From: Scott Roberts (jse885@localnet.com)
Date: Wed Feb 23 2005 - 17:22:38 GMT
Marsha,
Marsha said:
You've stated "But the Middle Way is intended to avoid both extremes,
substantialism (as in SOM) and nihilism (as in MOQ)." You've stated that
MOQ contains nihilism. Would you please define nihilism as you are using
it?
Scott:
A handy definition is that a nihilist is one who holds that nothing exists,
or that nothing can be known, or that there is no value in anything. But
then there are large difficulties in what is meant by these denials. For
example, I would say that a pragmatist like Matt is on the nihilist side,
but he would say that I am begging the question, and he is correct. This is
because a pragmatist finds no use for saying that anything "exists", beyond
our conventional use of the word. The conventional use is, for example, if a
student of mathematics asks: does a proof of such-and-such exist? Well, if
it does, a teacher can point it out. If it doesn't, it doesn't. But I would
say that if one does beg the question, by continuing to ask philosophical
questions about existence and knowing and value as such, one can move beyond
both a substantialist and a nihilist viewpoint, while a pragmatist will see
any such questioning as presupposing a substantialist viewpoint.
In philosophies of mysticism, the same question pops up. I call the MOQ
nihilist because the way it talks about intellectual static patterns of
value is, in my opinion, denying that anything can be known in itself. It is
saying that all that we know consists of intellectual SPOV, but that such
SPOV covers up the true reality: DQ, which is unknowable except through
mystical transcendence. In my view, this way of talking about SQ is
nihilistic, but the way it talks about DQ is substantialistic (so overall,
the MOQ is nihilist, since it itself is SQ).
- Scott
MOQ.ORG - http://www.moq.org
Mail Archives:
Aug '98 - Oct '02 - http://alt.venus.co.uk/hypermail/moq_discuss/
Nov '02 Onward - http://www.venus.co.uk/hypermail/moq_discuss/summary.html
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 : Wed Feb 23 2005 - 17:27:48 GMT