From: hampday@earthlink.net
Date: Tue Jun 14 2005 - 22:15:50 BST
Matt --
> Yeah, okay, that's enough. The above is straight out of Descartes'
> Meditations. Trying to find an Archimedean point, turning inward, finding
> the ego, working out from there, etc., etc.
And I had such high hopes for you!
> (By the way, some secondary
> philosopher that only intellectual historians know of (I can't even
remember
> his name) pointed out that by Descartes' principles, we wouldn't _know_ "I
> think therefore I am." We wouldn't know there was a "self" that was
> thinking, we would only know that there was "thinking.") Paul and I think
> that is a _huge_ mistake. It leads, in fact, to the problems Pirsigians
> collectively identify as the Subject-Object Metaphysics.
By strict logic, Descartes couldn't prove "I exist"; he could only establish
that "something is". In truth, the fact that he could ONLY think should
have led him to the conclusion that he did not exist, or at least that his
existence was not a part of Primary Reality.
> Related to the type of thought experiment that you want us to do, I said
> this in "Philosophologology":
>
> "One reason why the 'traditional philosophical problems' and the
traditional
> philosophers still resonate outside of their time and place, despite any
> historicizing of their thought, is that the philosophers themselves wrote
as
> though they were speaking to all eternity. They formed their thoughts in
a
> way that made it easy to think that they were speaking to all people at
all
> times. They used thought experiments that could be easily reproduced,
> rather than their own personal historical experiences and travails, to
> contextualize and 'pump up' the problems they saw. But not only do they
> write as though they are speaking to eternity, they _actually thought they
> were speaking to eternity_. Their project was the project of speaking to
> eternity. This all has the effect of making it seem as though these
> problems are perennial problems."
I have no idea what you mean by "historicizing" thought. It seems to me
that if an assertion is self-evident, or true in principle, it makes no
difference when it is stated. Was MoQ's author not speaking for "all
etermity"?
> The traditional problem that specifically pops out of your
Meditations-esque
> line of thinking is the Problem of Other People or the Problem of an
> External Reality. But why should these be problems?
I never said they were.
> ...We aren't foundationalists and so aren't
> concerned with trying to "prove" the existence of people and rocks. We
> follow G. E. Moore in thinking that all the proof we need is in the
kicking
> of a chair.
Does the fact that you're not "foundationalists" mean your philosphy is
without foundation? How sad! Philosophology sucks. It's the theorists who
advance the cause, and who seem to be having more fun doing it.
> Pirsig seems pretty antithetical to Essentialism as far as I can
> tell, and all the better for it.
Yes, I've come to the same conclusion -- all the better for me, now that I
see the futility of discussing it in the MD.
Ham
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