From: Scott Roberts (jse885@cox.net)
Date: Mon Aug 29 2005 - 22:28:02 BST
Matt, Erin, et al,
Matt said:
I do think the spirit of Pirsig's writings places him as an
antiessentialist, though not in Scott's recently formulated terms. In
Fish's terms, Scott's essentialist and antiessentialist both appear as
essentialists, while the one who wants to eshew those terms (the one saying
yes, no, neither, both) is the antiessentialist. I think Pirsig is an
antiessentialist most of the time, but slips into some essentialistic
mutterings from time to time.
Scott says:
The fourth horn of the tetralemma (one cannot say "neither") is saying that
one *should not* eschew the terms, as a pragmatist wants to. Why not, you
ask? Because if one wants to think about how things hang together, they will
inevitably resurface, albeit using other words. So what I have been pointing
out is that in the MOQ, the words "essence" and "universal" have resurfaced
as "static pattern of value". The only way the MOQ could be truly
antiessentialist is to deny that there is value at all levels. But this, of
course, would just turn it into (possibly non-reductive) materialism, and it
would no longer be the MOQ. Saying that value is real at the inorganic level
is the camel's nose under the tent. The MOQ antiessentialists are trying to
deny the rest of the camel (consciousness and intellect at all levels) while
keeping the nose.
Materialism (non-reductive or otherwise) does not see a resurfacing of
"essence" simply because it tries to ignore that consciousness and intellect
are all about the play between essence and existence, and cannot have arisen
in a world without essences. What the tetralemma says is that it is
meaningless to talk about inherently self-existent essences -- they only
exist as essences because of existents, but it is also meaningless to talk
about inherently self-existent existents -- they only exist (in a valued
way) because of essences. Contradictory identity. The materialist assumes
that before there were humans, there were existents without essences. The
MOQ cannot make that assumption without ceasing to be the MOQ.
- Scott
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