John shared a quote that opposes humanism: "Man is no longer to be the measure of all things, the centre of the universe. He has been measured and found to be an undistinguished bit of matter, different in no essential way from bacteria, stones and trees. His goals and purposes, his egocentric notions of past, present and future; his faith in his power to predict and through prediction to control his destiny - all these are called into question, considered irrelevant, or deemed trivial." dmb says: This would be a pretty good example of reductionism. Man is essentially the same as stones, trees and bugs. His goals and purposes are irrelevant. This is exactly the kind of thing the MOQ criticizes for it's alienating effects. This is flatland objectivity wherein all things are essentially the same with no qualitative differences. By contrast, the MOQ says that there is an evolutionary hierarchy such that the higher forms emerge from the lower levels and need those lower levels in order to be, but that they cannot be explained or described properly in terms of the forms they emerged from. I'd also point out that the MOQ takes "man to be the measure of all things" not as a claim about Man's centrality in the universe but rather serves as a limit to what we can know. It says we can only understand things from our own perspective. It says we can't make any claims about what is outside of our experience. In that sense, it's not arrogant. The Judeo-Christian view and scientific objectivity both pretend to deal with eternal, universal realities, pretend to know what reality really is regardless of what anyone thinks. You came to the table here talking about Royce and art and so I figured you were at least in the neighborhood, philosophically speaking. But the distance between you and the MOQ seems to expand with every post you write. Not to mention the problem with seeing Pirsig as a reactionary. Yikes. You thought he was a reactionary and you still liked him? Double yikes! Takes all kinds, I guess.
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