From: Platt Holden (pholden@sc.rr.com)
Date: Fri Jan 10 2003 - 15:05:07 GMT
Matt:
> Platt said:
> I'd like to point out that you each employ many absolute
> statements in your arguments against absolutism, thus becoming
> hoisted on your own petards.
>
> Matt:
> One of my statements and JoVo's statements could easily be regarded as
> absolutes in the sense that Jonathan [see I can spell correctly], Kevin,
> and I would like to get rid of. What Platt is construing absolute to mean
> however is different then the sense in which Jonathan, Kevin, and I are
> taking it. If I'm correct, the three of us would like to get rid of
> _metaphysical_ absolutes. "Non-metaphysical absolutes," however, are a
> little harder to take seriously because the producers of these absolutes
> don't take them seriously. Like non-metaphysical binaries, I don't know
> how we would be able to think without "non-metaphysical absolutes." To
> point, when I said, "There are no knock-down arguments against convinced,
> thorough, dogmatic people," for Platt's sake, I should have said, "I can't
> think of what a knock-down argument against convinced, thorough, dogmatic
> people would look like." Making us who eschew absolutes in the
> metaphysical sense _have_ absolutes in the metaphysical sense, whether we
> know it or not, is putting us in a position that makes us look, as you have
> pointed out, ridiculous. But it also begs the question, so making us look
> ridiculous has really no effect other than to point out that you're betting
> on the usefulness of absolutes and we are not.
Pardon my ignorance, but would you explain the difference between a
"metaphysical absolute" and a "non-metaphysical absolute."
For someone who doesn't take non-metaphysical absolutes seriously
you use them a lot which also shows that you consider them useful
even while you absolutely deny their usefulness. Also, don't such non-
metaphysical absolutes, required by language, become absolutely
necessary for your "language-contextualized" universe?
> And, once again, I'd like to point out that masochists would view sitting
> on a hot stove as high quality. This is still a problem for Pirsig's
> statement, "But that the quality is low is absolutely certain."
Maybe in an imaginary contextualized world you could find such a
masochist who would by definition enjoy sitting on a hot stove, or
imagine an alien who gets his energy from sitting thereon, but the
challenge is to find such a person in experiential reality.
Platt
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 Jan 10 2003 - 15:11:10 GMT