From: MATTHEW PAUL KUNDERT (mpkundert@students.wisc.edu)
Date: Thu May 22 2003 - 03:42:24 BST
Scott,
Scott said:
But clearly, Rorty can't accept this, since he is a materialist. To put it
another way, it is not a case that the appearance/reality distinction serves
no purpose, but that a materialist has to see it as false, as being
anti-materialist.
Matt:
And here, I think you are wrong about this. Rorty doesn't accept the appearance/reality distinction because he's a materialist (an outdated word he doesn't use anymore in his own carefully nuanced self-descriptions), he doesn't accept it because he's a pragmatist. You could be the opposite of a materialist, an idealist, and deny the appearance/reality distinction. And reductive materialists use the appearance/reality distinction when they say that mental events are really just physiological events, as I think you've pointed out before.
Scott said:
There is also the criticism that it (metaphysics) is a conversation-stopper.
It seems to me that it is the Rorty's of the world who are trying to stop
the philosophical conversation, and again for dogmatic reasons. It is
Rorty's belief in materialism that leads him to put down Platonic
philosophy, not a historical summing up. Of course, for him, metaphysics
cannot do any good, because he believes there is nothing to be metaphysical
about. But 2500 years of mystics, some of them metaphysicians, should tell
him he might be wrong. (How to interpret quantum mechanics might also get
him questioning.)
Matt:
Rorty does go to great pains to say that he has no intention of stopping the philosophical conversation, just the metaphysico-epistemological conversation. And again, I don't think his materialism necessitates his anti-Platonism. Marx, after all, was a good materialist metaphysician. And so were the early analytic philosophers. And so are the current realist philosophers. As for dogmatic reasons, they are no more dogmatic then your own. After all, you aren't a non-reductive physicalist. The difference between you and Rorty, as I see it, is that you both draw opposite morals from the history of philosophy.
Scott said:
In any case, what I am trying to say here, then,
is that in your criticism of Pirsig's metaphysical tendencies, you are being
just as dogmatic, just as, if not more, dependent on a particular belief in
How Things Really Are -- in particular, They Are such as to lead one to
discount mystics. Have you let yourself be open to writings of contemporary,
philosophically literate mystics, or do you assume it is a waste of time to
read them? (Examples: Bernadette Roberts, Sri Aurobindo, John Wren-Lewis,
and of course my fave, Franklin Merrell-Wolff.)
Matt:
Well, saying that I do have a belief about How Things Really Are both begs the question and is a lie. I don't do metaphysics and I don't have such a belief. But we've been around this tree before (who's going around who we'll leave to the Jamesian philosophers watching us ;-). And I have read some mystic literature. I don't assume its a waste of time because I'm too young and haven't read enough of it to make assumptions like that. But like many people who read, I read where my interests take me and, philosophically speaking, where the footnotes take me. Rarely they take me to the names you've mentioned, but Merrell-Wolff is one I've read before in my seperate readings. The difference between our two positions is that, because you believe in a hidden reality that can force upon us pure facts, if we never read mystics, its almost like a crime against humanity because we will never reach the Truth if we don't acknowledge the mystic reality. If people never read pragmat
ists, however, its simply unfortunate because pragmatists are simply betting that pragmatism will be better than mysticism, rather than saying that pragmatism is the True Reality.
Matt
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