From: Mark Steven Heyman (markheyman@infoproconsulting.com)
Date: Sun May 15 2005 - 01:57:09 BST
On 12 May 2005 at 15:35, Matt Kundert wrote:
Matt said (May 2nd):
it's idolatrous to think that Mill was using reason when he decided that
liberty was the highest value and Aquinas was using something else when he
decided love for God the highest. I have no idea what Mill and Aquinas were
doing differently. As far as I can see, they were both “using reason.”
They just did different things with it.
Mark replied (May 3rd):
The difference, I think, is in the universal accessibility of the objects of
their thought. The concept of liberty, personal freedom, is immediately
accessible to everyone. No one needs to be told that freedom is better than
being buried alive. That the concept of God is not immediately accessible
to everyone is obvious in that not everyone believes in God. Pirsig's
Quality, like Mill's Liberty, is immediately accessible to everyone. This,
I suggest, is why belief in God is idolatrous and belief in Quality or
Freedom or Liberty or Equality is not.
Sam jumped in on cue (May 3rd):
I think this is a very revealing exchange. … But more importantly there are
indeed societies where the concept of personal freedom is incomprehensible.
I quote from Alasdair MacIntyre's 'After Virtue' - he's a
philosopher/theologian I greatly admire.
…
What really strikes me as odd is that, for someone so lucidly critical of
modern ideologies in the political and economic spheres, you seem remarkably
at home with the very same ideology in the philosophical sphere - which is
ironic, in that it is precisely the ideology which you are here defending
which provides the main justification for the practices which you so
cogently condemn elsewhere.
msh says:
I've addressed Sam's identical ideology criticism of me elsewhere, in
an exchange which resulted in the Capitalism thread where, the ball
is still in Sam's court. I see no reason to comment further here.
Matt:
To my mind, the reason why Enlightenment philosophy is wrong is
because it was looking for philosophical justification in the first place.
msh says:
Ok, you see my position as a result of "Enlightenment philosophy,"
which, evidently, you find less impressive than, what, post-
modernism? I see my philosophy as Enlightenment plus Pirsig. Anyway,
your sentence above is not enough to help me understand why
Enlightenment philosophy is wrong and who, (Derrida, Rorty?) are
right. Why not start a separate thread on that?
matt:
If I’m right, there are basically two stages to your argument. First,
things like personal liberty are “immediately accessible.” When this is
shown to be suspect, by digging into history and showing how our moral
conceptual heritage has changed, which is what Sam was pointing out,
msh:
History proves nothing regarding this point, and is in fact an
academic diversion. I doubt if the concept of freedom was
immediately accessible to Neanderthals; this doesn't mean it isn't
immediately accessible to post enlightenment human beings, assuming
such humans have escaped the FRH destroying externalities I've
mentioned before.
matt:
your second stage is to argue that a “fully realized human being” would find
personal liberty immediately accessible. My first softening up move will be
to point out that not everybody believes in Quality, as you say they do. To
say that they do is to make the same move the theist does when they say that
God exists whether particular people believe in Him or not.
msh says:
Uh, no. I think Pirsig makes it pretty clear than everyone makes a
hundred quality decisions a day. This is why belief in Quality is
empirical and belief in God is not.
matt:
The only way to “believe in Quality” is to first have read Pirsig’s books (which not
everyone has) and then to have been persuaded by them (which even fewer
people have been). To say otherwise is to make the same kind of
appearance/reality distinguishing move that Plato gave us, where
Quality/God/whatever is there whether we like it or not.
msh says:
See above. People believe in Quality whether they've read Pirsig or
not. If you disagree with this, then maybe we need to go over the
parts of ZMM where I believe this is made quite clear. I'll be happy
to do that.
matt:
I should like to argue, though, that the introduction of the notion of a “fully
realized human being” as a rebuttal in an argument begs all the important
questions,
msh:
Per my previous post, I don't use it as a rebuttal.
matt:
just as supposing that some ideas are “immediately accessible”
whereas others are not. We can fill in the blank behind “a fully realized
human being would _________” with whatever we want, say, “be a penguin,” and
whatever denial or argument your opponent comes up with, you can always
reply “Well, they aren’t fully realized human beings,” which for all your
opponent (or, as importantly, you, for that matter) knows, is true.
msh:
This ignores my contention that we judge the realization level not by
what someone says but by what they DO, or by the results we observe
if what they say is translated into action. Remember, a fully-
realized human being is defined as one who recognizes our common
humanity, (see Einstein) so anyone who deliberately acts in any way
detrimental to humanity is, by definition, not an FRH.
matt:
We could all just be stages towards some hitherto unknown moral level. We
won’t know until we get there, so placing our current moral understanding at
this endpoint level begs the question over your opponent who thinks that
their moral understanding is the better one that will last. They can reply
the same way you do, thus creating an impasse.
msh says:
See above. Our moral goal is not unknown; it is to become a fully-
realized human being. The so-called impasse is broken once we look
at actions or results rather than listen to words. That is,
bloodless, limitless, metaphysical DISCUSSION is what creates the
impasse.
Matt, at this point I need to snip four or five or six long
paragraphs of philosophology. I enjoy reading these academic
diversions, but I personally am really far more interested in knowing
what we living beings are thinking, at our common end-point of
evolution. I think we should be able to explain our thoughts without
reference to others, unless we are asked for historical.academic
support for our opinions.
matt:
I’ll end by saying something more about the notion of a “fully realized
human being.” While I don’t think such a notion helps in an argument with
an opponent who already disagrees with you on the end result, the notion,
like the notion of a “fully realized polity,” does play a part in our moral
thinking. For “post-moderns,” it is important to sketch the utopias we’d
like to see realized because it helps us think up concrete suggestions for
realizing them. It gives us a direction to go. It also helps us begin the
channels of communication between alternative utopias described by others.
The existence of plurality and diversity poses a significant challenge to a
community. The first step is communication, spelling out the various
traditions and cultures people are coming from, their different ends, goals,
and desires, and then trying to figure what we are going to do about it.
msh says:
Great. I look forward to this discussion. Let's start another
thread.
Mark Steven Heyman (msh)
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