Krimel said to dmb:
Nor can knowledge be achieved by sitting in the corner staring at your navel. Or oh humming about how pretty it all is. The acquisition of knowledge requires a variety of tools and techniques. dmb says: Yea, I know and never said otherwise. Has anyone ever said knowledge can be gained through navel gazing or humming? I doubt it. Krimel said: Let me call this quote from the Fish article to your attention: "What has become an urgent necessity," Pirsig announces (he is hardly the first in history to do so), "is a way of looking at the world that does violence to neither of these two kinds of understanding and unites them into one." I always thought that was the point of ZMM and my interpretation flows from that. You on the other hand twist it into a shape you think overthrows science and naturalism. dmb says:I don't think anti-reductionism overthrows science and naturalism, as I've said repeatedly already. Anti-reductionism is opposed to a particular methodological stance and this opposition has the aim of improving upon such scientific methods, of improving science itself. It is definitely NOT anti-scientific. By analogy, it's like you're saying economics can be explained in terms of the atoms and molecules in a dollar bill and I'm saying that is not an appropriate method to understand economics. Instead of addressing that, your response is to accuse me of denying that there are atoms, molecules and dollar bills, which would be ridiculous. Krimel said:But let's look at your specific charge of "greedy reductionism" with regards to experience and physiology. dmb says: Yes, let's discuss my specific charge. That would be nice for a change. Unfortunately for you, I never used the phrase, "greedy reductionism". I agree that some forms of reductionism are more subtle than others but my complaints are aimed at your reductionism, at the specific claims you are making. I reproduce those claims in my responses so it should be pretty clear what the specific charge is. For example, you said, "we know that emotions are localized in the brain in the evolutionarily significant parts of the midbrain where they are found in most mammals". That's the kind of thing I'm talking about. To call that a reductionist statement is NOT a denial that we have brains or that science can detect neural events. It simply says that it's inappropriate to understand emotions in terms of what that organ is doing when we have them. When you do that you are no longer talking about emotions. You're just talking about brains. Instead of talking about the specific charge, you're merely repeating the kind of thing that drew the charge in the first place. Krimel said:Your best shot here is to appeal to higher authorities based not on what they say but on who they are and you criticize not my ideas but me. dmb says: Higher authorities? Sigh. To suggest that it's wrong to cite philosophers in making a philosophical point is laughable. You had said that Pirsig only mentioned reductionism once and had no problem with it and so I cited Fish to dispute that. If I say so myself you accuse me of being "lame" or whatever and when I come up with textual evidence you accuse me of arguing from authority. Dude, I think you don't understand how this game is played. Anyway, as you should have been able to see, Fish shows us that even the literary structure of the book is relevant to this issue. I've tried to explain how the very structure of the MOQ, with the levels, is relevant to the issue of reductionism. I directed you to video of Sandra Rosenthal and Hilary Putnam on the issue because they accuse your intellectual heros of being reductionist. Well, I'm so sorry for referencing the work of professionals who have thought about this. That's just crazy talk, eh? My bad. I really shouldn't rely on people who know what they're talking about. How foolish of me. (Eyes rolling right out of my head) Krimel said:I would actually appreciate a reasoned and reasonable attack on my position. dmb says:I wish you could appreciate it but I think you've already proven otherwise. _________________________________________________________________ Insert movie times and more without leaving Hotmail®. http://windowslive.com/Tutorial/Hotmail/QuickAdd?ocid=TXT_TAGLM_WL_HM_Tutorial_QuickAdd_062009 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/
