From: David MOREY (us@divadeus.freeserve.co.uk)
Date: Sun Dec 07 2003 - 19:49:49 GMT
Matt
My: "Most of the time we can step aside." is to open the space for human
activity
against the determinists, because the causality stuff is like this, the car
is going to make
a big mess of you only if you don't get out of the road, most of the time
the causality stuff
is pretty manipulatable. My: "pushed around by nature," is having a go at
the push metaphor
that is really only applicable to certain kinds of interactions. So rocks or
texts, it is really
useful to work out what is different about these things, and about the sort
of beings they interact with.
This is where we start to get into the levels that Pirsig suggests, which
for me are levels of more or less
interactive freedom. Rocks are less free in relations to feet than people
are in relation to texts.
You say: "difference in subject material", yes this is my point, nature
provides very different sorts of material
answers with different objects, sure I want to see the natural and human
sciences as a continuum, the difficulties
of the human sciences as opposed to the natural need to be understood in
terms of the difficulty of getting closed
systems in the human sciences and also that there are free/dynamic qualities
of an increasing level connected with
systems that are more complex, i.e. more complex forms of life. My point
about langauge as a means of developing
increasingly complex questions about nature is that this creative production
of language enables the emergence of
very different things about the world, but this is not a one sided affair,
the world has to be responsive to this development
of language, otherswise do we just need language and no world, of course,
this interactive, conversational, aspect should
not be such a big surprise, it is all a human-life-world after all. Go and
read more Heidegger, he offers wider spaces than the
urban and grounded Mr Rorty, but it is also very dark stuff. I am reading
Rudiger Safranski's biography of Hedeigger at
the moment, and his walk up to the edge of the Nazi revolution and the
subsequent retreat is some warning about how
the road to freedom (cosmic evolution as Pirsig likes to describe it) makes
the fall into barbarism more likely. I think that
Pirsig's use of levels can also be dangerous in this respect, is it
appropriate for one level to exploit another? To sacrifice
low levels for the sake of the higher? Some how a sense of unity is required
to undermine these dangers. And a acute
sense of the closeness of possible evil.
regards
David M
----- Original Message -----
From: "MATTHEW PAUL KUNDERT" <mpkundert@students.wisc.edu>
To: <moq_discuss@moq.org>
Sent: Sunday, December 07, 2003 6:38 PM
Subject: Re: MD When is an interpretation not an interpretation?
> David,
>
> I still see the same stuff as I've been seeing: we basically agree. Our
only difference is that you still insist on saying that the scientist asks
nature questions as opposed to my insistence that nothing is lost if we
don't describe the scientist as asking nature questions. Rorty's point is
that everyone is everywhere and always in touch with nature. I think it is
wrong to say, "Most of the time we can step aside." I don't see that we
can. Where would you step to? It doesn't make any sense. With Rorty's
bland conception of being "pushed around by nature," it also isn't a
criticism to say, "When it comes to knowledge its alot more to do with us
pushing nature around. We discover a lot by how nature responds to our
promptings." Neopragmatists can only agree, except we hold back from the
conversation model.
>
> When you say that scientists work in a different conceptual framework,
pragmatists agree following in Kuhn's footsteps. Different disciplines have
different matricies with which they conduct their business. But the only
major difference between physics and literary criticism is that physics
deals with what we call "rocks" and literary criticism with what we call
"texts". We have found over the years that consensus on rocks tends to be
very high, while consensus on texts tends to be low. Any differences in the
specific techniques and methods used by the practicioners of the two
disciplines flows out of their difference in subject material and purpose
with respect to their subject material.
>
> I just still don't see the big difference. Let the scientists do what
they do. The only thing we need to do is step in and pop their
philosophical bubbles, because that isn't part of "what they do," that's
part of what we do.
>
> Matt
>
>
>
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