From: David MOREY (us@divadeus.freeserve.co.uk)
Date: Mon Feb 02 2004 - 19:34:49 GMT
Hi
I prefer pattern to cause/law but I do want to emphasize
that patterns have pretty constraining aspects.
I.E. if a car is going to hit you there is no point
trying to adjust your concepts? How say you Matt?
regards
David M
----- Original Message -----
From: "David Buchanan" <DBuchanan@ClassicalRadio.org>
To: <moq_discuss@moq.org>
Sent: Sunday, February 01, 2004 11:17 PM
Subject: RE: MD Objectivity, Truth and the MOQ
> "The MOQ says that Quality comes first, which produces ideas, which
produce
> what we know as matter. ... However, as if to further the confusion, the
MOQ
> says that the idea that matter comes first is a high quality idea!" LC
Note
> 67
>
> "This knowledge is confirmed by experience in such a way as to allow the
> scientist to generate a supremely high quality intellectual belief that
> external objects exist. But that belief itself is still subjective." LC
p313
>
>
> Paul, DM, Matt and all MOQers:
>
> David said:
> Hard to think that objectivity means little more than intersubjective
> agreement.
>
> Paul replied:
> Yes, "little more than" is a conclusion arrived at when the only
> alternative to objective is subjective. When value enters the picture as
> a third category, there is a further reason to accept realism - it's the
> *best* intellectual pattern for investigating nature. From this starting
> point we can say that intersubjective agreement is created by Quality
> and objectivity is then created by intersubjective agreement.
>
> dmb says:
> Mmmm. Thanks for the light. For starters, I think these Pirsig quotes also
> show that any accusations about the MOQ's "correspondence theory" is
without
> "foundation". If the very idea of objective reality is a "just" a
subjective
> belief (intellectual static pattern) and the MOQ can assert both that
ideas
> preceed matter AND still call the opposite a "high quality idea", its hard
> to imagine that any charges of absolutism could ever stick. I think these
> quotes show that these neo-pramatists complaints don't pertain to Pirsig's
> MOQ. In fact, I think its the other way around: The MOQ's complaints about
> amorality and relativism pertain to neo-pragmatism. What really interests
me
> here are the differences between the neo-pragmatists intersubjective
> agreement and Pirsig's social and intellectual patterns, which are roughly
> translatable.
>
> "Values provide the only basis for fully intelligible comprehension of
> culture because the actual organization of all cultures is primarily in
> terms of their values. This becomes apparent as soon as one attempts to
> present the picture of a culture without reference to its values. The
> account becomes a meaningless assemblage of items having relationship to
one
> another only through coexistence in locality and moment - an assemblange
> that might as profitably be arranged alphabetically as in any other order;
a
> mere laudry list." Pirsig quoting Harvard anthropology professor Clyde
> Kluckhohn. LILA p59
>
> dmb continues:
> Here Pirsig is using Kluckhohn to voice his own complaints about
value-free
> objectivity. More specifically, he is using one of Boas' students in his
> attack on value free objectivity in anthropology. In any case, it seems
that
> there is a striking similarity between the neo-pragmatist's historically
> contingent intersubjective agreement and Kluckhohn's "meaningless
> assemblage..in locality and moment". All the various webs of belief, from
> obsure idiosyncracies to widely held common sense, constitute little more
> than a laudry list or more or less useful opinions with no real underlying
> coherence. This turns language and culture into a thing we can only
measure
> by its usefulness like some soul-less machine. Function and fit. There's
no
> THERE there. The MOQ, on the other hand, manages to escape the gravity of
> those dreaded absolutisms without getting so lost in space.
>
> "The greatest benefit of this substitution of "value" for "causation" and
> "substance" is that it allows an integration of physical science with
other
> areas of experience that have been traditionally considered outside the
> scope of scientific thought. Phaedrus saw that the "value" which directed
> subatomic particles is not identical with the "value" a human being gives
to
> a painting. But he saw that the two are cousins, and that the exact
> relationship between them can be defined with great percision. Once this
> definition is complete a huge integraton of the humanities and scences
> appears in which platypi fall by the hundreds. Thousands. ..If science is
> the study of substances and their relationships, then the field of
cultural
> anthropology is a scientific asurdity. ...But if science is the study of
> stable patterns of value, then cultural anthropology becomes a supremely
> scientific field." Lila - end of chapter 8.
>
> David said:
> The basis I accept realism is on that of causality and our capacity to
> investigate underlying levels of causality, e.g. that the colour green as
we
> experience it is dependent on the wavelength of light. ...The idea that we
> can
> have useful knowledge depends on realism, any other idea is a bit stupid
> really, despite the pragmatist fear of committing to realism.
>
> Paul:
> I would rephrase that last sentence like this - "The idea that we can
> have useful knowledge [of inorganic and biological patterns] depends on
> realism, any other idea is [of lower quality], despite the pragmatist
> fear of committing to realism." - and agree with you,...
>
> dmb says:
> There's something comforting about the word "realism". :-) Leaving aside a
> qualification or two concerning "causation", I agree too.
>
> "Phaedrus had railed against the conjuror, Aristotle, who invented the
term
> (substance) and started it all. ...What is it that keeps these properties
> uniform if it is not something called substance? That is the question that
> created the concept of substance in the first place. The answer given by
the
> MOQ is similar to that given by the "causaton" platypus. Strike out the
word
> "substance" wherever it appears and substitute the expression "stable
> inorganic pattern of value." Again the difference is linguistic. It
doesn't
> make a whit of difference in the laboratory which term is used. No dials
> change their readings. The observed laboratory data are exactly the same."
>
>
>
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