----- Original Message -----
From: "david buchanan" <[EMAIL PROTECTED]>
To: <[EMAIL PROTECTED]>
Sent: Thursday, June 12, 2008 11:42 AM
Subject: Re: [MD] Chance
Marsha said to dmb:
No I don't think I should let you put the onus on me to explain my horror.
dmb says:
I don't see how its possible to respond to your objection (or any
objection) unless I first understand what it is.
Marsha continued:
...The M in MoQ is metaphysics. If you want to proclaim it dead, you need
a better justification and explanation than to quote "academic
philosophers" or the book from your latest class. Neither RMP or
Nietzsche were lazy thinkers.
dmb says:
Oh, I see. This is enough to see where you're coming from because I was
just there myself. There is a sense in which Pirsig's philosophy is a
metaphysical system. We can see this in his treatment of the objections to
it that are typically raised by positivists and mystics and in his general
attitude that doing metaphysics is unavoidable when dealing with any
coherent system of thought. This is not the kind of metaphysics that has
been pronounced dead. And I have to say that quoting "academic
philosophers" on this point is about the best a person can do because the
death of metaphysics refers to a particular set of developments within
academic philosophy. Nietzsche was one of the central figures in this
development and his "death of God" is still widely discussed. The Radical
Empiricism of William James, to use my favorite example, was designed to
keep out all metaphysical fictions. This would include the eternal truth,
the first cause, God, Ham's primary source, Plato's forms, Kant's
things-in-themselves, objective reality and a whole host of entities that
could not be known in actual experience but were said to be behind
experience or the cause of experience or the conditions of experience,
etc. The classical pragmatists see these metaphysical fictions as abstract
ideas that were mistakenly inflated and given existential status. They're
abstracts mistaken for concrete realities, ideas that forgot they were
ideas and thought they were real things. I think "reified" is the word for
that. Anyway, the death of metaphysics doesn't even give the flu to the
MOQ. I think the MOQ fits into this movement quite nicely.
Greetings,
Hmmm. I'm more inclined to think that theism and "western academic
philosophy" are dying, and Metaphysics is evolving. In-deed!
Marsha
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