From: Matt the Enraged Endorphin (mpkundert@students.wisc.edu)
Date: Tue Jan 07 2003 - 19:05:24 GMT
Glenn,
Glenn said:
I don't know why you think I show such tendencies unless you think
anyone who acts according to definition 1 is apt to like the idea
expressed in definition 2. I sure don't. I am, in Rorty's words,
an "old-fashioned prig" when it comes to the sullying of science at
the hands of expanders (or diminishers, depending on the pov).
Matt:
Fair enough. I really didn't know specifically what your position was and
I really didn't want to refer to you as following scientism's perjorative
sense. Its why I kinda' wishy-washy'd it and said you "show some
tendencies." I really only wanted to remain descriptive. I'm actually on
the side of leaving the natural sciences to whatever it is that they do and
not co-opting it for other disciplines. I think people have tried to get
to much work out of the word science in the past 200 years and its left it
pretty meaningless. When I say "science," I don't mean the "scientific
method" or anything, I mean "the discipline whose practitioners call what
they do 'science'" or "people who work on lumps rather than texts" or
"people's whose views tend to converge rather than diverge." I mean, that
seems to be what the real, cashable difference is between physics and
literary criticism. Physicists work on rocks and their opinions about
rocks are basically all the same and literary critics work on texts and
their opinions about rocks are basically all different.
Matt said:
"What I see Pirsig doing is taking science and trying to expand its
meaning so that we can have a "science of morals" (which some people
have characterized the MoQ as). But at the same time he tries to
expand morals to mean something that can be made a science. I think
both attempts to be wrongheaded."
Glenn said:
I agree. Pirsig is advocating something like scientism here. He is
not advocating the methods of physical science to ethics but he
nonetheless claims to have turned ethics into a discipline that has
scientific rigour. I don't think he has succeeded, and even
Pirsig has backed off on this in LC.
Matt:
Yeah, I never quite thought of it that way, but Pirsig is "advocating
something like scientism."
Glenn said:
I am sympathetic with Pirsig when he attacks Boas for taking the
methods of physical science and applying them to anthropology at the
exclusion of all else. However, I hesitate when Pirsig says
something to the effect that his moral taxonomy can at last judge
between the morality of two cultures on a rational basis.
Matt:
Agree. Wow, I never thought I'd agree so much with you, Glenn. We learn
something new everyday ;-) I would add this, however. While I don't think
Pirsig's moral taxonomy gives us "at last" a rational basis to choose
between two cultures, I think Rorty could save the word "rational."
Following Rorty, if we interpret "rational" to me "the use of persuasion"
(making irrationality the use of force), we could choose rationally between
two cultures. This makes it more ike the ironists search for a better
vocabulary, picking and choosing amongst all vocabularies. On a global
scale, this makes imperialism irrational, but what we're doing here rational.
Matt said:
"What I think it would be better for Pirsig to do is to stick to the
pragmatist, Kuhnian train of thought on science: to level it down to
cultural size, on par with the other disciplines."
Glenn said:
This is not the pragmatist approach but the neo-pragmatist,
post-modern approach. The fathers of pragmatism, particularly
Pierce, would want no part of this.
Matt:
Again, fair enough. I simply say pragmatist instead of "Rortyan
neo-pragmattic, post-modern" because (other than the second's bulkiness)
I'm speaking from pragmatism's current incarnation, which, while not
universally agreed on, is agreed on a few things, particularly if you just
take, say, Putnam, Rorty, and Bernstein as the principal pragmatists (I'm
pretty sure about this, mind you, not completely sure). The main reason to
say "pragmatism" rather than the latter is because its a way of co-opting
the tradition. Its fair enough to point out that Pierce would definitely
not agree and that Dewey and Hook had some scientistic elements still left
in them. Rorty acknowledges this and speaks on interpreting them at length
in different places.
Glenn said:
In any case, why do you think
it is better to cut science down to the level of the humanities,
and by what criteria would it be on par with them afterward?
Matt:
The upward motion makes it seem like you're co-opting something inherent in
science that you want to spread it around to other disciplines. The
downward motion is to just realize that scientists work with lumps and
people in the humantities work with texts (to use Rorty's locution from
"Texts and Lumps"). Their authority extends over their subject matter and
they are both in the service of humanity, and doing a good job, so why put
one up on a pedestal? That's what the downward motion sums up to.
Granted, one may think that the humanities are worthless and that the
sciences are the only cultural activity that's worth doing. But I think
that view is more like scientism.
Glenn:
Oh, and Matt, did I read you properly when you said that Doug R's
quantonics site was an example of "normal science"? Were you joking
or did I miss your point?
Matt:
Ah, yeah. I should have said "normal discourse (which is analogous to
Kuhn's 'normal science')." I didn't mean to imply that they were doing
science. What I mean is that, for better or for worse, they have chosen an
interpretation of Pirsig and have moved on to puzzle-solving. What's
occuring here is more dynamic then that, which would be more analogous to
Kuhn's "revolutionary science." That's all I really meant by it.
Matt
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