From: David Buchanan (DBuchanan@ClassicalRadio.org)
Date: Sun Feb 15 2004 - 22:18:04 GMT
Matt, Paul and all:
Matt said:
...For instance, the whole idea of a "linguistic turn" in philosophy. Rorty
thinks that switching from talk about experience to talk about language
focused our conceptual clearing ability, which helped us get rid of a lot of
these crappy conceptual moves. So, for the post-analytic, neopragmatist,
"empirical experience" is simply translated into "language" and nothing is
really lost.
dmb replies:
I think Pirsig's epistemology is significantly different from Rorty's. It
seems to me that "empirical experience" and "language" are very different
things for Pirsig and so one cannot be translated into another. The MOQ adds
a sense of value to traditional empiricism, which says that the biological
senses are the primary gatekeepers, the "starting point of reality"...
Pirsig said in his SODV paper:
"The Metaphysics of Quality follows the empirical tradition here in saying
that the senses are the starting point of reality, but -- all importantly --
it includes a sense of value. Values are phenomena. To ignore them is to
misread the world. It says this sense of value, of liking or disliking, is a
primary sense that is a kind of gatekeeper for everything else an infant
learns."
dmb continues:
But there's more to it than just the senses. To this biological level
starting point Pirsig adds culture. (This is where language itself plays
such a large role.) In the MOQ, both the biological senses and the social
level linguistic customs are necessary pre-requites for our intellectual
descriptions, so the the levels act as a series of filters...
"Our intellectual description of nature is always culturally derived. Nature
tells us only what our culture predisoses us to hear. The SELECTION of which
inorganic patterns to observe and which to ignore is made on the basis of
social patterns of value, or when it is not, on the basis of biological
value." LILA CH24
Matt said:
Pragmatists can and still do talk about experience, like experiencing a rose
or a heavy metal concert. But when we start doing conceptual things, we
start thinking in terms of language instead of experience. We do this for
the same reason we don't use the word "ontology," "epistemology,"
"metaphysics," "correspondence," or "objectivity": we think conceptual
accidents are more prone to happen when using these words. ...
dmb replies:
I don't mind using words like "epistemology" or "metaphysics" because I have
excellent "conceptual accident" insurance. I hope Matt is well covered
because his putting Rorty and Pirsig on the same track is bound to cause an
awful trainwreck. But seriously, I think Pirsig differs here too. Not just
because experience and language aren't translatable, as already discussed,
but also because makes a distinction between reality and our intellectual
descriptions of it, between the data and the language we use to talk about
it...
"In a value-centered MOQ this 'scientific reality' platypus vanishes.
Reality, which is value, is understood by every infant. It is a universal
starting place of experience that everyone is confronted with all the time.
Within a MOQ, science is a set of static intellectual patterns descriing
this reality, but the patterns are NOT the reality they describe" LILA CH8
(Emphasis is Pirsig's)
"It may sound a little awkward, but that's a matter of linguistic custom,
not science. The language used to describe the data is changed but the
scientific data itself is unchanged. ...Particles 'prefer' to do what they
do. An individual particle is not absolutely commited to one predictable
behavior. What appears to be an absolute cause is just a very consistent
pattern of preferences. Therefore when you strike 'cause' from the language
and substitute 'value' you are not only replacing an empirically meaningless
term with a meaningful one; your are using a term that is more appropriate
to actual observation." LILA CH8
OK. Maybe "trainwreck" is too strong. But trying to fit Rorty's 'linguistic
turn' into Pirsig's ideas is like putting a square peg in a round hole. At
the very least, its noisey and frustrating. And there is the danger of
destroying the peg, the hole, the hammer, or one's will to live.
Thanks,
dmb
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