dmb said:
The first thing I did was supply a general definition of both Royce's Absolute
and the general idea of an Absolute.
Joh replied:
Ok, dave, I did not accept your definition of Royce's absolute. I don't accept
the wiki defintion. ...Kuklick in particular is diametrically opposed to
interpretation of Royce that you listed. He says its invalid to picture Royce
as outside the mainstream of Pragmatism AND it's invalid to convey pragmatism
in oppostion to idealism. If you insist on my diggin' through the archives to
show you his quotes, then I can.
dmb says:
Okay, but Royce's relation to pragmatism is not relevant to the definition of
the Absolute, unless you're saying that Royce rejected the Absolute altogether.
Let me remind you that I used wiki for a basic definition because you would not
say what it is. Remember, I double dared you to explain it?
John said:Honestly, if you're gonna take on Royce then any published work ABOUT
Royce, by somebody who has studied him intensely is fair. I don't accept
cursory summations in the SEP, Wiki, or anything that is a compendium of
different philosophers. I DID respond to this before, but perhaps you suffer
from a little of the ole attention deficit disorder yourself.
dmb says:
Yes, I did use published work about Royce. Obviously, I'm not resting my case
on a dictionary. I just used it to take up your slack. And I realize that you
responded before but I objected to the very thing you're doing again. Don't you
remember me asking you WHY these sources aren't good enough? To simply declare
that you don't accept them is not a reason. And it is unreasonable to refuse
such things because they are the ONLY things that CAN count as evidence in a
dispute like this one. If we want to know what Royce thought of the Absolute
and compare that to James's and Pirsig's thoughts about the absolute, what
could be better than quoting James, Pirsig, Royce, or the scholars who write
about them?
The SEP, by the way, is peer reviewed and as a valid source it is considered to
be nearly as good as an academic journal. Anthologies are usually compiled by
people who are at the top of their field and are also considered to be a
totally valid scholarly source.
John said:
And if we're stuck at the "well my sources are better than your sources" then I
guess we're stuck.
dmb says:
But I don't recall ANY of your sources speaking to the issue, to the Absolute.
That's a big part of why you got the double dare to explain it. But you never
did. So I whipped out my wiki.
John said:
...the Absolute you're rejecting depends upon the definition of your Absolute.
Royce's Absolute isn't comprehended by either of you.
dmb says:
Oh, so you do admit that he has an Absolute in his system? Well, that's
something. Teach me. Tell me. Help me comprehend Royce's Absolute. Apparently
it's a big secret they're keeping from all the scholars I quoted on the topic
and from those hacks over at Stanford. Plus I double dared you to.
John said:
And according to my understanding, "direct everyday experience" can't be
contrasted with an intellectualized Absolute, because it IS an
intellectualized Absolute.
dmb says:
Huh? Look, the thing that has already been established for sure is that you
like this Absolute thing and I don't. But that's not the issue. That's not the
question. I quoted Pirsig on the Absolute because the dispute is about what he
thinks of it. It's not even about whether he's right or wrong about it. I just
want to establish the simple fact that Pirsig thinks Quality is direct everyday
experience and that this is contrasted with the Absolute. I'd also add the
answer I gave to gav, who'd asked about the "anti-theistic" comments in the
Copleston annotations. That God the idealist are talking about that that Pirsig
suggests we drop as a relic, that is the Absolute. He was rejecting yet another
form of Hegelian idealism in those comments. Again, the issue is not whether
his statements are true but simply that we have his view on record. Pirsig's
statements about what he thinks are the best evidence we have for what he
thinks.
John said:
There's no "transcendance" in Royces definition. His Absolute IS Experience
itself! You say that's not "much different" than a reality that's beyond
experience, and I don't know what's wrong with your reading and reasoning
powers...
dmb says:
Oh, I see. Well, if you've ever said that before I missed it. Do you have any
source to cite on that? I can't just take your word for it, especially since my
sources say otherwise. That's a reasonable request, no?
dmb said previously:
It's also worth noting the basic rules of radical empiricism because they
practically tailor made to preclude the Absolute.
John replied:
Yeah, well that I probably agree with you on. Considering who the arguments
were aimed at, there's a great deal of truth in the assertion. But in a
dialectical arena, you can't understand the combat by watching only one side.
dmb says:
Well, there you go then. That's the only point, really. James was doing combat
against the Absolute and you know perfectly well that he had a pretty good idea
what that meant. Again, the issue is not whether James is ultimately right
about the universe or if his reasons for rejecting it are valid. The only thing
I want to establish is THAT James against it and apparently we agree on that
much.
dmb says:
James wants to reconstruct all of philosophy on the back of two simple
restraints. If it IS known in experience, your philosophy can't ignore it. If
it is NOT known in experience, you can't use it in your philosophy.
John replied:
And do you remember my refutation of this assertion? I do. It relates to
intersubjectivity as the precondition of knowing.
dmb says:
Again, you are confusing two different questions. Plus James isn't asserting
anything about conditions of knowledge. He's setting down some rules as a
method. The method's validity is not the issue, but simply that he had one and
that it ruled out entities that can't be known in experience. If you want to
make a case that Royce's absolute is knowable in experience, then you'll have
to show some evidence for that. Again, this assertion defies the essential
thing about Absolutes as they're defined and described in every other source
I've ever seen. I think that it is quite reasonable to be skeptical of this
assertion. And I think its unfair to act like this conclusion constitutes some
kind of prejudice or incomprehension or whatever. As far as I know, you're the
only one who's ever made such a claim and you made it just this once without
any support at all.
I suspect that you're confused because the idealist see everything that happens
as an act of the Absolute, but the argument against this idea is that we can
experience the everything that happens but the Absolute itself is just an
abstract idea about everything, not an entity or mind that's somehow underlying
everything, as a unity which holds all of reality within itself.
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