From: skutvik@online.no
Date: Sat Nov 01 2003 - 07:43:36 GMT
People!
Please add the date of your references, many don't read all inputs and
it's difficult to find the said messages.
30 Oct. MATTHEW PAUL KUNDERT wrote:
> Wim said:
> Shouldn't the idea that something can be a 'lie' (i.e. be inconsistent
> with objective reality) be dropped in a MoQ-based culture?
> Platt said:
> Definitely not. A culture, MOQ-based or otherwise, will fall apart if
> truth standards are up for grabs. Imagine what life it would like if
> you couldn't trust you doctor, your electrician, or your plumber.
> Matt:
> I think Wim has pointed out an interesting observation. The idea of a
> "lie" as being inconsistent with objective reality should be dropped.
> That's what is dropped in a culture where truth is not an object of
> inquiry that you can get wrong. What's funny, is that Platt's answer
> is the same thing I would say, "a culture ... will fall arpart if
> truth standards are up for grabs". In a pragmatist culture, be it
> MoQian or otherwise, truth standards aren't all up for grabs, they are
> just recognized as having the ability to change, like the change
> between Ptolemy and Galileo. Galileo wasn't more true, or closer to
> Truth, he had different standards, standards that we consider better.
> I see Platt as trying to dress up the practical, everyday stuff that
> pragmatists would agree to, in the rhetoric of objectivism. I think
> Wim is right to poke fun at this.
I don't know if I understand Matt's comment to Wim's (equally
inscrutable) observation right. "The idea of a lie as being inconsistent
with objective reality should be dropped"? I don't think any culture
past or present has been without a truth/false distinction, or can be
without it .. the "objective/subjective" variety however!!
The MOQ starts with the Reality=Quality postulate, this is merely a
claim that things get a better explanation in this light than in the SOM
one. Then the static levels where one may safely say that the
false/true issue did not apperar before Society and language. However
only with the advent of the intellectual level did the subjective/objective
kind (of false/true) enter existence - as SOM - and this is something
different.
Galileo was a showcase of the new intellectual S/O reality asserting
itself over the social religious-mythological one, he had discovered an
objective truth that clashed with the religion-inspired cosmology. Now,
when Matt speaks about this not being more true only better ...etc. he
has transcended intellect's S/O and see things from the Quality point
of view (my "rebel intellectual pattern" from where intellect is seen for
what it is: a mere static level. From this Q-level there is no S/O only
ever better (higher) static "explanations".
I guess Matt will refuse any agreement with Pirsig, but I can't see it
otherwise than his position is MOQ-compatible, the difference with
Platt is due to NOT distinguishing between the false/true and the
subjective/objective kind. Platt is of course right, but he need not
worry, the false/true standard can't be abolished (Joseph Goebbels
said that lies became truth if repeated, but would certainly be upset if
this was practized at home) As said, the S/O is intellect's value and
like the rest of the static levels it can be transcended ..and the
Quality Idea is something that transcends intellect ...IMO.
I could go on about how Pirsig stresses that Intellect is out of Society
and thereby NOT the detached objective observer it likes to present
itself, and how - in this definition - it is very difficult to get these two
positions reconciled. Only the SOL-interpretation meets both Pirsig's
out-of-society-claim as well as being a high value level ...but I won't
harp on that merely say that if this is Matt's alignment of Rorty and
Pirsig I think he is right .......but I guess I soon will be told otherwise
:-)
Sincerely
Bo
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