Hi Ant, Somewhere there is RMP/MoQ talk of many-truths, do you remember where? Or am I mistaken?
Marsha -----Original Message----- From: [email protected] [mailto:[email protected]] On Behalf Of Ant McWatt Sent: Friday, August 21, 2009 12:36 AM To: moq discuss Subject: Re: [MD] Rorty's Relativism Dave B stated to Steve Peterson, August 18th: " To cite the most relevant and familiar example, Pirsig also felt the need to deny relativism in both books despite his rejection of SOM. He felt the need to dispute this not just for his critics or people like Rigel but he also disputes Plato's charges against the Sophists." Ant McWatt comments: Unsurprisingly, I'd tend to agree. From my reading of texts such as Mario Untersteiner's "The Sophists" (1954), it seems highly unlikely that Sophists such as Protagoras were relativists (as Pirsig understands the term). In this context, texts such as Plato's "Theaetetus" are a form of propaganda designed to sway the reader towards dialectic rather than rhetoric; towards the "bean counter" rather than the poet. Plato's works are, of course, available on the Internet or, your local bookshop while, on the other hand, Protagoras's works (such as "The Truth") are largely lost or stuck in libraries buried in lava (such as the "Villa of the Papyri" in Herculaneum) or politics (such as the texts held by the Vatican). Until someone has the skill/inclination/finances/political will to retrieve Protagoras's texts, we're stuck with what Plato (a hostile witness) chooses to tell us about them. However, if you read (the roots of the MOQ in) F.S.C. Northrop's "The Meeting of East and West", you will see that it is towards a universal intellectually guided world-view (to underlie a universal moral code) rather than a relativist free-for-all (largely guided by socially orientated local traditions) that Northrop (and, subsequently, Robert Pirsig, his pragmatist student) was striving for. Moreover, if you keep in mind that Pirsig replaces Truth with the Good as the primary metaphysical chess piece in the MOQ then you won't go far wrong in understanding why he thinks his form of pragmatism is not a form of relativism. For instance, "man is the measure of all things" because human beings can analyse and grade all four levels of static value patterns (from the inorganic to the intellectual) while animals such as pigs largely follow instinct (i.e. pre-coded biological patterns) and are, therefore, limited to valuing only the lowest two static levels (i.e. inorganic and biological patterns). Finally, why is Pirsig correct in his thinking and Plato wrong (about the priority of the Good over the Truth)? I'll leave this question to Dr Christoph Bartneck (of Eindhoven University) and the following paragraph taken from his recent academic paper about the MOQ: "While one could use dialectic reason to discuss if the good is absolute or relative, it cannot be used to justify the superiority of truth above the good. Plato's premise that dialectic (or reason) "comes before everything else" is clearly erroneous. Dialectic presupposes knowledge of what is valuable and good, else why choose dialectic as a method and not the tossing of a die [25]. Scientists sometimes refuse to target their science towards utilitarian goals and demand that science should be conducted out of pure curiosity. Science should be aimed at the understanding of the world and free of values. But following Plato's error this is impossible. Preferring to know about the world is already a value judgment." www.bartneck.de/publications/2009/designScienceMetaphysicsQuality . _________________________________________________________________ Windows Live Messenger: Celebrate 10 amazing years with free winks and emoticons. http://clk.atdmt.com/UKM/go/157562755/direct/01/ 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/ 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/
