From: Matt the Enraged Endorphin (mpkundert@students.wisc.edu)
Date: Sat Mar 15 2003 - 02:34:07 GMT
Joe,
Joe said:
For some time I have been trying
to put together logical elements to show how an intuitive approach to
knowing things is logical.
Matt:
Oh, I'm pretty sure it's logical, but that's not really the issue as I see
it. Pragmatists think that intuitive approaches to knowledge, which is
common to both phenomenology coming out of Husserl in the the Continental
tradition and logical positivism coming out of Russell in the
Anglo-American tradition, just don't pan out. They think that having
intuition be the gatekeeper of knowledge, that you know things about the
world by being in touch with it, raises needless stumbling blocks like
forcing you to answer the skeptic ("how do you know your intuition is
right?"). As an alternative, Davidson and Rorty suggest that we think of
knowledge as something internal to beliefs. We have knowledge of our
beliefs, not of the world. Some of our beliefs are about the world, but
this only means that we have knowledge of our beliefs about the world. By
doing this, pragmatists can say that the world causes us to have certain
beliefs, which makes us "always and everywhere in touch with the world,"
without having to say that this cause is a reason for us to have this
belief. The intuitionist wants to say that the world gives us reasons to
have particular beliefs about the world. The Rortyan pragmatist wants to
say that the world causes us to have particular beliefs and that reasons,
like knowledge, are internal to beliefs. Reasons are using one belief to
justify another belief. To have the world provide us with reasons and
knowledge is to have the skeptic always hounding your every step.
So, when I follow Davidson in saying that metaphors cause us to have
beliefs, I'm saying that these indecipherable sounds behave just like tree
branches on us. They can only cause us to have certain beliefs. They have
no logic, because logic is internal to beliefs. It is only after we
literalize a metaphor that it can become a reason for a belief because the
dead metaphor has come to express a meaning, it has come to refer to other
beliefs coherently.
Joe said:
The impression of 'indecipherable sounds and scratches' is not something I
attach to a basis for dogma. What is the authority for the new dogma?
Matt:
I'm not following you. What do you mean by dogma?
Joe said:
My memory of scholastic philosophy was of substance and nine accidents,
quality, quantity, time, place etc. (it was a long time ago) which inhere in
the substance. Quality was the first accident. Color, an example of
quality, does not have its own existence. Only substance exists, and
accidents inhere in the substance.
By abstraction the essence of an image of the substance is separated by the
mind and given intentional existence in the mind as an idea. Words express
that idea. This is the basis of SOM. Quality which is an accident also
inheres in the essence abstracted. I do not conceive in SOM how it can be
conceived of as 'anti-essence.' That would be illogical.
Matt:
I think I better understand what you mean by SOM. Your spin on it is of a
particularly Aristolellian bent. That's fine, but I don't understand why
you would say, "I do not conceive in SOM how it can be conceived of as
'anti-essence.' That would be illogical." You are assuming I'm using an
SOM perspective, when I'm not sure that I am, even by your lights.
The way I'm using essence is in a Lockean kind of way. Locke conceived of
objects as having an essential nature. It was up to us to discover what
this essence was. A discovered essence would basically be something like a
True Definition. This is why I think of Quality as being an anti-essence:
it's undefined. Quality can have no definition, so how can it have an
essence? After taking the "Quality is Reality" metaphor seriously, we get
the picture that we shouldn't be looking for essences at all. Definitions
become internal to our beliefs, not as connectors to the world. In fact,
"Quality is undefined" is a metaphor, too. We can define the word
Quality. Words were meant to be defined. So, by saying that a particular
word is defined as "undefined" we are being completely and utterly
incoherent against the backdrop of our other beliefs. "Quality is
undefined" doesn't give us an cognitive meaning, it simply causes us to
have beliefs like "Quality is Reality."
Maybe our misunderstandings are coming out of when I said, "Pirsig seems to
strike the view that you don't need epistemology. It's all
intuitive." You keep saying that I accept it, but I think you think that I
accept the premise "It's all intuitive," when the only think I accept is
that Pirsig accepts the premise "It's all intuitive." I believe the
misunderstanding is that you are interpreting me as following Pirsig in
being an intuitionist, hence all the talk about the internal compromises of
logic. I do not accept the premise "It's all intuitive." I accept that
Pirsig is an intuitionist. I'm not trying offer an interpretation of
Pirsig that matches with that premise. I'm reading it out of him and
redescribing Quality as if Pirsig wasn't an intuitionist. Thus, I think
mine and your projects are different. You want to interpret Pirsig as an
intuitionist and I don't. You are developing a more elaborate intuitionist
epistemology for Pirsig, in the end to defend Pirsig's "Quality" project,
and I want to read epistemology out of Pirsig altogether, in the end to
defend Pirsig's "Quality" project. Two quite incommensurable approaches.
Matt
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