From: David Buchanan (DBuchanan@ClassicalRadio.org)
Date: Sat Feb 08 2003 - 02:16:40 GMT
Matt, Kevin and all pragmatists:
DMB says:
I've changed the thread name because "Gardner" is nowhere in sight. I've
deleted all of Matt's remarks except for two paragraphs, the ones that
address the question most directly. Most of the deleted material delt with
the distortions to which no philosophy is immune. I think we all agree that
ALL isms and ideologies can be distorted and appropriated for morally
dubious causes. Therefore, to reject any one of them for that reason is to
reject it arbitrarily. It is not a valid criticism. But that's not the
question. The question is about the moral consequences of pragmatism as it
really is, without distortion. Clearly, Pirsig is saying that there is
something inherently AMORAL in the notion that the test of truth is
practicality.
Matt said:
What Pirsig thinks he's able to do is give us a proof-positive way of never
falling into Nazism. And I agree, if we all agree on how to interpret the
levels and it's done in a way that avoids Nazism, then none of us will fall
into Nazism. The problem is the Nazi. The Nazi wouldn't distort the MoQ.
He wouldn't think he was distorting the MoQ, only we might. He would say
that Pirsig had gotten wrong. Only we might disagree. He would say that
Jews are no better then animals and that, as biological patterns, they
should be eradicated to make room for us blue-eyed intellectual-level
people. Like a germ being killed in favor of a patient. The Nazi will
say, "Europe is sick. We must cure it." Only we who already don't agree
with Nazism will say that their interpretation is wrong. The Nazis aren't
distorting the MoQ, they're interpreting it the same way we are: in the way
that makes the most sense to them.
Kevin added:
So Pirsig feels the MOQ is highly hijack resistant, but plain old
pragmatism isn't?
DMB says:
No. I opened this post with an explantion of why its not a NAZI problem, its
not about those who would corrupt a philosophy. (Because its not a valid
criticism) But I wanted to take issue with the last sentence in context.
Here you have denied that the Nazi view is really even a distortion, and
added to other such comments, even denied that there can be such a thing as
a distortion. There seems to be something amoral about the idea that all
interpretations are equally valid, don't you think? I think this is the kind
of thing Pirsig is getting at. There are several other examples of pragmatic
postions that I'd also characterize as amoral. Perhaps I'll respond to your
post again and go into more detail, but you get the idea. I should point out
that even your brief example about the specific way a NAZI would confuse the
levels to make his case shows that you CAN see what a distortion looks like.
Anyway, you really got to the meat of the issue in the second half of the
last paragraph...
Matt said:
The point of all this is to say that the pragmatist isn't very impressed by
Pirsig's "philosophical justification" for certain Western attitudes.
Pragmatists don't think our attitudes need philosophical justification.
The best politically-orientated philosophy can do is sum up some of our
platitudes, put them in an outline so maybe we can gain some insight into
them that way. But to say that our attitudes and platitudes need some
neutral, "objective" philosophical justification is to take on a Platonic,
Kantian, and, as I would argue, SOMic quest. A quest that the pragmatists
are suggesting we forgoe in favor of concrete comparisons of alternate
attitudes and platitudes. The reason why it looks as though the MoQ needs
distortion to be turned to Nazi ends and that pragmatism doesn't is because
the MoQ plays into the Platonic quest for a knock-down argument against
Nazis, the Cartesian quest for the perfect foundation in which no evil can
be done from. The pragmatist, on the other hand, eschews that quest. The
MoQ offers us philosophical "back-up" for the moral sentiments we already
have, while pragmatism simply points out that our moral sentiments are
gained by our contingent circumstances. Pragmatism doesn't encourage
Nazism. Only politics can do that. And pragmatists suggest that, when
arguing about public policy, we not worry about our philosophical
foundations, but instead worry about politics.
DMB says:
I can see how pragmatism's rejection some grandiose Platonic quest for
absolute foundations might be relevant to the issue generally, but question
I asked is much more specific than that. (The assertion that the MOQ is
linked to all this is one I'm not prepared to buy without further
inspection. And I don't think even the most general generalist can generally
say that Plato, Descartes and SOM are all the same.) In any case, I think
pragmatism's rejection of so many traditional philosophical issues only
demonstates the moral paralysis inherent in pragmatism, where moral
sentiments are just attituides and plattitudes, they're impervious,
incorribigle and contingent. It is no wonder this view has no defense
against a NAZI hijacking. It treats morality just as SOM does; it sees such
things as unknowable, uncertain, unfounded and not really real. And this is
precisely the kind of amorality that the MOQ is designed to cure.
Thanks for your time,
DMB
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