homepage - http://www.moq.org
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