Hi Krimel:
> [Platt]
> For all those interested in postmodernism a review of a book entitled
> "Beyond the Hoax" will be of interest. The author of the book is Alan Sokal
> who exposed postmodernist thought when he wrote a parody of it that was
> accepted as genuine by the journal Social Text. The review also has some
> interesting insights into the nature of belief. The web site is:
>
> http://www.nysun.com/arts/fight-for-the-life-of-the-mind/76744/
>
> [Krimel]
> Thanks for the tip, Platt. I especially enjoyed the final paragraph:
>
> "There is progress in science, and some views really are superior to others,
> regardless of the color, gender, or country of origin of the scientist
> holding that view. Despite the fact that scientific data are "theory laden,"
> science is truly different than art, music, religion, and other forms of
> human expression because it has a self-correcting mechanism built into it.
> If you don't catch the flaws in your theory, the slant in your bias, or the
> distortion in your preferences, someone else will, usually with great glee
> and in a public forum - for example, a competing journal! Scientists may be
> biased, but science itself, for all its flaws, is still the best system ever
> devised for understanding how the world works."
I also enjoyed that paragraph. I'm sure Pirsig would, too. Except for one
thing:
"Subject-object science is only concerned with facts. Morals have no
objective reality. You can look through a microscope or telescope or
oscilloscope for the rest of your life and you will never find a single
moral. There aren't any there. They are all in your head. They exist only
in your imagination. From the perspective of a subject-object science, the
world is a completely purposeless, valueless place. There is no point in
anything. Nothing is right and nothing is wrong. Everything just functions,
like machinery. There is nothing morally wrong with being lazy, nothing
morally wrong with lying, with theft, with suicide, with murder, with
genocide. There is nothing morally wrong because there are no morals, just
functions. Now that intellect was in command of society for the first time
in history, was this the intellectual pattern it was going to run society
with?" (Lila, 22)
Now maybe Pirsig is all wet. Perhaps there is a scientific basis for social
morals as proposed by sociobiologists who claim moral behavior is
genetically imprinted in the brain. But if the idea of morality is expanded
to include our experience of value (some things are better than others),
then morality breaks out of its social context and can 1) help explain
phenomena beyond the purview of science and 2) provide a framework for more
rational moral decisions.
Anyway I think that's what Pirsig was trying to accomplish with the MOQ.
That he came up short in convincing readers that reality is based on a
moral order is obvious from the discussions on this site. Still, he can
take some comfort from being provocative which is no small feat in the
field of philosophy after the demise of Derrida-style postmodernism and the
consequent elevation of other 20th century philosophers -- James,
Heidegger, Dewey, etc. --- who, to me at least, are old news (not to
mention boring).
Whatever. We learn from one another and even have some fun in the process.
Platt
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/
