From: Platt Holden (pholden@sc.rr.com)
Date: Thu Feb 13 2003 - 18:31:08 GMT
Hi Matt, Kevin, Scott, All:
MATT:
> Contra Scott, I
> don't think metaphysics is something that is inescapable.
Contra Pirsig, too. "As long as you're inside a logical, coherent universe
of thought you can't escape metaphysics." (5)
MATT:
>I would say that Pirsig (at his best, pace Platt and Scott)
>and Rorty are doing philosophy, but not metaphysics.
Pirsig leaves no doubt he is doing metaphysics. "Getting drunk, picking
up bar-ladies and writing metaphysics is part of life." (5)
I agree with Scott that despite Matt's and Kevin's protestations, Rorty is
very much into metaphysics. I would take it a step further and claim that
Rorty is a fundamentalist. By donning a pair of glasses for a panoramic
view, one can easily see that an anti-fundamentalist stance is itself
foundational, and that Rorty's denial of absolute truth is itself an
unqualified truth.
Rorty's metaphysics is replete with such self-contradictions. It tells us
for a fact that there are no facts. It disavows certainty in no uncertain
terms. It makes universal judgments while simultaneously denouncing
universal judgments. It claims its argument is right while at the same
time assuring us that all distinctions between right and wrong, valid and
invalid, acceptable and erroneous based on consistent principles is
wrong.
But it's Rorty's assault on truth that concerns me most. Because when
question arises as to what society ought to forbid and what it ought to
allow, and enough people following Rorty's lead believe that an appeal to
universal truth (We hold these truths to be self-evident . . .) to be
hopelessly outdated and possibly dangerous, raw power will fill the
vacuum. Even in a discussion group like this where truth can be
accepted as simply a matter of taste because it cannot be used to
impose restrictions on anyone, it should still serve as standard for
judging an argument's quality. In answering Dan Glover's question in
Lila's Child, "What distinguishes a high quality intellectual idea from a
lower quality one? "Pirsig's answer, "It's truth."
When you undermine the concept of truth as a transcendental reality
(beauty, goodness and truth) and substitute political criteria such as
usefulness or "intersubjective agreement," you're vulnerable to waking
up in a society where the truth is taken over by the government, as
British philosopher Roger Scruton discovered:
"Perhaps the most fascinating and terrifying aspect of Communism was
its ability to banish truth from human affairs and to force whole
populations to 'live within the lie,' as President Havel put it. To me it was
the greatest revelation when I first traveled to Czechoslovakia in 1979 to
come face to face with a situation in which people could, at any
moment, be removed from the book of history, in which truth could not
be uttered, and in which the Party could decide from day to day not only
what would happen tomorrow, but also what had happened today, what
had happened yesterday, and what had happened before its leaders
were born."
No wonder Pirsig comes down hard on the "moral right of the intellect to
be free of social control," saying "it is essential to the evolution of a
higher level of life from a lower level of life." (24) In other words,
fundamental. Keep truth away from "what every knowledgeable person
says."
Platt
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