From: Platt Holden (pholden@sc.rr.com)
Date: Tue Nov 22 2005 - 17:03:38 GMT
Hi Matt,
In your effort to conflate intellectual and social patterns, i.e. reason
with faith, you posed the following conundrum:
> How can "individual intellects" be said to think freely if what enables
> them to do so is a dogmatic article of faith? If freedom allows you to
> swing free from dogma, how can dogma allow you to swing free from dogma
> when its dogma that's allowing you to swing free? How do convince others
> that you are free from dogma when they can point to your own admission that
> you aren't?
If I understand you correctly, you see that those who employ reason do so
because of their faith in the efficacy of reason, and this faith you
characterize as "dogma." To me, "dogma" is that which is believed based
on authority without adequate grounds or supporting evidence. The evidence
for reason's practicality or usefulness, something you hold in high
esteem, is overwhelming, making it's acceptance as a tool of survival far
from dogmatic. The proof is in the pudding.
Your underlying argument that regards intellect totally incapable of
separating itself from the social level seems to boil down to little more
than societies (a mother, father, and a child) are necessary for any human
activity of any kind, whether language, reason or mathematics. If that's
your argument, then it amounts to little more than a truism that Pirsig
acknowledges when he says upper levels are dependent on those below.
However, there are mathematicians and physicists like Roger Penrose who
are convinced that mathematical truths exist in a Platonic realm with or
without the presence of human beings. I'm inclined toward that view, just
as I agree with Pirsig that values that created our world in the first
place existed long before people (and the social level) arrived on the
scene.
To each his own "dogmas" :-)
Platt
P.S. As for my wanting "a stick to beat communists with" I'll take any
stick I can get. It's an evil that should be eradicated from the face of
earth.
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