From: David Buchanan (DBuchanan@ClassicalRadio.org)
Date: Sat Jan 04 2003 - 22:05:56 GMT
Matt and all MOQers:
I had to butcher your post. Hopefully only the prime cuts are left.
Matt said:
.....................The Rortyan position holds that beliefs are changed
causally, not through "rational" argumentation. The proper "method" for
intellectual engagement is recontextualization. The private position of a
person is recontextualized within a narrative of history by which the
private position is shown to have an inadequate understanding of the
patterns of the past and the needs of the present. Positions aren't so
much engaged as they are circumvented by shifting the grounds of debate
into one's own private vocabulary. Consensus is reached if you can
persuade the other person that their understanding isn't as useful as yours.
DMB says:
Huh? No wonder the newbies are perplexed. I don't think anyone could
understand what "recontextualization" means from this explaination. In any
case, circumventing the position and shifting the ground of debate to one's
own private vocabulary sounds intellectually dishonest and evasive. It
strikes me as a pretty good way to put the breaks on a conversation and as a
method that is fundamentally hostile to philosophical debate. I find it
extremely hard to believe that he'd recommend such a thing. Are sure he's
not complaining about the antics of true believers or the thought style of a
third level person? That's what it looks like to me. I think he's talking
about how zealots are immune to rational persuasion, which is true, but is
nothing to be pround of or intentionally cultivate. I'm pretty sure that
only very bad philosophers fail to engage the position or stay on topic. I
think the distinction you make between dialectic and recontexualization, is
really a difference between intellectual and social level thinking.
Matt said:
..............................The practical problem as I see it is that,
as of yet, I don't think anybody is agreed to what the MoQ vocabulary
consists of for intra-vocabulary discourse to be made viable. There are
still major disagreements and, when moving between vocabularies, "rational"
arguments are still of little value. When all the key words are still up
for grabs, we can do little more then suggest different ways of picturing
and accounting for things.
DMB says:
Agreement on the MOQ's vocabulary. Yes. I think you've identified one of the
main problems here. I find this extremely frustrating. I wonder how anyone
can read Lila and fail to grasp the basic terms. People want to change the
names of levels, add them, subtract them, ignore the differences between
them. I think all this stuff is motivated by misunderstanding and reflects
this undesireable tendency to distort things in order to fit them in with
what we already believe. Intellectual honesty and self-serving
rationalizations don't go together. Anyway, enough of that rant. Knowing the
basic terms and structure of the MOQ are pre-requisites to any fruitful
conversation, which is why I quote from the books so much. I want us all to
get away from their won private vocabularies and pet projects and just look
at what Pirsig says.
Matt said:
Finally, I wish to elaborate briefly on why I find the MoQ-religion analogy
a pleasing description. As I've said, all people have recourse to their own
final vocabulary. The most famous source for final vocabularies in the West
is the Judeo-Christian tradition. With the indentification of religions as
supplying final vocabularies we have the ability to compare secular
vocabularies to traditionally religious vocabularies. However,...
DMB says:
Ah ha! Religious tradition are indentified with these final vocabularies.
This supports my hunch that this behavior is associated with the third level
social values and is therefore and inappropriate method for philosophical
discussions, which, obviously, is supposed to be a fourth level thing.
Matt continued:
consequently, the divide between the secular and the religious has been
blurred. Many Religious Studies academics are constructing definitions of
religion that include, for instance, Marxism and Capitalism. This has had
the effect of making the secular/religious distinction, not only blurred,
but even ubiquitous and therefore as having outlived its usefulness. Not
only that, it has also had the effect of turning the heinous charge of
being religious (as necessarily being dogmatic) into a gentle, descriptive
analogy.
DMB says:
Well, some people might hold to a political ideology with all the dogmatism
and zealotry in the world, but that's about the person, not the ideology
itself. But what I really want to get at is the idea that the MOQ is like a
religion. Here's how I see it. Religions are social level descriptions of a
mystic reality and the MOQ is an intellectual level description of that same
mystic reality. They describe the same thing, but from completely different
levels.
I don't know, Matt. I'm far from an expert on Rorty and I should probably
just play it safe and defer to you on this, but I think you've misunderstood
Rorty AND misapplied it to the MOQ. I think its safe to say that Rorty is
several light years from mysticism, which is the essence of the MOQ. I think
you've got to do some serious violence to the square peg and/or the round
hole to make this thing fit.
Thanks for your time,
DMB
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