Re: MD Begging the Question, Moral Intuitions, and Answering the Nazi, Part III

From: MATTHEW PAUL KUNDERT (mpkundert@students.wisc.edu)
Date: Sun Oct 12 2003 - 19:00:48 BST

  • Next message: David MOREY: "Re: MD Intellectual level - New letter from Pirsig"

    Platt,

    Briefly:

    Platt said:
    Your first lengthy argument in your 3-part series makes a big deal about the role of assumptions in logic argument but fails to acknowledge that Rorty's views are also based on assumptions such as "Our final vocabulary corresponds to our assumptions." In fact, Rorty's whole big deal about "vocabularies" is one elephantine assumption that begs the question over the MOQ.

    Matt:
    Platt, if I say, "we are both ... begging the question over each other" that means we are both, myself and Rorty and Pirsig and you, begging the question over each other (if and only if that happens to be the case). It is completely asanine to think that somehow I'm saying Rorty escapes the circularity of justificatory practices. If we take Pirsig as doing Platonic metaphysics, then yes, Rorty is begging the question, just as Pirsig is begging the question. However, I'm not sure that Pirsig doesn't agree with Rorty's "big deal," his "one elephantine assumption" about different vocabularies. In fact, most of what was in this series, I think, is evidence to the contrary.

    To think that I was somehow out to show that Pirsig begs the question and Rorty doesn't was to do a poor job of reading. I'm sorry, but my posts were mainly about Pirsig this time, not Rorty.

    Platt said:
    That assumptions are vital in logical argument comes as no great revelation. Years ago Ayn Rand warned people to "check your premises." So I don't think you need to spend a lot of time arguing that argument depends on beginning assumptions by assuming your audience doesn't know any better.

    Matt:
    To assume that I was out to belittle my audience is not as good an assumption as assuming that I was making sure that we would all be on the same page when I say certain words and phrases like "final vocabulary" and "begging the question". People wanted to know what in the world I was talking about, so I tried in some small way to explicate what I talk about. Remember, explication? The only thing I can do when my interlocuter's vocabulary differs to a significant degree? The evidence for what I was up to is in the post, if only you wanted to read it.

    Damn it, I told myself I wasn't going to get bogged down by this crap.

    Matt

    MOQ.ORG - http://www.moq.org
    Mail Archives:
    Aug '98 - Oct '02 - http://alt.venus.co.uk/hypermail/moq_discuss/
    Nov '02 Onward - http://www.venus.co.uk/hypermail/moq_discuss/summary.html
    MD Queries - horse@darkstar.uk.net

    To unsubscribe from moq_discuss follow the instructions at:
    http://www.moq.org/md/subscribe.html

    This archive was generated by hypermail 2.1.5 : Sun Oct 12 2003 - 19:02:35 BST