Hey David,
Matt had said long ago:
But to confront you [who? I can't remember] one last time with Pirsig:
you
said, "To watch your thoughts without judgement, to see your (human)
nature is valuable."
Wasn't the idea behind Pirsig's Quality that it is value, i.e.
judgments,
all the way down to the very core of reality?
David said:
Interesting, a useful point but I'd suggest some qualification. What we
experience and value is generally highly conceptualised. There is always
a
need and possibility to think again, to sweep aside our current concepts
and make a fresh start or going back to possibilities previously set
aside. Such is the point of such calls to purity or back to basics. Yes,
it looks dubious if you make a call to origins and purity as if such a
state can be sustained.
Matt:
I demur. For philosophical reasons that you are generally aware of,
theory-ladenness, denial of the analytic/synthetic distinction, etc., I
would say "what we experience and value is [always] conceptualized."
This
always gets me in trouble, but 1) I don't think it's really all that
radical and 2) how else do you get around Quine/Sellars/Davidson and
their
attacks on the dogmas?
I think you're absolutely right that "there is always a need and
possibility to think again, to sweep aside our current concepts and make
a
fresh start or going back to possibilities previously set aside." That
may be the point of calls to purity and the like, but I don't think the
metaphor of purity is a good one to use for such calls because it proves
misleading if pushed (like Kant's analytic/synthetic distinction, or
thinking that there are bare, unconceptualized experiences that one
could
think about). One can never wipe the entire board and start over--you
always have to leave something as background. Like Sellars (roughly)
said, "science is the greatest thing because it can put any claim in
jeopardy--just not all at once." He said it about science, but we can
generalize it.
So, I take the engine of your point to be from the reminder that we
always
need to have the possibility to think again. I can agree, but I think it
is unconnected to a need to claim that value and experience is
_generally_
(as opposed to always) conceptualized and the metaphor of purity,
"sweeping aside" and "fresh start." Yeah, you sweep some stuff aside,
but
you can't sweep everything aside.
Matt
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