From: Platt Holden (pholden@sc.rr.com)
Date: Wed Jul 09 2003 - 18:49:30 BST
Hi Matt:
> Platt said:
> Perhaps I'm hung up on Matt's "context" because to his way of thinking,
> we're always stuck in some context or other, and for me the context isn't
> history like for Matt, but people. In other words, such and such is true,
> but only in the context that a person says so.
>
> Matt:
> Oh, come on now. I have never, ever said that there is one context. The
> notion of context is the way it is so it can be stretched out to fit a lot
> of stuff (like "history") or not as much stuff (like "Americans"). You are
> conflating a lot of things I've said Platt. My point about history has
> always been that our patterns of value are contingent upon our place in
> history, that we can never be released from history's grip and leap to
> someplace outside of history. This is related to context insofar as the
> contexts we use are also trivially embedded in history. To juxtapose
> history with people is to make me look Hegelian when I've never made any
> moves towards some some metacontext like History. I think humanity's
> entire culture is made in the context of people saying things. As you say,
> "such and such is true, but only in the context that a person says so."
> That's closest I've ever seen you come to endorsing the idea of
> intersubjective agreement replacing objectivity.
Sorry you didn't pick up on the tongue in cheek tone of my post. The
obviousness of being stuck in a context of people I picked up from your
statement to Johnny that "I don't think it would ever be incoherent to
add, 'But only the context you and I are stuck in.' " I probably could
have made my point clearer if I had talked about the "context" of being
"stuck in our skins."
There's a wonderful line in Note 126 of Lila's Child where Pirsig says,
"The answer provided by the MOQ is that pain, like hearing and vision and
smell and touch, is part of the empirical threshold that reveals to us
what the rest of the world is like."
I find "empirical threshold" and "the rest of world" to be a important
ideas (intellectual patterns). Whatever you or I claim as true about
reality from our empirical threshold has to apply to us since we're
inevitably a part of what we're trying to describe. (Ask not for whom the
bell tolls.)
So when you claim that our patterns of value are contingent (dependent) on
our place in history, it appears you're assuming a empirical threshold
stance outside of history which, by your own claim, you're not supposed to
do.
I bring up this paradox because there's something profoundly meaningful in
paradoxes and self-contradictory claims like "There are no foundational
principles." If we're stuck anywhere, it's in such puzzles, the most
puzzling to me being our unique individuality where we find ourselves
eternally separate, but never apart . . . "from the rest of the world."
Platt
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