From: hampday@earthlink.net
Date: Fri Apr 15 2005 - 07:24:51 BST
Mark --
You commented on my note to Anthony as follows:
> LPs claim that everything we know is derived from logical reasoning,
> and/or empirical observation, that is, to use the jargon, all
> knowledge is analytic a priori (all bachelors are unmarried men), or
> synthetic a posteriori (some elephants are white). Therefore any
> statement claimed to be synthetic apriori, say "God exists", is
> meaningless, because denying it produces no verifiable change in our
> experience.
It has been some time since I attended a Logic class. If "synthetic a
priori" judgments are logically invalid, it supports the claim of Pierce,
among others, that we cannot know whether any belief about the world is
absolutely true or not. I accept this axiom as an essential principle, but
not because "denying it produces no (verifiable?) change in our experience".
FWIW, I happen to think one's experience IS affected by his belief -- even
if that belief is only faith-based and logically unsupportable. Do you deny
that the experience of a 'born-again' Christian is changed by the
experience? -- or that a 'near-death' encounter produces a change in the
survivor's experience? I'm aware of numerous situations in which the
behavior of an individual -- an act of great courage or generosity, for
example -- is directly related to his personal belief system.
But faith is not philosophy, and perhaps I'm digressing again from the point
you raised.
> Ant's point is that LPs can say the statements "God exists" or
> "Essence exists" are meaningless, but they cannot claim that "value
> exists" is meaningless since they themselves are making a value
> judgement when they say their theory of knowledge is better than
> others. The MOQ gets them off this hook; but Essentialism (and your
> off-point answer above) does not.
What, precisely, is this "hook" that so concerns the MoQ and its author?
And why must a philosopher assume a defensive position relative to the
methodology of the positivist? I'm hardly a logician, as you can see; but I
sense a fallacy in Pirsig's statement to me that "the positivist cannot say
... that his experiments have no value."
You claim that the positivist's assertion that his methodology is better
than others is a "value judgment". (Would this be an 'analytic' or a
'synthetic' a posteriori judgment?)
Actually, I'm having a problem seeing this as a "judgment call" at all.
Instead I see the positivist saying simply that value, in this sense,
doesn't enter into his methodology. Value for the positivist is a
quantitative measurement or reference point rather than a qualitative
judgment -- your meaning. So, unless he is referring to the efficacy of his
experimental method -- a synthetic a priori assertion? -- any mention of
"value" would not normally be to disparage other methods, but to identify
the result(s) of his experiment. (I guess my original take on Pirsig's
statement was to assume he was referring to objective values rather than to
a subjective value judgment per se. That was before I understood that the
author's value was DQ.) But I'm still not convinced that this argument
isn't flawed by the ambiguity of the word "value" in this particular
context.
In any case, the use of such an argument to substantiate the MoQ as an
empirical-based philosophy is a weak defense at best. I concur with Matt,
Sam, and a few others here that the attempt to position this philosophy in
the domain of scientism is fraught with problems and totally unnecessary.
At least I've tried to "freshly engage with the question" -- and with no web
site boiler-plate to irritate your "sliver of annoyance"!
By the way, I'm still reeling from the remark you made to someone a while
back that my "quasi-religious" exposition of Essentialism is "giving
philosophy a bad name". Since I'm such a nice fellow, I'll refrain from
characterizing a certain other philosophy as "quasi-scientific".
Regards,
Ham
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 : Fri Apr 15 2005 - 07:40:34 BST