From: David Buchanan (DBuchanan@ClassicalRadio.org)
Date: Sat Jul 05 2003 - 17:22:05 BST
Matt and all:
DMB said:
Who in the world asserts that knowledge and facts rest upon transcendental
and eternal truth? Who says that? I honestly wonder who and what in the
world you are talking about. Please, give me just ONE example of just ONE
such assertion. (Preachers and pundits don't count.)
Matt:
Plato asserts it. Augustine asserts it. Aquinas asserts it. Descartes
asserts it. Locke asserts it. Berkeley asserts it. Kant, Hegel, Lessing,
Marx, Feurerbach, Schelling, and Comte assert it. The history of philosophy
is littered with them. It is still littered with them. Take the
neo-Kantian, P.F. Strawson. His The Bounds of Sense is a very influential
exposition and update of the Critique of Pure Reason. A lot of contemporary
philosophers have heard of him. He might even still be alive. I think
Mortimer Adler believed in ahistorical truths, too. Noam Chomsky can be
considered to be trying to find transcendental facts.
dmb replies:
A list of major philosophers? I keep asking for an example, not a list. See,
I just think your whole approach is rather vague and Quixotic. You're
tilting at windmills. I understand that Rorty basically rejects all of
Western philosophy, but I'm asking YOU to provide an example of this boogey
man so that we might get a sense of how much of a problem it really
represents. See, I think you have only the vaguest, most parrot-like grasp
of what you're talking about. It seems that your slippery style is a result
of a sophomoric and vague understanding of the issues. I used to think that
you simply REFUSE to be specific as a matter of will, but now I think you
CAN NOT be specific as a matter of ability. Please, prove me wrong. How's
that for a challlenge?
Matt said:
I'll agree with the next person that foundationalism is on the decline. But
as long as antifoundationalists still have opposition, which as far as I can
tell they still do, I'll keep trotting out the old arguments. Besides,
since you've supposedly already made the contingent turn, I fail to see why
you get so excited by my ever so brief interlocution.
dmb says:
If B is opposed to A and C is opposed to B, then C is A? No. Being opposed
to antifoundationalism is not that same as being in favor of
foundationalism. This is a good example of your tilting at windmills, not to
mention the lack of good logic. Pirsig is not Rorty's dragon. I'm not even
sure it ever existed. I think Rorty and most every materialist has
completely misunderstood the nature of the transcendental realms, but that's
a long, long story. In any case, I fail to see what these frequently trotted
out arguments have to do with the MOQ. Its not that I get "excited" by them
so much as I get irritated by their irrelevance. I believe that both Rorty
and Pirsig would agree. They'd both tell you that they're not very relevant
to each other. I indulge myself in a fantasy that asking you to be specific
and explicit will trick you into thinking about it seeing that for yourself.
(To dream, the impossible dream.... How do like the whole ironic Man of La
Mancha thing I got goin' here, huh? Pretty cleaver, eh? You pomos like that
sort of thing right?)
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