From: Elizaphanian (elizaphanian@tiscali.co.uk)
Date: Tue Feb 04 2003 - 18:14:46 GMT
Hiya Struan,
Seems like you're the self-appointed Socrates of this forum, giving
authority to nothing except the search for truth. ("The evil that Pirsig,
Horse and their ilk tap into here is deeply disturbing for anyone concerned
with intellectual integrity and the search for truth.... I, nevertheless,
shall carry on in my new role as meta-moderator, picking Horse up each and
every time I consider his abuse of dissenters, and/or genuine philosophers,
to be severe enough to warrant my intervention.")
As such, I would be interested to know your reactions to Matt's campaign of
the last year or so (a good summary is now available on the website in his
latest essay). For his approach is most assuredly not guilty either of your
characterisation of the moq as dependent on strawmen, yet nor does it share
in your concern for the 'truth'. Perhaps, if you felt up to it, you might
engage with his work rather than indulge in animus-driven squabblings.
Unless you don't think Matt's a "genuine" philosopher of course.
On the subject of logical positivism, I think you're being - to put it
charitably - somewhat disingenuous with your demand to Horse that he "should
feel obliged to find quotations from logical positivists which show that
'logical positivism attempts to degrade art and music'." It's a bit like
demanding evidence from a geneticist demonstrating their rejection of
Lamarckian inheritance. The main course of their work takes place within the
context of a guiding assumption - the rejection of Lamarckian inheritance -
so there's precious little point in mentioning it that often. (That isn't to
say that you would never find a Lamarckian geneticist - just that they would
be remarkably unusual, and for sure they would talk about it).
I'm sure you'll agree that the central project of the Vienna Circle was the
rejection of metaphysics on the grounds of its meaninglessness (ie it can't
be verified). The other side of that project was, of course, the elevation
of science as the pre-eminent means of both developing knowledge and driving
forward human progress. Metaphysical speculation (eg Hegel's Absolute),
religious and moral language were all rejected. (Ayer: "The fact that people
have religious experiences is interesting from the psychological point of
view, but it does not in any way imply that there is such a thing as
religious knowledge, any more than our having moral experiences implies that
there is such a thing as moral knowledge"; "in every case in which one would
commonly be said to be making an ethical judgement, the function of the
relevant ethical word is purely 'emotive'. It is used to express feeling
about certain objects, but not to make any assertion about them." And so
on). This approach fed in directly to the psychological school of
behaviourism (so you have Carnap and Neurath developing a 'logical
behaviourism' in the thirties).
So what we have is a school of thought which a) treats science as the sole
source of knowledge, and sees philosophy's role as providing articulate
questions for science to answer, and b) rejects all language of value as
emotivist (so their main targets are metaphysics, religion and ethics) and
c) tends to a devaluing of the 'inner' life. Now it seems to me that to then
demand specific criticisms of art and music (in addition to traditional
philosophy - which surely you would accept they criticised??) is to ask too
much. Perhaps it exists, not sure how I would go about finding it, without
reading through all the back copies of 'Erkenntnis' - and frankly, life's
too short for that. Yet if you have a school of thought which denigrates all
talk of 'value', and treats empirical knowledge as the engine of human
progress, it would seem only reasonable for that school of thought to not
include 'art and music' within the sphere of empirical knowledge (and
therefore needed for human progress) but in the sphere of emotions - and
therefore not important. That's their guiding assumption - why would they
need to refer to it in detail, when their main battle is with the
metaphysicians and moralists?
Of course, it would be a simple matter for you to refute Horse on this. All
you need to do is provide evidence of a sustained engagement with either art
or music on the part of a logical positivist (sustained implying seriousness
of attention, giving it some value). Something which showed that they
treated art or music as having an equivalent value to empirical knowledge. A
personal taste of a logical positivist wouldn't be enough - it would have to
be an appreciation of art or music *as a logical positivist*. That would be
pretty much a knock down.
Of course, in providing that, you would also be knocking down the general
impression of logical positivism within our culture - which is what Horse,
and indeed Pirsig, are drawing on. If you achieve it, I would recommend
seeking academic publication. It would make your name in "genuine"
philosophical circles. I'd certainly revise my opinion of the logical
positivists if you did so.
By the way, I sent this in a few weeks ago, but chances are you missed it:
~~
Ray Monk (the biographer of Wittgenstein) tells the wonderful story of how
when he was invited to speak to the Vienna Circle, Wittgenstein would
sometimes "turn his back on them and read poetry. In particular - as if to
emphasise to them... that what he had not said in the Tractatus was more
important that what he had - he read them the poems of Rabindranath
Tagore... whose poems express a mystical outloook diametrically opposed to
that of the members of [the] circle.... To the positivists, clarity went
hand in hand with the scientific method, and, to Carnap in particular, it
was a shock to realise that the author of the book they regarded as the very
paradigm of philosophical precision and clarity was so determinedly
unscientific in both temperament and method." I love
the image of a bunch of positivists gathered at the feet of the master, who
turns his back on them and forces them to listen to poetry. Of course, if
Struan is right about the positivists, that anecdote has no point :o)
~~~
Hoping you don't run away from debate again.
Sam
"I am not altogether on anybody's side, because nobody is altogether on my
side, if you understand me... And there are some things, of course, whose
side I'm altogether not on; I am against them altogether." -- Treebeard
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 : Tue Feb 04 2003 - 18:54:26 GMT