From: abahn@comcast.net
Date: Sat Sep 20 2003 - 22:36:44 BST
Hi David,
You Quote Pirsig,
"What passed for morality within this crowd was a kind of vague, amorphous soup
of sentiments known as "human rights". You were also supposed to be
"reasonable". What these terms really meant was never spelled out in any way
that Phaedrus had ever heard. You were just supposed to cheer for them. He knew
now that the reason nobody ever spelled them out was nobody ever could. In a
subject-object understanding of the world these terms have no meaning.
There is no such thing as "human rights". There is no such thing as moral
reasonableness. There are subjects and objects and nothing else. This soup of
sentiments about logically non-existent entities can be straightened out by the
MOQ. ...According to the MOQ these "human rights" have not just a sentimental
basis, but a rational, metaphysical basis. They are essential to the evolution
of a higher level of life. They are for real"
Andy: Well, I do see here a contradiction between Rorty and Pirsig. Rorty
obviously doesn't believe there is a metaphysical basis for human rights. I
might be going off on a tangeant here, but I don't want to argue from Rorty's
position here. Rather I will argue from my own. I don't want to criticize
Pirsig too much, because like Rorty we need to look at his whole body of work
and not just a few select quotes to understand his philosophy and the MOQ. But
I will say that Pirsig is just plain wrong in the above quotation. These "human
rights" are NOT essential to the evolution of a higher level of life. In fact
we have gotten where we are, through evolution, by nurturing a view of
individuals in groups outside of our own as something less than human. Society
has advanced, evolved and grown by killing off ideas, humans, and biological
adversaries opposed to our evolutionary trajectory. Through all of this the
intellectual level has been growing and advancing. Evolution has rewarded
individuals who are aggressive and competitive when dealing with unknown
entities such as strangers in unknown groups. Evolution has also rewarded
individuals who react with violence over rational responses to fear and the
unknown. Evolution has also rewarded individuals who responded to authority
unquestioningly. All these traits have been passed down to us through our
evolutionary history. We do not naturaly have a concept of "human rights" that
is defined through the evolution of a higher level of life. Rather we have to
create this definition in order to reach a higher level of life, because our old
views of human rights for insiders and a complete disrespect for all lives
outside of our groups will no longer be feasible in our increasingly smaller
global world.
You say:
"Pirsig's take seems to correspond to the real world and the problems were are
faced with, while Rorty seems to be attacking a position held by nobody. I mean,
is there a serious thinker who believes democracy and human rights have an
eternally fixed definition?"
Andy: From the Pirsig quote above, this would seem to me to be exactly what
Pirsig is saying.
DMB: "If so, that would be news to me. It seems quite obvious that the problem
is exactly the opposite, that no one has been able to pin it down or spell it
out and that the meaning of the word changes through time and from place to place."
Andy: Exactly!
DMB:"Do we have power over our language? Again, it seems that Rorty is exactly
wrong and that exactly the opposite is true."
Andy: Well let's be precise here. I said we have power over our language not
Rorty, but let's go on.
DMB: "Language has power over us. Words like these refer to a certain kind of
experience. We don't alter experience by using better or different words. New
words come into existence and old words change their meaning through a process
that has very little to do with an individual's will power. I mean, we can't
force a bigot to become a civil rights activists by simply forcing him to say
"African-American" rather than "nigger". Such a person will simply transfer all
the hate onto the new term and nothing has changed except in the most
superficial way."
Andy: I think I agree with you here. I was talking about a word like democracy
and freedom though. I don't want to just give these words away to others and
invent a new term for treating people equally. I still hold these words sacred.
It bugs the @*&# out of me when I here what the American military is doing
around the world in the name of freedom and democracy. THese are not the use of
the words I would wish them to be used for. But, it will take some work to
convince many people that democracy does not mean giving select indivduals the
freedom to do whatever they like, without government intervention, with property
they have come im possesion of--such as Iraqi oil. Democracy means all
individuals in society deserve the same rights to pursue happiness. It means
lessening human suffering and cruelty. It means not exploiting workers for
profit. It means not exploiting a ecological system that benefits us all for a
short-term profit. It means not disregarding the rights of future individuals
to also enjoy the vast richest on this earth including clean air and water. Now,
I might have a long way to go and perhaps an insurmountable current of
opposition to contend with, but I am going to bank my hope on democracy meaning
this when I say it and I am going to fight to my last breath anyone who wishes
to distort the meaning to some exact opposite one. So, yes language does hold
power over us. But, as artists, poets, screenwriters, novelists, philosophers
and others we have the power to create new uses for language and this power can
change the world. At lkeast that's what I'm banking on.
DMB: And its not enough to convince such a bigot that such terms are more useful
because it is a MORAL issue. Such a person, I think, will only change when he
can be presuaded that its not just a matter of being nice or fair, but is a
matter of his own moral status.
Andy: You mean it won't do any good to just tell Platt to just be nice. :-)
DMB: Usefulness is about what is in the hands, but morality is about what is in
the heart and soul, if you know what I mean.
Andy: I think I do, and I understand why you might think this. However, I
would expand the term usefulness to also be about what is in the heart and soul
if it would help us cope--or if it would lessen human suffering in the world.
This is a barometer Rorty has proposed for usefulness. Maybe it isn't perfect,
but I like it. If is lessens human suffering and cruelty in the world then we
could call it useful.
DMB: Further, I think we can fairly easily demonstate that an emphasis on
property rights as a definition of democratic principles is quite wrong-headed.
The slavers of the old south asserted their "property rights" (as well as the
Bible) to justify all kinds of cruelty and injustice. Its really not so
different today. Property rights are asserted to justify all kinds of little
evils including less conspicious forms of exploitation and cruelty.
Andy: Yes, indeed!
DMB: I think the MOQ's solution goes a long way toward preventing that kind of
non-sense, while Rorty seems to be putting us right back into that sentimental soup.
Andy: Well, I am not going to annoint myself as an expert on Pirsig's MOQ, but
I have witnessed plenty who would that have reached just these sort of non-sense
solotions from the MOQ. And, I really don't think I can prevent them from
reaching these conclusions. This is exactly what Rorty would say we cannot
prevent, because we cannot point to any authority above our own experience and
history. Rather, we should continue to try and pursuade through open
communication and discussions and also through creating.
DMB: "Does that make sense? Does that show Prisig and Rorty as oil and water, or
what?"
Andy: I think it makes sense. Does it show Pirsig and Rorty as oil and water.
No. I think I might agree that Rorty is not going to help you get from
Pirsig what you want to get. But, he helps me read Pirsig and a lot of others I
am reading. What Matt has been trying to say in his mixture of Pirsig and Rorty
and "strong misreadings" is that Pirsig will not be the last word on the MOQ or
even Pirsigs work. We all will interpret what he has said. Some of us will
interpret his work by trying to discover his exact intentions in everything he
said. They will try and make the MOQ cohere by looking to Pirsigs work and
everything he said in the past and hopefully into the future. Others will try
and make the MOQ cohere by adding something that Pirsig never intended, because
they see some contradiction in the MOQ that cannot be mended without this
addition. And others will combine Pirsig with something else in order to create
something brand new and beautiful. All of this will fall under the heading of
MOQ in the future.
Thats what I think anyway,
Andy
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