From: David MOREY (us@divadeus.freeserve.co.uk)
Date: Sun Aug 31 2003 - 12:18:49 BST
Hi Matt and DMB
I am enjoying this exchange. You seem to have boiled
it down to where the differences are. I agree that the problem with Rorty is
his materialism or physicalism,
I am happy with all the stuff he says about epistemolgy#
and pragmatism but then he seems to go off in a completely unsupported
physicalist direction. The mystic
skepticism/agnosticism about materialism/physicalism is because we just
can't see on what it is supposed to be based. What we call matter is just
what the sciences currently picture it as being, which is constantly
changing.
Rorty seems to do little more than make philosophy bow down to the physical
sciences and I am not keen to buy that. Besides quantum theory gives us one
very strange version of what physical reality is supposed to be. And if we
are to believe Prigogine in his 'The End Of Certainty'
that reductionist project is really looking very suspect these days. And if
physicalism is not about reductionism what is it? Pirsig supports notion of
the irreducibility of explanation between levels, and modern science theory
may well be supporting him in this.
DM
----- Original Message -----
From: "David Buchanan" <DBuchanan@ClassicalRadio.org>
To: <moq_discuss@moq.org>
Sent: Sunday, August 31, 2003 12:34 AM
Subject: RE: MD A metaphysics
> Matt and all:
>
> Matt said:
> Its not asanine that you're following a path of mysticism, or people are
> Pirsigian. What's asanine is that you call materialists dogmatic because
> they don't agree with you. The problem I've tried focusing on in our
> debates is that the materialist and the mystic will _never_ convince the
> other by using argumentation because the materialist and the mystic do not
> hold enough of the relevant premises (i.e. beliefs) in common. They both
> beg the question over the other.
>
> dmb says:
> I think the issue is much more simple than that. I think that Pirsig is a
> mystic and Rorty is a materialist. Scientific materialism is one of
Pirsig's
> main targets. Its the heart of the thing he hopes to replace. It hardly
> makes sense to interpret the MOQ through Rorty's eyes.
>
> DMB had said:
> And since its pretty clear that scientific materialism is assumed by Rorty
> and friends, it just seems that all these guys have really done is abandon
> the most interesting questions in favor of physics and such. If that's not
> SOM, nothing is.
>
> Matt replied:
> Right, right. Rorty assumes one thing just as you assume something else.
> Pointing that Rorty assumes something is fairly pointless in of itself...
>
> dmb says:
> Pirsig's enemy is SOM. Rorty's ideas rest on SOM assumptions. You don't
see
> the point of that? It's not that Pirsig's view is God's own truth, but
> haven't you brought a Klansman to a meeting of the NAACP? Why wouldn't you
> expect some objections to such a bad mix, an incompatability Rorty himself
> has confirmed. That's the point and I think its quite enough.
>
> Matt:
> Well, all I was saying about Plato was that he certainly thought ordinary
> experience was an illusion. Hence, the "via our senses" part. However, I
> don't remember anything in Plato about direct experience leading to the
> underlying unity of reality.
>
> dmb says:
> Modern interpretations of Plato have all but erased all references to myth
> and mysticism. The culture is hostile to mysticism generally and is one of
> the things we tend to filter out. But when we look at Plato's work in the
> context of his own time and culture, it is increasingly easy to see that
his
> work is saturated with references to myth and he belonged to a long
> tradition of mysticism and mystery religions.
>
> More later,
> dmb
>
>
>
>
>
>
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