From: Steve Peterson (peterson.steve@verizon.net)
Date: Thu May 15 2003 - 19:06:59 BST
Hi Matt,
> Now, I don't want to say you're begging the question to end a conversation.
> At times you are, after all, just asking questions. I'm just a little
> confused because I thought you caught some of the conversations I'd been
> having with some of the others around here on these issues, so I presumed a
> little background knowledge.
I have caught many of your conversations, but I am only slowly understanding
your position. I came in to the DG in the middle of a Rorty thread that I
couldn't follow at all not having followed it from the start. I think I
understand more and more of your posts over time. I appreciate the time
you've taken to answer questions that you've answered before. Some of them
I've even asked before, but I couldn't remember your answers.
(By the way, I read your "confessions" essay a few weeks ago and made some
notes on it while I was reading and I hope to find the time to ask you some
questions about it.)
> So, no post-structuralists don't have to reject hierarchies. A good example
> is Rorty, who quite plainly prefers liberals to conservatives.
>
> Steve asked:
> But this is just his subjective opinion?
>
> Matt:
> Ewww, gross! What a very odd thing to say. I wouldn't think that anybody who
> takes Pirsig seriously, from either of his two books, would say something like
> that. So, I think the question is severly limiting because anything I answer
> under the current formulation will be wrong according to Pirsig's, Rorty's,
> and my perspective. Let's just say that Rorty, like Pirsig, get's rid of the
> distinction between subject and object and he also blurs the distinction
> between knowledge and opinion, making it a continuum between stuff that's easy
> to reach a consensus on and stuff that ain't.
Ok, sorry. I'm not sure what I meant by that question. (see below)
>
> Matt said:
> As far as I can see, the only way to call somebody on this fallacy is to
> already have in mind the "correct" way to differentiate pre- from trans-.
>
> Steve said:
> But I do. A higher level includes and transcends a lower level. I higher
> level performs all the functions of a lower level and more. If the word
> "higher" is offensive, choose a different word. The distinction I'm
> (Wilber, really is) making is that transrationality inclu
> des rationality
> (and thus can forward mathematics) while prerationality (babies) can't.
>
> Matt:
> Yah, but my point is that for the interesting examples of pre- v. trans-, like
> between mystical intuition and mythology, there are going to be long-winded
> arguments about why mystical intuition doesn't transcend the lower levels. It
> may seem cut and dry for you, but for someone like me it doesn't. That's
> because we are both operating under different final vocabularies, different
> intuitions about the way the world works, different paradigms. If I went off
> about the continuities and essential sameness of mystical intuitions and
> mythology and you accused me of a pre/trans fallacy, I would just shrug it off
> because my metaphilosophical orientation already accounts for how to interpret
> mystical intutions and mythology. You think I'm getting it all wrong, but
> then, I think I'm getting it all right. To use your own language, why
> wouldn't I be able to turn to you and say, "But that's j
> ust your subjective opinion." To me, fallacy only applies between people who
> already share enough of the relevant beliefs, which I don't think we would.
Steve:
But I wasn't trying to convince someone on a pre-rational or a merely
rational level of a difference that he couldn't possibly see. My thought
was that anyone who was turned on by ZAMM is likely to be open to such a
distinction which would bring clarity to someone who was already on the
verge of a trans-rational level of awareness. If you accept that a higher
level includes and transcends a lower one (as cells include and transcend
molecules which include and transcend atoms and so on) as a definition of a
"higher level," then it could be useful to keep in mind that the
trans-rational cannot be irrational, so if you want to get there, you should
avoid rather than embrace (like the "New Age"rs seem to do) the irrational.
Do you think that there is anywhere to get to? Do you think there are
higher and lower levels of awareness? Higher and lower levels of cognitive
ability? Higher and lower stages of moral development? Etc?
Do you personally find any use for the idea of transcendence? I think what
makes me cringe is the sense that you don't see any perspective as better or
worse than any other. It's the apparent lack of possibility of ascent in
your philosophy that bothers me. I'm sure you'd say that this is not your
view, but it's hard for me not to read you that way. I'm not sure where
the block is in my understanding. You say that you don't say that but in
your explanations I read you saying it again.
>
> Steve said:
> Is there a good reason why I should take the position that there are no
> ahistorical hierarchies? Wouldn't such a reason imply that there is one?
>
> Isn't being able to take the perspectives of others (understanding different
> contexts) better than only being able to see things from your own? Another
> ahistorical hierarchy? Being able to take the perspective of others
> includes and transcends your own. No?
> Matt:
> On being able to take on other perspectives, that is of course a good thing.
> But the notion of another ahistorical hierarchy is incoherent. To
> contradictory hierarchies can't both be True and ahistorical, true for all
> time.
I'm not sure what you're saying possibly because of a typo or two.
>If they can, then we are already talking past each other. I take you
> to mean simply that its good to take in other people's experiences, their ways
> of talking, and try and see how it fits in with ours. That's an extremely
> pragmatic and Rortyan motif. On appropriating and synthesizing other
> perspectives and having that to mean transcendence, I have no
> problem, except that the word transcendence makes me cringe because of what it
> typically means in philosophy.
I'm talking about trying to discover the direction of the arrow of progress
so I can head that way.
I'm looking for justification for saying it is good to be able to take
other's perspectives. Some people can't do that, by the way. (When little
kids cover their eyes, they think you can't see them.)
Some people are stuck in an egocentric understanding of the world while
others have reached a higher ethnocentric understanding. Still others like
you are able to see that what their own culture says is right and wrong is
not absolute. They have a world-centric view. Is none of these
perspectives better than any other? I see these as stages of development.
(The higher level includes the lower.)
To tear down such a structure is to destroy the means that got you to the
level at which you could critique structures and would end the possibility
for growth.
>Like some people's definition of metaphysics
> here, I have no problem with it theoretically, it just doesn't fit my
> purposes.
It's hard for me to see your purpose. This goes back to why I asked about
Rorty's preference for liberals being merely his opinion. I can't see where
this is supposed to get us. When you say the pre/trans fallacy is bunk,
it's hard to accept the criticism when you seem to think that everything is
bunk. I know you would never say that, but that's how it seems to me.
Do you think about what is good? How do you make decisions?
Thanks,
Steve
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