Everyone who suddenly is very interested in this thread, I blame you Krimel. As soon as you continued talking about truth and justification, a conversation I was trying to deflect, I knew, I knew! with the absoluteness to which Platt thinks I otherwise deny to Truth, that Platt was going to open his yapper with accusations about relativism. Platt and I, for the most part, have a moratorium on the conversation for as long as I admit that truth is absolute and he admits that neither I nor Richard Rorty are relativists.
But here you had to open up that can of worms ;-) I believe I may have been the first to call Pirsig a post-modernist. I will take the blame for that. It was during a brief time in my life when I thought such a thing existed in any coherent way. I no longer think there is anything that goes by the label "post-modernism" in philosophy, though many--mostly those who hate whatever it is with the heat of a thousand suns--still think there's mileage in the label. I also believe that there is no such thing as relativism. Relativism _is_ self-refuting, and anyone who identifies as one is either 1) holding a self-refuting position or, as is far more often the case, 2) holding a position that is better labeled contextualist, or some variation. More so than post-modernist, almost the only people who use the label are those who think it pernicious, like Platt. It is a bugbear for them, something to fear. But what most who live in actual fear of relativism don't realize is that in practice, relativism can't exist (which is why it is self-refuting in the first place), so there's a lot less to fear than they think. I wish people that hate it with the gravitational pull of a thousand black holes actually attended to the actual practical effects of supposedly relativist thinking, rather than the bugbear, because attacking the bugbear just looks lame (because the position is lame). I appreciate your concerns, Krimel, and I will write a post about them. But I will not attend to any of the short, epithetic comments being thrown in quick succession surrounding this conversation. Ian and Arlo are good contextualists, and they like needling Platt, so I know why they jumped in. Ham...well, Ham's Ham. I don't have a lot to say about that, so I won't be attending to his comments either. Platt: you remember our deal, right? As long as our deal is in effect, I won't be saying anything directly to you in this conversation. I hope you don't take offense. You just happen to enjoy going in a particular direction in conversation with regards to truth, but I think it is important to go in a different direction. I find epithets like "relativism" just impede understanding about the issues, especially when hastily deployed. Matt _________________________________________________________________ Stay in touch when you're away with Windows Live Messenger. http://www.windowslive.com/messenger/overview.html?ocid=TXT_TAGLM_WL_Refresh_messenger_052008 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/
