From: David Buchanan (DBuchanan@ClassicalRadio.org)
Date: Sat Nov 01 2003 - 20:49:34 GMT
Andy, Platt and all thread followers:
Andy said:
Short of time, so I will just conclude for awhile by saying that it seems
there is some consensus that Pirsig and the MOQ does not offer us an easy
answer to the question of what makes an idea dangerous. Some side
disagreements seem to center on the term "value." ...
dmb says:
I wouldn't blame the MOQ. I mean, the question is far too vague. Dangerous
to who or what? What kind of danger? The Doctor has ideas that are dangerous
if you are a germ, but we humans are quite happy about those same ideas.
Maybe we should get specific here. I'm not saying there are EASY answers in
the MOQ, just that we might get more out of it if we asked different
questions.
Andy said:
According to AntMcwatt's thesis, Quality/value are primary in the MOQ and
truth is secondary. I am not inspired enough this morning to further split
truth between big T and little t. But, I am talking about truth as
something we inquire about. DMB and Platt wish to combine truth with the
primary reality in the MOQ. I think the rest of us see the folly in this.
dmb says:
You've completely misrepresented my position here. I certainly do NOT
"combine truth with the primary reality." That's not even close to what I've
been saying. You've lumped me in with someone I disagree with about
everything and taken a vague and general swat at the both of us. I wish
you'd have responded to the things I wrote to you in detail. That approach
might have prevented such a wild misrepresentation. In any case, its quite
clear to me that Pirsig's version of truth (high quality intellectual
patterns) is not the primary reality (DQ).
Andy continued:
When the pragmatist says the best we can do with truth is persuade and
discuss that there are better ways to live or better explanations or better
predictors of the future and that we come to intersubject agreements about
what these better things are, all they are saying is that truth is
secondary. That it is a property of language. They are saying nothing
about the primary reality--whatever we want to call that. They are saying,
however, that we can never make a correspondance between the primary reality
and our descriptions of this primary reality. In this sense, they agree
with the mystic interpretation of Pirsig. In the MOQ the primary reality is
called Quality or value, but in particular Dynamic Quality. So, finally, to
DMB, I will assert that he still has not pointed out why Pirsig's truth and
Rorty's truth will not mix.
dmb says:
This is hard to follow, but I think I've spotted an important mistake, the
same one that Matt is making. You're confusing Pirsig's DQ, the primary
reality (DQ), with objective reality (sq). This confusion has lead you to
believe that Rorty and Pirsig are taking about the same thing, but they are
not even in the same ballpark. The "correspondence" that neo-prags deny is
NOT between the mystical reality and our descriptions, but between our
descriptions and the rest of static reality. The neo-praggy is denying the
distinction between our descriptions and the world "out there". Its a denial
of objective truth in favor of intersubjective agreement. It hard to even
imagine how a self-described atheist and physicalist could be talking about
the mystical reality, let alone in such terms. This neo-praggy denial simply
has nothing to do with mysticism or DQ.
More later,
dmb
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