dmb said:
...This doesn't mean they're right or that other scholars won't disagree but it
does mean that it has been evaluated by their peers in the profession.
Disagreement drives the whole process, in fact. James described one of his
critics, a very famous a well respected figure, as "malevolent and stupid" and
another he described as having the "intelligence of an inorganic body". It's
fun to watch.
Steve replied:
The name calling surprises me. In fact, one thing to admire about James was the
way he understood his oponents positions and was able to articulate the best
forms of their arguments before arguing against them instead of
mischaracterizing and dismissing the worst forms of their arguments. He even
found better arguments against himself than his oponents could sometimes even
think of. In other words, I think he exemplified that philosophical virtue of
charity as well as anyone I've read. His mode of philsophical discourse is a
model that all of us here would do well to emulate.
dmb says:
I know what you mean. The other day I was looking at journal articles published
online by the William James society. Some of the articles are written by
doctoral students and in some cases that means the author is in his or her
early to mid-twenties. And man does it show. I saw at least one that was
shockingly snarky. I mean, compared to the posts around here it was downright
wise and regal but compared to other journal articles, his snarkiness was quite
jarring. Even though it offered some support for my case and even though its
hostility was aimed against my opponents, I had to scratch it off my
bibliography. It was just too childish to be taken seriously. It was
unprofessional.
James was not only a professional. He was also a Victorian, at least in terms
of the context of his life. There is no way he could have gotten away with
calling Bertrand Russell names in public. In public he absolutely HAD to
conduct himself like a gentleman. His era was very buttoned up and totally
dominated by stiff and brittle social level values. But he told his friends
what he really thought. I'd guess the only thing that's changed is the context.
We're not quite so buttoned up but there is still some distance between our raw
passions and the formalities of publishing but they're not as far away from
each other as they used to be. But this isn't just because we live in the era
of talk radio and overheated bloggers. It is also because the notion of
disinterested observation and objective analysis has come to be seen as a
pretense, as an unrealistic standard and even as an impossibility. The notion
of calm, cool, bloodless deliberation is just philosophy's version of the
so-called value-free sciences. Pirsig and James both think there is no way to
take human values out of the equation. They both insist that feeling and
rationality are equally important in the overall cognitive process.
This integration of the affective domain into our ways of thinking doesn't give
us permission to be abusive jerks, of course. But it has become perfectly
normal to admit that you're coming from somewhere and that you're bringing
certain personal feelings and attitudes to the table. In fact, the failure to
do so can be criticized as a sign of a scholar's lack of self awareness. At the
very least, it is widely recognized that the scientific, objective approach
usually works in the physics department but it's less likely to be appropriate
in the humanities. One of the recurring themes in the thesis class I'm taking
is this notion that a scholar needs to do some self-examination and think
seriously about what feelings, attitudes and assumptions he or she's bringing
to the table. We can't peel off our attitudes and the examination of the
examiner is a very tricky business. But you have to try to take an honest look
at yourself and gain some awareness of what you're bringing to the subject
matter. To me, this seems quite true.
If you're interested enough in a question or issue to write a thesis or journal
article or even to make a case by posting here, that more or less proves that
you have a personal interest in it, more or less proves that you feel something
of value is at stake in it. And why should we pretend otherwise? We should care
and we should admit that we care and we should think about why we care. I think
it's reasonable to expect a certain amount of heat when people debate things
they care about. I'd even say it's a good sign. But only up to a point. What
goes beyond that point, exactly, is open to debate. As I see it, James and
Pirsig have reframed things in a way that defies the common sense notions about
the difference between passion and reason. Instead of using reason to squelch
the passions, it's more like we admit that reasonableness is something we value
passionately. We admit that reason is a form of passion, admit that truth is a
species of the good, that facts are values.
Thanks.
dmb
_________________________________________________________________
Hotmail: Trusted email with Microsoft’s powerful SPAM protection.
http://clk.atdmt.com/GBL/go/210850552/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/md/archives.html
