From: Elizaphanian (elizaphanian@tiscali.co.uk)
Date: Fri Apr 04 2003 - 12:48:51 BST
Hi Rick, Platt,
> PIRSIG (LILA ch12 p179)
> The intellectual level of patterns, in the historic process of freeing
> itself from its parent social level, namely the church, has tended to
invent
> a myth of independence from the social level for its own benefit. Science
> and reason, this myth goes, come only from the objective world, never from
> the social world. The world of objects imposes itself upon the mind with
no
> social mediation whatsoever. ...it isn't so.
>
> RICK
> I don't think this should be read to say that intellectual patterns (like
> science) are no more objective than social patterns (like the church),
> rather I just think it means there is no 'perfect objectivity' (see my
> recent posts to Sam In the Philosophy and Theology thread on "metaphysical
> neutrality").
Nice to see that Pirsig uses mythology in a similar sense to the one that I
have been using (was that an argument with you?)
Something I came across whilst I was revising my thoughts on revelation:
"The significance of this [theological revolution in 13th century] became
apparent only in the subsequent bifurcation made possible by the rise of
modern science: the 'model' (ie, the 'map of being'...) was set apart from
'reality itself' (the referent of experimentation-as-guarantor). With this
division, the patristic and medieval accounts... became completely
incoherent..... As a result of shifts in language and reappropriations over
time, speech becomes radically vulnerable to its provisionality and the need
for its own constant re-establishment...The divorce between words and
things, coupled with the conflation of God and things, introduces a
fundamental irrationality into what had been and ordered and intelligible
realm of relations, an abyss between intelligibility and human
intelligence."
Seems to me that there is something in common between three different
threads - the 'what is a fact', the 'a/r distinction' and the 'philosophy
and theology' one. I would argue that a properly theological account can
overcome all these difficulties - but then, I would, wouldn't I? ;-)
Sam
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