Re: [MD] Harris and Steve

2010-04-11 Thread david buchanan
dmb said: Arguments only ever persuade people who are persuadable by arguments. Mary replied: DMB! I LOVE THIS! Can I frame it? Print it out? Hang it on my wall? If this is original to you, GENIUS. dmb says: I just plugged it into google and got zero hits. But that doesn't mean I'm

Re: [MD] DMB and Rorty

2010-04-11 Thread david buchanan
Matt said: What additional condition is there for truth? Claim-X being true, in addition to justified. But since justification is our only route to truth, it does in a sense make justification sufficient: justification is _experientially_ sufficient for a claim of truth. But since new

Re: [MD] DMB and Rorty

2010-04-11 Thread david buchanan
Matt said: ... the reason there is always a distinction between truth and justification is because of what I will now dub the Truth Fact: you might be justified in thinking X, but X might not be true. Steve has endlessly reiterated this fact about the experience of truth, and what neither

Re: [MD] Harris and Steve

2010-04-12 Thread david buchanan
Ian said to Matt: ...when he [Harris] says he favours Correspondence Theory (of Truth) over Pragmatism I interpret this two ways. (1) It's fact and truth he is corresponding, not fact and reality, or truth and reality, or language and reality. (See JC's note on conflating truth with reality,

Re: [MD] DMB and Rorty

2010-04-12 Thread david buchanan
Matt said to dmb: Now you don't get to say I or Rorty (since Rorty would subscribe to both of the above) abandon truth theories or epistemologies. Because I just gave you both. ...If you feel cheated, it would be unclear to me why, since Rorty's never denied semantics as a discipline nor

Re: [MD] re, fellow european-Bodvar

2010-04-15 Thread david buchanan
Horse said to John: ...but when some on this list start complaining about the academic and more technical side of philosophy and trying to make a bogeyman out of their work I think it does become a problem. Whatever your views on the academy and how they 'philosophologise' (!) it's still a

[MD] Reading Comprehension

2010-04-16 Thread david buchanan
Arlo said to Platt: ... I could, of course, try to dumb things down for just you, but given that everyone else understands me just fine, I'll decline... If you can't effortlessly understand what someone writes, maybe the problem is with YOU? Nhhh... must be those big bad intellectuals...

Re: [MD] Systems Philosopher: Evolution Presupposes Design

2010-04-16 Thread david buchanan
Arlo said: but I find very problematic the notion that patterns were arranged by some external agent's bidding, rather than their own volitional responses to Dynamic Quality. In this sense, nothing responds to DQ, things are merely moved around like pieces on a chessboard by DQ's hand. We

Re: [MD] MOQ would seem to imply that above human intelligence computers

2010-04-16 Thread david buchanan
Is this some kind of joke? A guy named Teach Baloney with a savetherich email address writes a post in favor of robot supremacy wherein humanity is a cancer. I guess it's not quite funny enough to count as a joke. But it surely is absurd. C'mon, be serious. Or at least sincere. Date:

Re: [MD] Problems with the Academic Approach

2010-04-17 Thread david buchanan
John said: That's the problem with Quality in an academic matrix, and it's not a problem with Quality, it's a problem with the academic matrix. Arlo replied: I think you are conflating Quality with the MOQ. Certainly, one cannot (nor should try) to constrain Quality in an academic matrix.

Re: [MD] Problems with the Academic Approach

2010-04-17 Thread david buchanan
Arlo said: ...No one, certainly not me, would say that Quality is something the academics can smack their lips on like some bon-bon. But the MOQ IS an intellectual pattern and as such is about expanding rationality, which is an intellectual endeavor,.. The MOQ is about an expanded

Re: [MD] Problems with the Academic Approach

2010-04-17 Thread david buchanan
Horse said to Platt: Your Pirsig quote comes from that part of Lila's Child where you are supporting Bo's (now) SOL idea and Pirsig disagrees with you about the MoQ being a SOM document based on SOM reasoning: ... Pirsig's notes 129, 131 and 133 also specifically disagree with Bo's idea

Re: [MD] honesty , re, marscha

2010-04-17 Thread david buchanan
dmb says: Because Jon is new, I think it's only fair to point out that Steve did not answer the right questions. I mean, Jon asked what the moq says about truth and how the moq avoids relativism but he answered as if Jon had asked what Rorty says about those things. Pirsig says, Value, the

Re: [MD] honesty , re, marscha

2010-04-18 Thread david buchanan
dmb said: ... Jon asked what the moq says about truth and how the moq avoids relativism but he answered as if Jon had asked what Rorty says about those things. Steve replied: Would you like to point out where I said something inconsistent with the MOQ? ...Can you explain what I said that is

Re: [MD] Reading Comprehension

2010-04-18 Thread david buchanan
Mary said to dmb: ...What I would say is that it occurs to me that there are basically two ways you can approach the MoQ. Either you take a Western road to get there via James and the Pragmatists or Empiricists; or you come at it from the Eastern Buddhist perspective. Both are valid. It

Re: [MD] Reading Comprehension

2010-04-19 Thread david buchanan
Jon said: I haven't followed the whole thread. But try to explain the connection with James and Pragmatism. How is James related to the Eastern approach? dmb says: Pirsig identifies his MOQ with pragmatism in general and with James's pragmatism and radical empiricism in particular. (Last

Re: [MD] Artificial intelligence? Of course! Artificial Intellect? Never.

2010-04-19 Thread david buchanan
John said to Horse: Despite your superior expertise, I think you're wrong. ... And all the expertise in the world will not obviate this fundamental truth. So there. dmb quotes Wiki: An expert is someone widely recognized as a reliable source of technique or skill whose faculty for judging

Re: [MD] honesty , re, marscha

2010-04-19 Thread david buchanan
Steve said to dmb: Your answer that the MOQ subscribes to empiricism doesn't get to the issue of relativism at all. dmb says: Sure it does. But I honestly don't know how I can explain this any clearer than I already have. Laura Weed's explanations are probably better than mine. Read her

Re: [MD] Artificial intelligence? Of course! Artificial Intellect? Never.

2010-04-19 Thread david buchanan
Platt said: The quotes from Wiki used here are challenged on their sites. In the case of anti-intellectualism, its neutrality is disputed. One would think an honest intellectual would include that caveat. But alas . . . dmb says: Yea, any Wikipedia article that touches on controversial

Re: [MD] Problems with the Academic Approach

2010-04-19 Thread david buchanan
Mary said: ... and yes, DMB, I find James alternative lacking and incomplete. dmb says: Why? I mean, could you be more specific? Mary said: ... And by the way, for DMB, and Ant (whom I know from way back), and Matt, and Steve's benefit, there are those of us who have a great deal of

Re: [MD] Reading Comprehension

2010-04-19 Thread david buchanan
Ian said to Mary: I actually agree with this [the MoQ has much greater explanatory power when the Intellectual Level is viewed as SOM than when it is not I actually agree with this] so I ask you a question. If we limit the intellectual level to this kind of intellect ... where in the

Re: [MD] Intelligence? Never.

2010-04-20 Thread david buchanan
Platt said: Marx, the darling of many intellectuals past and present, sanctioned totalitarianism: ...The haste by some here to defend Marx speaks volumes. dmb says: How does Platt respond to the charge of anti-intellectualism? He engages in a little McCarthyism, a little anti-intellectual

Re: [MD] Reading Comprehension

2010-04-20 Thread david buchanan
Bo said: The intellectual level is either SOM or a mental vessel that contains ideas, concepts, modes of thinking with SOM one mode and the MOQ another, and such SOM's MIND. And if mind prevails then the MOQ turns into a somish idealist teaching. There is no compromise between these two

Re: [MD] But WHY should we love others?

2010-04-20 Thread david buchanan
Steve gave us A Narrative of Moral Progress and said: With regard to my metanarrative (where I paint a view of moral progress as better taking into account the needs of more and more beings through the expansion of the moral imagination through stories that help us see the other as also your

Re: [MD] The Roots of Freedom

2010-04-20 Thread david buchanan
Jon said: The issues of political freedom, the respect for human rights, including women's rights and civil rights did not emerge from such a world view as the moq, and it is indeed alien to the recognition of such rights. dmb says: Well, the ideas about human rights and political freedom

Re: [MD] The Roots of Freedom

2010-04-21 Thread david buchanan
Jon said: Pirsig favors dynamic quality, just as the I Ching with its two fundamental principles, favors yin, or the change principles Moq favors the dynamic reality over the static. And this sabotages its rational element even though it is often unseen. dmb says: Okay, now I'm

Re: [MD] Reading Comprehension

2010-04-21 Thread david buchanan
dmb says: Wow! Nice work, Andre. You nailed it. In just a few short paragraphs, Buddha, Northrop, James and Pirsig are all connected on the same essential point. Thanks. Andre: Hi Marsha, not sure he was doing this. At least, this is not what 'legend' says about his quest. He was

Re: [MD] Sam Harris, revisited by one reviewer

2010-04-22 Thread david buchanan
Howdy MOQers: It took about two minutes to realize that this critic is a right-wing crank. Check out the difference between the Publisher's Weekly review and the praise heaped upon him by the Washington Times, The Conservative Book Club and a Chesterton fan over at the newspaper written for

Re: [MD] Reading Comprehension

2010-04-22 Thread david buchanan
Quality is the primary empirical reality of the world. dmb says: In that phrase, Quality refers to Dynamic Quality. The primary empirical reality is the cutting edge of experience, that pre-intellectual awareness that Northrop calls the undifferentiated aesthetic continuum and James calls

Re: [MD] Reading Comprehension

2010-04-23 Thread david buchanan
it too. What's the name of this thread? On Thu, Apr 22, 2010 at 7:30 PM, david buchanan dmbucha...@hotmail.comwrote: Quality is the primary empirical reality of the world. dmb says: In that phrase, Quality refers to Dynamic Quality. The primary empirical reality

Re: [MD] Reading Comprehension

2010-04-24 Thread david buchanan
Bodvar said: Need I spoon-feed you weak-interpreters? (*) In a ZAMM context Socrates represents SOM's independence from the Arete past, here he is said to represents the intellectual level's independence of its social origin (all levels have their origin in the former level). Without

Re: [MD] Reading Comprehension

2010-04-24 Thread david buchanan
Mary: On what basis do you make you claims? Sorry, but I just don't see any merit to your objections or accusations. Again, I don't see how it can make any sense to reject James against Pirsig, especially since it was Pirsig who equated them. What this equation adds to the MOQ is about a

Re: [MD] Reading Comprehension

2010-04-24 Thread david buchanan
Mary said: The question was, what does the Intellectual Level value, not what values have made the Intellectual Level possible. What you and Andre point to below refers to the latter and not the former. dmb says: If the answers didn't address your question then I probably don't understand

Re: [MD] the universe is flat

2010-04-24 Thread david buchanan
Mary said: John, I get a kick out of Hitchens. He's the only guy I know who'll show up on Bill Maher with a drink in his hand in a clear glass. Everybody else hides theirs in a coffee cup. dmb quotes Sam Harris on Hitchens: Credit goes to Christopher Hitchens for distilling, in a single

Re: [MD] Reading Comprehension

2010-04-25 Thread david buchanan
dmb said to Bo: ...Pirsig refers to Quality (DQ) and the pre-intellectual reality. You repeatedly take this as a reference to social static patterns. Because they evolved prior to intellect, you figure, social patterns are pre-intellectual. Mary replies: Dmb, I can't believe you just said

Re: [MD] Reading Comprehension

2010-04-25 Thread david buchanan
Okay, one more post. Mary said: We have always had intellectual freedom. It was intellectual freedom that came up with gods, and kings, and then different gods, and then one god, reading and writing, poetry, art, music, legal systems, politics, money, trade, etc. All these changing ideas

[MD] Stanford on William James

2010-04-25 Thread david buchanan
Late Writings Pragmatism (1907) James first announced his commitment to pragmatism in a lecture at Berkeley in 1898, entitled “Philosophical Conceptions and Practical Results.” Later sources for Pragmatism were lectures at Wellesley College in 1905, and at the Lowell Institute and Columbia

Re: [MD] Reading Comprehension

2010-04-27 Thread david buchanan
Mary said to dmb: I can't find anywhere in Bo's comments where he equates the Social Level with Dynamic Quality itself. dmb says: Huh? That's a confused version of what I said. Bo mistake is not EQUATING the social level with DQ. His mistake is CONFUSING the social level with Arete. Bo

Re: [MD] Putnam on Is-Ought and Truth

2010-04-27 Thread david buchanan
Craig said: For Searle the Is-Ought gap is the same as the fact/value gap the descriptive/evaluative gap. Steve replied: I'm not sure what he means by saying that they are the same. Can you point me to his essay? I couldn't find it on the web anywhere. dmb says: Seriously? I think the

Re: [MD] A fly in the MOQ ointment

2010-04-27 Thread david buchanan
Mary asked: What is the Intellectual Level, and specifically, what makes it different from the Social Level? Dave replied: The first question we have all tried to answer since the discussion group started years and years ago. dmb says: The distinction Pirsig makes is a modification of

Re: [MD] Putnam on Is-Ought and Truth

2010-04-27 Thread david buchanan
Steve said: I know what Pirsig says. I'm wonderring how his arguments stand up to arguments that others have made. Aren't you also wonderring why, if these questions have been so thoroughly dissolved, that people keep asking about them? dmb says: Well, that's just it Steve. I don't see

Re: [MD] DW Presuppositions of Philosophic Thought

2010-04-27 Thread david buchanan
Howdy Moqers: Here's a little bit of Wiki, just so you know what Jon is selling here. Following Abraham Kuyper, and other, earlier Neo-Calvinists, Dooyeweerd attempted to describe reality as a creation of God, which has its meaning from God. This God-given meaning is displayed in all of the

Re: [MD] Buddhism's s/o

2010-04-27 Thread david buchanan
Steve, Marsha: Marsha said: To recap why I think Buddhism cannot be used as an exception to the Intellectual Level being SOM, I offer these to quotes that indicate that Buddhism used logic and the scientific method for an objective study of 'Mind'. dmb says: Can SOM be equated with

Re: [MD] Buddhism's s/o

2010-04-27 Thread david buchanan
Marsha said: I wrote To recap why I think Buddhism cannot be used as an exception to the Intellectual Level being SOM, I offer these to quotes that indicate that Buddhism used logic and the scientific method for an objective study of 'Mind'. I DID NOT write that SOM equated to logic and the

Re: [MD] A fly in the MOQ ointment

2010-04-27 Thread david buchanan
Jon said to dmb: ... How do you define conservatives or theists as anti-intellectual, unless there is some absolute intellectual claim you have. If so, show it or prove it. That sounds like a biased faith based statement to me. What's intellectually sound about it just because its in your

Re: [MD] Putnam on Is-Ought and Truth

2010-04-28 Thread david buchanan
Steve said: I'm pretty sure that RMP would see a difference between asserting X is true and One ought to do X. There is a difference between saying DMB thinks this distinction is meaningless and DMB should see this distinction as meaningless. dmb says: This problem of trying to describe

Re: [MD] Reading Comprehension

2010-04-28 Thread david buchanan
Bo comments: ...Then the million Euro question is: What does SOM and Aretê translate into in a MOQ context? dmb says: Well, I want to be more specific and just focus on how Arete translates into the terms of the MOQ. If you just look at Pirsig's description it is obvious that he's talking

Re: [MD] A fly in the MOQ ointment

2010-04-28 Thread david buchanan
Thanks, Andre. That's a nice way to put it. In some broad sense, we could say that overcoming the blind spot to DQ in our culture would serve the cause of feminism. I realize that sounds like some kind of joke, but I'm not kidding. Date: Wed, 28 Apr 2010 05:43:21 +0200 From:

Re: [MD] Reading Comprehension

2010-04-29 Thread david buchanan
Andre said to Bo: Your objection to the MOQ not being a static intellectual pattern of value makes no sense at all. Your dismissal of 'thinking', your dismissal of 'feelings' as all being indications of a SOM Mind Reality are plain silly. ... Your dismissal of the intellectual level as not

Re: [MD] Putnam on Is-Ought and Truth

2010-04-29 Thread david buchanan
dmb quoted Pirsig: This problem of trying to describe value in terms of substance has been the problem of a smaller container trying to contain a larger one. Value is not a subspecies of substance. [You can't get oughts from ises.] Substance is a subspecies of value. When you reverse the

Re: [MD] Putnam on Is-Ought and Truth

2010-04-29 Thread david buchanan
DMB said to Steve: ...Rorty dismisses epistemology because he defines the question in terms of the failed answer. Matt finally saw what I meant. Ask him. Steve: I never read Matt agreeing with you that Rorty dismisses epistemology. In fact, everything I have read him to say on this topic

Re: [MD] Putnam on Is-Ought and Truth

2010-04-29 Thread david buchanan
dmb said: Radical empiricism says ALL experiences can be counted as evidence for or against our claims. It insists that all kinds of experience be accounted for in our philosophies and says that anything beyond experience should not be included in those accounts. This empiricism is so radical

Re: [MD] Reading Comprehension

2010-04-29 Thread david buchanan
Platt said: ...Since then, SOM has become an end in itself and is screwing everything up, evident as today's socialist Greece goes down the tube with other European countries blindly following the same morally-vacant SOM downward path. dmb quotes: Here is some actual Greek political history.

Re: [MD] Putnam on Is-Ought and Truth

2010-04-29 Thread david buchanan
dmb said: Notice that the pragmatists are not only rejecting SOM but also taking up those two categories of experience. Primary and secondary are dynamic and static or preconceptual and reflective. But Rorty rejected this distinction and that's why he's wrong. To understand why Rorty is wrong,

Re: [MD] Putnam on Is-Ought and Truth

2010-04-29 Thread david buchanan
dmb says: How would a radical empiricist test the claim that there is intelligent life elsewhere? He'd say we can only speculate. Alien life, at this point, is beyond human experience and so anything we say about it can only be educated speculation. We can try to find some, and we are doing

Re: [MD] Pirsig's theory of truth

2010-04-30 Thread david buchanan
Today, Steve said: Again, that is just not what is normally meant by truth. You are of course free to try to win over people to a new way of using an old word, but I think the common sense notion of truth is worth keeping to keep track of what we used to believe to be true that turned out to

Re: [MD] Reading Comprehension

2010-04-30 Thread david buchanan
Andre said to Marsha: ... and I am not the only one on this discuss who suggests that his pov is a detriment to the MOQ. Even Mr. Pirsig has said so!!! ( Annotn. 132/133) dmb says: Right. This is the part that bothers me the most. We have the author on record saying that he thinks Bodvar

Re: [MD] Pirsig's theory of truth

2010-04-30 Thread david buchanan
Steve said: I personally find it absurd to think that, for example, the assertion the earth is roundish was MADE true for a particular person when that person was able to ride that truth to successful action while the earth is flat was at that time still true for anyone who was able to cash

Re: [MD] Reading Comprehension

2010-04-30 Thread david buchanan
Andre said to Marsha: ... I care about the MOQ and about Mr. Pirsig's accomplishments. Marsha replied: The known is an ever-changing, interrelated, impermanent, relative static pattern of value. I see no reason to be too concerned with something that will, even for you, be changing and is

Re: [MD] Pirsig's theory of truth

2010-04-30 Thread david buchanan
Steve said: This is not to say that radical empiricism may not do anything extra for you in terms of metaphysics, it is just that it doesn't do anything for you in terms epistemology that we can't have in other ways. dmb says: Well, people like me and Sam Harris disagree. I think Rortyism

Re: [MD] Pirsig's theory of truth

2010-04-30 Thread david buchanan
Steve said: It isn't that I don't understand what James is saying. I just disagree with him. As for Pirsig, I am not convinced that he ought to be read as subscribing to the so-called pragmatic theory of truth. It is one thing to subscribe to fallibism--to assert that all beliefs ought to be

Re: [MD] Reading Comprehension

2010-05-01 Thread david buchanan
Pirsig said to Platt and Bo: Therefore to say that the MOQ is based on SOM reasoning is as useful as saying that the Ten Commandments are based on SOM reasoning. It doesn't tell us anything about the essence of the Ten Commandments and it doesn't tell us anything about the essence of the MOQ.

Re: [MD] Pirsig's theory of truth

2010-05-01 Thread david buchanan
Friday morning, Steve said: ... to follow DMB in his Jamesian true for you false for me relativistic notion of truth where beliefs are made true by verifying them is not what anyone but Jamesians and post-modernists normally mean by true. Later that same Friday, Steve said: Ah, here we go.

Re: [MD] Spinning our Wheels, metaphorically speaking

2010-05-02 Thread david buchanan
John said: ... For very, very many people, the whole GOD thing is a huge billboard pointing them in a Quality direction. These people are your most primitive types, admittedly. M. Scott Peck illustrates them as the criminals and police. The drunkard and reformer. Often, from a life of pure

Re: [MD] Reading Comprehension

2010-05-02 Thread david buchanan
Mary said: On one side are arrayed the forces of DMB, Horse, Andre, Steve and others who are the equivalent of MoQ Fundamentalists. ...On the other side are arrayed the forces of Bo, Marsha, myself, and Platt, who take a more, dare I say, liberal interpretation. dmb says: A more liberal

Re: [MD] Spinning our Wheels, metaphorically speaking

2010-05-03 Thread david buchanan
John said: More troublesome is the statement it is evil to put the higher levels in the service of a lower one. Is it really evil for a man to engage intellectually so that he can land a good academic position and feed his wife and kids? Because if so, you've got some explaining to do to

Re: [MD] News on Oxford DVD

2010-05-03 Thread david buchanan
Hey Doc! Glad to hear it's finished and I can't wait to see what you've done with it. I imagine it would take some pretty fancy editing techniques to hide the fact that I was jet-lagged, bird-flued and outta my mind with stage fright. Maybe if you employed the services of George Lucas's

Re: [MD] Pirsig's theory of truth

2010-05-03 Thread david buchanan
Matt said: Heidegger suggested that Newton's laws were neither true nor false before Newton dreamed them up. Rorty said this about it in 2000: I once tried to defend Heidegger's audacity, but my defense went over like a lead balloon. So I have resigned myself to intuiting, like everybody

Re: [MD] News on Oxford DVD

2010-05-04 Thread david buchanan
Ant said to dmb: Ron DiSanto seems very fair minded AND knowledgable regarding the drawbacks and advantages of religious traditions. Moreover, his understanding of Pirsig's work in the wider context is probably better than Pirsig's and definitely better than mine so you couldn't have got

Re: [MD] Pirsig's theory of truth

2010-05-04 Thread david buchanan
Steve said: ... it always has been a semantic issue as far as I am concerned while DMB has wanted to make it an epistemological issue. He wants to say that since whatever we feel justified in believing (...) we will of course call true, then truth is just that--justified belief. dmb says:

Re: [MD] Spinning our Wheels, metaphorically speaking

2010-05-04 Thread david buchanan
Steve said: While there are some interesting similarities between Pirsig and James, at some point DMB will have to put his secularism up against James's The Will to Believe and see what wins. I'd be interested to hear his thoughts on the article as a secularist and a Jamesian. dmb says:

Re: [MD] Pirsig's theory of truth

2010-05-05 Thread david buchanan
Steve said: ... I don't see any evidence that Pirsig followed James any further than saying that the true is a species of the good in subscribing to the so-called pragmatic theory of truth. dmb says: What the MOQ adds to James' pragmatism and radical empiricism is the idea that the primal

Re: [MD] Pirsig's theory of truth

2010-05-05 Thread david buchanan
Steve said to Ian: If you aren't hearing it from DMB, then you just haven't been listening. Based on what you have said in your previous post, you and DMB strongly disagree about truth. For example, if you think that quote I made up could conceivably have come from RMP, then you and DMB have

Re: [MD] Pirsig's theory of truth

2010-05-05 Thread david buchanan
Matt said: .., if justification is our only route to truth, then it does seem an add-on to then say it is justified _and_ true. Call the endorsing use the use of truth from the first-person standpoint. .. Another use of true, which is what Steve wants to emphasize is different and needed--we

Re: [MD] Pirsig's theory of truth

2010-05-05 Thread david buchanan
Ian said to Steve: No, I think I do get DMB, he said exactly what I said he'd say ... ie he does NOT say truth is whatever we feel justified in believing. His emphasis not mine. Steve said: DMB of course disagrees. ... Everything he says about truth ought to be said about justification

Re: [MD] Reading Comprehension

2010-05-11 Thread david buchanan
Andre quoted Pirsig: 'Later Phaedrus felt that three-termed realities are rather unwieldly ( low quality) and rare in metaphysics, and tries to collapse them into one. He saw that if you collapsed them into the object you got a materialist metaphysics. If you collapsed them into the subject,

Re: [MD] Know-how

2010-05-11 Thread david buchanan
James In 1890, William James, agreeing there were two fundamental kinds of knowledge, and adopting Grote's terminology, further developed the distinctions made by Grote and Helmholtz:I am acquainted with many people and things, which I know very little about, except their presence in the

Re: [MD] Pirsig's theory of truth

2010-05-11 Thread david buchanan
Steve replied to Marsha: The problem for DMB of course is that he wants to support this theory of truth but deny the relativism it entails. After years of attacking Rorty for being a relativist, DMB now claims that Rorty wasn't audacious enough in his relativism because Rorty didn't have the

Re: [MD] e: Reading Comprehension

2010-05-11 Thread david buchanan
Arlo said (repeatedly): .., if all intellectual patterns are SOM, what exactly was Pirsig lamenting in ZMM? If intellect can be nothing else but SOM, then what's the beef with Aristotle? And those Sophists, they were peddling SOM too. ... I think that calling intellect nothing but SOM

Re: [MD] Know-how

2010-05-11 Thread david buchanan
: I don't know what you mean. Not even sure what the topic is. Are you talking about know-how or knowledge by acquaintance or what? On May 11, 2010, at 1:49 PM, david buchanan wrote: James In 1890, William James, agreeing there were two fundamental kinds of knowledge, and adopting

Re: [MD] Know-how

2010-05-11 Thread david buchanan
Matt said: I remember reading a transcript of a lecture Pirsig gave once where (if memory serves) he used Bertrand Russell's distinction between knowledge by appearance and knowledge by description to catch hold of the same thing. dmb says: As my wiki tweaky shows, the distinction Russell

Re: [MD] Know-how

2010-05-11 Thread david buchanan
Matt said to Steve: I think if we follow the Turner letter definition of intellectual patterns as manipulation of symbols, then that's pretty much coextensive with propositional knowing-that. And that, I think, would mean that bio and social are know-how--you can't articulate what you are

Re: [MD] e: Reading Comprehension

2010-05-11 Thread david buchanan
Arlo asked Marsha: Again, if ALL intellectual patterns are SOM, there is no conflict in ZMM as both the Sophists and Aristotle were peddling the same SOM-Intellect. Marsha replied: What? dmb says: If you equate SOM and intellect, you also have to say Pirsig's book is pointless. He

Re: [MD] e: Reading Comprehension

2010-05-11 Thread david buchanan
Marsha asked dmb: On what basis does your I think of agreement with Arlo exist? By mistaken identity! dmb says: If you think I cannot agree without basing it on SOM, then you are one seriously mixed up cat. Now anyone who uses a personal pronoun is committed to the notion that reality is

Re: [MD] e: Reading Comprehension

2010-05-11 Thread david buchanan
Arlo said to Marsh cat: Again, if this is the case... if ALL intellect is SOM by definition... then where is the conflict in ZMM between the Sophists and Aristotle? BOTH were peddling SOM. dmb says: Yea, it's a great story. Descartes created a ridiculous fictional self and Aristotle was the

Re: [MD] Teach your Children Good

2010-05-11 Thread david buchanan
When that happens to me, I find the second version is usually about half as long and twice as good. The effort pays for itself even if the product disappears. Date: Tue, 11 May 2010 19:57:15 -0700 From: bypryordes...@gmail.com To: moq_disc...@moqtalk.org Subject: Re: [MD] Teach your

Re: [MD] e: Reading Comprehension

2010-05-12 Thread david buchanan
of intellectual vandalism. Barbarians! Thanks Dave. Marsha On May 12, 2010, at 12:01 AM, david buchanan wrote: Marsha asked dmb: On what basis does your I think of agreement with Arlo exist? By mistaken identity! dmb says: If you think I cannot

Re: [MD] Pirsig's theory of truth

2010-05-12 Thread david buchanan
Matt said: For fuckheads who like Rorty and beavers and think that Rorty has a bias towards language over non-linguistic experience, I present this passage talking about the distinction between propositional knowing-that and nonlinguistic know-how (with beavers): dmb says: I think Rorty has

Re: [MD] Pirsig's theory of truth

2010-05-12 Thread david buchanan
Steve said to dmb: You seem to have an unusual notion of what relativism with respect to truth is. ...For a Pirsigian and for a Jamesian as well as for a Rortian, what actually is true is not a coherent part of the vocabulary, so the question of reativism with respect to truth just doesn't

Re: [MD] Pirsig's theory of truth

2010-05-13 Thread david buchanan
Steve said to dmb: ... Can you please, please, please define relativism with respect to truth, so I can know what you mean when you say (pace Ant) that Pirsig can't rightly be called a relativist with respect to truth? dmb says: Pragmatic truth is empirical. I would have thought it would

Re: [MD] Know-how

2010-05-13 Thread david buchanan
dmb says: Instead of concepts shaping what's given to the senses, concepts are taken from the stream of experience they way one would take a bucket of water from a river. The bucket of water does not get in the way of the river. It does not represent the river or correspond to the river. It's

Re: [MD] Know-how

2010-05-14 Thread david buchanan
Steve said to dmb: As is becoming typical, instead of responding to my objections to the analogy, you post a bunch of quotes... dmb Quoted Dewey: The history of the theory of knowledge or epistemology would have been very different if instead of the word 'data' or 'givens', it had happened to

[MD] Rorty, Pirsig and the Sophists

2010-05-14 Thread david buchanan
All interested MOQers: Several threads are combined here. I think they were converging on their own anyway, so hopefully there is something in it for just about everybody. Arlo said: The intellectual patterns emerging from the Sophists were not SOM. They were clearly something better. And

Re: [MD] No non-conversational constraints on justification

2010-05-14 Thread david buchanan
Steve said: ...But the Pirsig quote wasn't about that. It was about objectivity as intersubjectivity. Subjectivity is just know-how. dmb says: There are places where Rorty and Pirsig agree, but those positions are held by lots and lots of people. But it is way too much of a stretch to put

Re: [MD] Reading Comprehension

2010-05-15 Thread david buchanan
Bodvar said: I knocked down DMB's argument (of various philosophers' INTELLECTUAL criticism of SOM excludes the SOL) and he shut up. dmb says: You are very much mistaken to interpret my silence as your victory. I agree with Andre in thinking you are totally lost in your own interpretation

[MD] Relativism

2010-05-15 Thread david buchanan
Marsha wondered if this definition is too plain-spoken: rel·a·tiv·ism n. Philosophy. A theory, especially in ethics or aesthetics, that conceptions of truth and moral values are not absolute but are relative to the persons or groups holding them. dmb says: If we compare that definition

Re: [MD] Relativism

2010-05-15 Thread david buchanan
Marsha said to dmb: Are you going to use wiki as a source for your thesis? dmb says: No. And you're such a sweet generous soul for asking. Your concern for my welfare is so touching that I think I might cry. You love me, don't you? Tell me, is it motherly or sisterly or do I have a shot at

Re: [MD] James on the BBC

2010-05-15 Thread david buchanan
I'm gonna listen to it again. Damn! I thought I was an enthusiast but the guests really have me pumped up now. Did I hear that right? The greatest American philosopher ever? Is that what he said? I'd like the future of philosophy to revolve around one crucial question for the next few

Re: [MD] knowledge

2010-05-15 Thread david buchanan
Matt said: Better than rubberband even is Quine's self as a web of belief. Web is nice because if we visualize life as instead of a river, but an open space of air with a nice breeze. dmb says: The of idea of a web of belief comes out of the structuralist movement. It's based on the insight

Re: [MD] Relativism

2010-05-15 Thread david buchanan
Marsha said: You missed where I mentioned that within the MoQ, conceptions of truth (patterns) are relative to a hierarchical level. dmb says: Yea, I was trying to be polite, so I let it go. You don't want to know what I think of that idea.

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