Arlo, Platt -- I've been trying to make some sense out of this dialogue. You seem to be discussing epistemology which caught my attention. So far, however, I can't see where either of you is heading, but I know what Arlo is trying to prove.
Arlo says: > Knowledge is what we believe. It is based on our assumptions, > assumptions that are culturally-derived. We value this knowledge > based on how well it works. When it stops working, we change > our assumptions, and our intellectual descriptions of nature > change accordingly. First of all, knowledge is based on experience, which has nothing to do with "culture". Practical knowledge is usually the result of factual information that has been proven to work when applied to situations under controlled conditions. For example, if we remove half of the eggs from a full dozen carton, we will have six eggs left in the carton. Such knowledge is generally accepted as a "truth", rather than an "assumption". [Arlo had quoted Pirsig]: "Our intellectual description of nature is always culturally derived". (LILA) But an "intellectual description" is not a fact of knowledge. It's a perspective of the external world drawn from various attributes or qualities experienced. Arlo then went on to assert that "knowledge rests on assumptions". It's a pretty safe assumption that half a dozen equals six, or that a raw egg dropped to the floor will break. But describing the mess on the floor as "scrambled eggs" or some other analogy is neither knowledge nor truth. It's an analogy, perhaps "culturally derived", or simply imaginative. So that Arlo has no logical justification for equating knowledge to "assumptions". [Arlo]: > "Every form of knowledge rests on assumptions", including > this statement. "All this is just an analogy", including this sentence, > "There are no absolute truths", including this sentence, > "Our intellectual description of nature is always culturally derived", > including this statement. > > When you change your assumptions, if you feel the new form > of knowledge has Quality, you accept both it and the assumptions > underlying it. Inserting "quality" into this argument doesn't win any brownie points. It's just a euphemistic way of saying that some knowledge is true. And this distortion of Descartes Cogito is laughable: > "If Descartes had said, "The seventeenth century > French culture exists, therefore I think, therefore I am," > he would have been correct." (LILA) Here's a prime example of what I meant by radical empiricists "explaining away" the individual. Descartes couldn't think, let alone exist, if it were not for the culture of 17th Century France! Apparently our 21st Century American culture has done away with individuals entirely. Platt and I are not subjects; we are merely patterns of society. Thanks, Arlo, for explaining to us how Pirsig has overcome the subject/object dichotomy. Regards, Ham 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/
