From: Matthew Stone (mattstone_2000@yahoo.co.uk)
Date: Mon Mar 03 2003 - 13:58:45 GMT
Platt,
> PH:
> Foucault makes a judgment if, as you say, "He
> accepts that a plant is
> as it seems visually." Pirsig makes a different
> judgment. He says a
> plant is not as it seems visually, but is a pattern
> of moral value left
> behind by the force of DQ. Judgments about the
> nature of reality, about
> what "is" and "is not," are based on fundamental
> metaphysical
> premises which are always judgment calls. If you
> claim Foucault makes
> no judgments, how can he (or you or me) make a
> judgment that what he
> says is right?
Ok, so you can take it to the level that Foucault's
primary perceptive capacity is a system of judgement.
But to what extent does this devalue his work? Are
you saying his appreciation of the relativity of
thought means he cannot think? That he cannot posit
ideas that, whilst recognising their own relativity,
are of great insight?
> PH:
> So logic and math are formal but not "substantive"
> or real. Is that your
> position?
No, it is that *what* we think can be relative and
contingent, but *how* we think can, in some
circumstances be taken as ultimately verifiable, e.g.
maths.
> MS:
> > When has Pirsig 'persuasively argued' against
> Eurpoean
> > Deconstructivism? Or postmodernism in general,
> for
> > that matter?
>
> PH:
> The entire MOQ as presented in Lila is an argument
> against
> postmodernism if postmodern posits, as you point
> out, that thoughts
> are illusions. In the MOQ, thoughts are "real as
> rocks" intellectual
> patterns.
Thoughts are illusionary in the sense that they give
the impression they are a pure engagement with
reality, whereas they are based on all sorts of
underlying factors and limitations that we don't know,
e.g. Foucault's example of the circularity between the
subject and the object, that doesn't analyse itself.
This is just as 'real' as Pirsig's intellectual
patterns. I think the best definition of postmodernism
is the realisation that thought is relative, and that
thought has the ability to turn back on itself and
scrutinise itself. Pirsig does this consistently.
> PH:
> So something has to have "material presence" to be
> real? Sounds to
> me like your boy Foucault is just another SOM type
> who buys into
> good, old fashioned science-style metaphysics. As
> Pirsig describes the
> SOM outlook:
>
> "Subject-object science is only concerned with
> facts. Morals have no
> objective reality. You can look through a microscope
> or telescope or
> oscilloscope for the rest of your life and you will
> never find a single
> moral. There aren't any there. They are all in your
> head. They exist only
> in your imagination." (22)
>
> Not only do you agree that morals are products of
> imagination but you
> go even further and say thoughts are imaginary, too.
> In direct
> contradiction, Pirsig says thoughts are real
> "intellectual patterns," and
> morals not only exist, but are the "whole thing."
> (13)
Again I would like to reiterate that I never said that
morals or thought don't exist, only that they are
illusions (perceptions and customs masquerading as
universal truths). But I see what you are saying -
that Pirsig conceives of a moral not as 'in your
head', as in SOM, but as a component of value just the
same as the magnet-iron filings relationship. But
this is really why I questioned Pirsig's postmodernism
in my first post on this thread: he reintrodcues
intellectual patterns. And if you contend that Pirsig
is not postmodern at all, what do you make of his idea
of the relativity and interchangeability of
metaphysics? If this is not postmodern, is it then
'modern'? In what sense?
Matt.
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