From: Matt Kundert (pirsigaffliction@hotmail.com)
Date: Tue Jul 26 2005 - 18:41:19 BST
Erin,
Erin said:
I still don't get where the no attitude of phlogiston or nonuseful word
comes in. It appears it would be a negative attitude ...it isn't useful in
understanding reality and so it is rejected. You say Ptolemaic astronomy
wasn't encompassed by Copernican....but I think it is more that our ideas of
the universe encompass both theories the ones we find useful/positive
attitude with the ones we don't find useful/negative atttiude. The ones we
don't believe I still would say are not dropped it helps us in finding what
is useful.
For example in our conceptual web it is argued that that negative exemplars
(things known not to be acceptable referents of a word) are contrasted with
positive ones to establish boundaries on a word extension.
I don't see why it wouldn't be the same with beliefs. The beliefs you find
useful are contrasted with the beliefs you don't find useful. The beliefs
are not dropped and you do have an attitude about them.
Matt:
I'm not really sure where we're disagreeing anymore. I think you might
still be using "belief" like "concept." A "belief" is something you hold to
be true. "Concepts," we could say, are linguistic formulations that
exist--they may be true, they may be false. It doesn't seem right to me to
say that I have a belief in God--but I just don't find it useful. I have a
belief that the concept God exists, that is to say, that I know others
believe in God. In fact, you put the matter paradoxically above: "The ones
[beliefs] we don't believe...." That strikes me as an unhelpful paradox. A
belief is like a skill you've learned, like juggling. If you don't use it,
you lose it. In the pragmatist idiom, a belief is that which is useful.
"Believing" doesn't occur after one has found it useful, it is coextensive
with utility. When I start to believe something, when I start to formulate
a belief, that means I've found something to be useful. Saying that a
belief becomes more and more central is the same as saying that that belief
is more and more useful.
I understand what you mean by contrasts setting the stage of our conceptual
web. But I think "conceptual web" is just another way of saying "the
history of language use." The word "concept" has this universal ring to it,
like these things have always been around. But that's not true, at least
not for pragmatists (and Pirsigians). A presently used concept, then, will
have as a contrast to it the history of the usage of that concept (and other
contrary concepts). "I don't mean this, I mean _this_." But that doesn't
mean that these contrasts are hidden behind our concepts or beliefs.
History can be useful for understanding, but it doesn't uncover something we
didn't know before, it simply enriches the way we use things, like concepts.
So, in a sense, our "ideas of the universe" did encompass both Ptolemaic and
Copernican astronomy. Copernicus' heliocentrism is contrasted with
geocentrism. But in another sense, I don't think encompassing is a good way
of putting it. For instance, do scientists need to know a lot about the
history of science to do their job? Do people secretly have a concept of
geocentrism that they don't know about when they are told that the sun is
the center of our solar system? I think history is good, but I think in
some cases it doesn't add anything. For instance, the Republican party used
to be the party that blacks voted for. Now they aren't. The history of
American political parties might help sometimes, but I think in some cases
you could be totally ignorant of that factoid and get along quite well in
the contemporary political scene. Another way of putting this is to say
that sometimes the contrasts change. When a concept (or whatever) is young,
it is contrasted against the old guys. But when it grows older, its now
contrasted against the young pups or against different old fogies who had
nothing to say to it before.
Matt
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