From: jhmau (jhmau@sbcglobal.net)
Date: Mon Mar 17 2003 - 00:25:56 GMT
Matt,
Matt Said:
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.
joe: I am thinking about 'words' and how we learn them.
1. Abstraction from sense data. Words represent the essence abstracted by
the mind. Words are leaned in childhood and remembered.
2. Intuition from an instinctive sense. Words represent patterns formed
from intuition and memory. They are learned in childhood.
3. Belief: words are learned by mimicry.
a. Faith, a gift from a higher level. New words are learned a in a
vision or trance, Revelation. Words repeated by the faithful - Dogma.
b. Trust: words are conventional sounds. Words repeated by the
trusting - dogma.
I like you using the word "hounding" to indicate that a skeptic is like a
dog. I agree.
Matt:
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: For believers words are conventional sounds. I do not know what you
mean: "after we literalize a metaphor"? The literalized metaphor is still
conventional sound, so what does the word "literalized" mean in that
context?
Matt said:
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.
joe: Matt, why are you trying to defend Pirsig's "Quality" project? Defend
against whom?
Joe
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