Hi David, Agree it's a good page. Getting better all the time.
(Incidentally, I've never seen Dennett's "intentional stance" summarised so clearly and succinctly before.) Ian On 1/27/08, David M <[EMAIL PROTECTED]> wrote: > Hi all > > pragmatism on wiki now includes a mention of Pirsig, > also here's some other stuff from the pragmatism page > and syas something about how radical empiricism > differs from standard: > > "James and Dewey were empirical thinkers in the most straightforward > fashion: experience is the ultimate test and experience is what needs to be > explained. They were dissatisfied with ordinary empiricism because in the > tradition dating from Hume, empiricists had a tendency to think of > experience as nothing more than individual sensations. To the pragmatists, > this went against the spirit of empiricism: we should try to explain all > that is given in experience including connections and meaning, instead of > explaining them away and positing sense data as the ultimate reality. > Radical empiricism, or Immediate Empiricism in Dewey's words, wants to give > a place to meaning and value instead of explaining them away as subjective > additions to a world of whizzing atoms. > > Daniel Dennett, who argues that anyone who wants to understand the world > has to adopt the intentional stance and acknowledge both the 'syntactical' > aspects of reality (i.e. whizzing atoms) and its emergent or 'semantic' > properties (i.e. meaning and value). > > Radical Empiricism gives interesting answers to questions about the limits > of science if there are any, the nature of meaning and value and the > workability of reductionism. These questions feature prominently in current > debates about the relationship between religion and science, where it is > often assumed - most pragmatists would disagree - that science degrades > everything that is meaningful into 'merely' physical phenomena. > > Moral questions immediately present themselves as questions whose solution > cannot wait for sensible proof. A moral question is a question not of what > sensibly exists, but of what is good, or would be good if it did exist. > [...] A social organism of any sort whatever, large or small, is what it is > because each member proceeds to his own duty with a trust that the other > members will simultaneously do theirs. Wherever a desired result is > achieved by the co-operation of many independent persons, its existence as > a fact is a pure consequence of the precursive faith in one another of > those immediately concerned. A government, an army, a commercial system, a > ship, a college, an athletic team, all exist on this condition, without > which not only is nothing achieved, but nothing is even attempted. (James > 1896)" > > Wiki also mentions process philosophers like Bergson & Whitehead under > pragmatism. > > > 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/ > 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/
