Re: MD The Not-So-Simpleminds at play

From: Sam Norton (elizaphanian@tiscali.co.uk)
Date: Mon Sep 22 2003 - 11:03:16 BST

  • Next message: Sam Norton: "Re: MD Where things end."

    Hi Matt,

    I hope you're not going to go away. I greatly appreciate your input and creative thinking. But I
    know that banging your head against DMB's intellectual walls can lead to despair; the only tonic is
    to take a break from it and recover some ironic detachment. I'm sure you've got the resources to do
    that.

    Anyhow, a brief response on this one.

    > But, I'm not sure I see what the difference is between values and opinions. The only way I think
    you can make that difference to stick is to take a different position than Sellars' psychological
    nominalism i.e. that to think is to use language. The alternate slogan is that we cannot pull the
    human off the inhuman, that I don't think we can pull values off of opinions. I don't think we can
    isolate them. If we want to talk about values, we are talking about opinions, and vice versa.
    >
    > The only way that the distinction avoids the temptation towards transcendence is if you read it on
    a continuum, that "values" is simply the moniker for well-established, agreed upon opinions and that
    "opinions" are more idiosyncratic.

    You'll have to unpick the reference to Sellars for me, I'm unfamiliar with him/her. My point is
    really the non-idealist one, that reality as a whole doesn't depend upon what we think about it. If
    value is the fundamental framework of the MoQ, ie that all of the inorganic level, to begin with, is
    structured from value, then our opinions don't play a part in it. I'm open to the idea that our
    opinions (ie value judgements in the sense you're using) structure our reality at the higher levels,
    but I don't think we can identify them in places other than the third/fourth levels.

    I'm not sure I would want to avoid the 'temptation to transcendence' of course, but perhaps we could
    have a little dialogue on that to clarify what I mean. My thoughts could do with a little untangling
    there.

    Cheers
    Sam
    PS Reading the Shusterman post left me with a big grin on my face :o)

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