Hi Ham, selections and insertions again ... On 10/19/07, Ham Priday <[EMAIL PROTECTED]> wrote: > > How you can justify an author's deliberate intent to espouse a metaphysical > theory "for all the right reasons" but at the same time call it a "mistake" > is beyond my comprehension. Are you implying that his theory is wrong, or > that he should not have attempted to make it a metaphysics in the first > place? Logically, it would seem that at least one of these criticisms must > apply. >
[IG] Yes the last of the three. A mistake to deliberately seek a metaphysics (so far as I understand metaphysics). But obviously he was well intentioned in making that "mistake" same as you are in disagreeing with me. > You and David M. seem to agree that "the 'argument' about whether > it is a metaphysics or not is pointless, and the argument about whether as a > metaphysics it establishes some fundamental ontology is also pointless." > David even equates poetry with philosophy: "Poetry is true...ontology and > philosophy," he says If it doesn't matter whether philosophy is a valid > ontology or a romantic poem designed to please the reader, it would appear > that we've lost the ability to discriminate between legitimate theory and > literary prose. > [IG] (We do say that the debate about "whether this philosophy is a metaphysics or not" is uninteresting, but not entirely pointless, since there is learning and discovery in going through the process.) But that does not say philosophy is pointless - far from it. David does not say "equate" or "doesn't matter" and neither do I. You are flip-flopping all-or-nothing - "is a ..., or a ..." - of course we can discriminate, but having made the distinction there is no rule that says you must choose only one side. We are saying a large part of philosophy (and science) involve large measures of both poetry and logic - they are not mutually exclusive. > > Where, then, do we turn for "the final word"? [IG] Pin your lug-holes back Ham. There is no final word, only the best word so far. Quality. > Are you content to base your > belief system on poetic reflections of experience? On adages, metaphors, > clichés and aphorisms, as opposed to well-thought-out cosmological theories? [IG] Grow up Ham. Stop playing the Platt card, throwing extremist opposite rhetoric into the mouths of the person you're debating with to ridicule an argument they are nt actually making. Please listen. No, not exclusively, of course not. > Has philosophy in our enlightened culture come to this? If everything that > can not be empirically known as truth is dismissed as myth, [IG] No. Not me. Just your dumb rhetoric is saying that. The opposite in fact ... where objective empiricism reaches it's limits - do NOT dismiss myth (and lingusitic history) - you are the one doing the dismissing. Equally where myth runs into empirical experience, give value to the latter. > Tell me, Ian, how would you define the purpose of Philosophy? [IG] To help us to find the best model / view / theory of how the cosmos works. (But not to fall into the schoolboy error of having found a good philosophy, the best that can be found, to then go around proclaiming that it is therefore an absolute metaphysical truth.) "Best" is about value and quality and experience in real life - all of it, excluding nothing, neither poetry nor logic. Ian Moq_Discuss mailing list Listinfo, Unsubscribing etc. http://lists.moqtalk.org/listinfo.cgi/moq_discuss-moqtalk.org Archives: http://lists.moqtalk.org/pipermail/moq_discuss-moqtalk.org/ http://moq.org.uk/pipermail/moq_discuss_archive/
