From: MATTHEW PAUL KUNDERT (mpkundert@students.wisc.edu)
Date: Wed Sep 03 2003 - 22:27:46 BST
David,
David said:
Matt talks about the mechanistic approach working with rocks, fine it does, but you can change the words as Pirsig says, e.g. from cause to value, it makes no difference to science but it changes the ontological assumptions and implications.
Matt:
Problem is, pragmatists have no truck with ontology. The only way I can figure a person would care about ontology is if there were something to get right about ontology. Otherwise, who cares whether you describe the world mechanistically or teleologically? The only thing that matters is utility. When Pirsig redescribes causation into pre-conditional valuation, I think of that as Pirsig being at his redescriptive, pragmatist best. I take his point to be that the world doesn't care whether it is described in terms of value or particles. This is a pragmatist point. But ontology is not part of this point. Only the usefulness of descriptions. Pirsig doesn't even try make the case that we should drop the concept of "causation" from our vocabulary. I don't think he wants to. His point is simply a pragmatic one.
Now, I think the case can be made that Pirsig is doing ontology. In this case, I think this is a misstep for a pragmatist, one I would criticize. However, I haven't looked closely at the text in a while, so I'm not really sure.
Matt
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