Matt: "Quality, on which there is complete agreement, is a universal source of things." (Lila, 6)
What Fish really "meant by 'first principle' " is anybody's guess. Platt On 16 Mar 2010 at 13:06, Matt Kundert wrote: > > > According to Fish, pragmatists would dismiss the MOQ's first principle of > > universal Quality > > That's not true. What Fish meant by "first principle" is not > what Pirsig meant by Quality. Fish means a Platonic Form > by which A) there is a method which B) we can find out > what this Form is and C) kill off all other intellectual lifeforms > because (A) certifies that our principle is the _real_ principle > (as opposed to all those other fake ones). > > When you use "universal," Platt, you typically mean this WMD > version of Quality--Quality is the real deal, and therefore > everything else is bunk. I don't believe Pirsig, however, > means this by "universal," but something more like "covers > everything," which when you are constructing a metaphysics, > of how things hang together, is just an articulation of > generalizability. And "first principle," in this sense, is just the > first axiom of an articulated system of hanging things > together--of a portrait in James' hallway that people judge, > partly according to various aesthetic principles you are > otherwise so intent on emphasizing (an emphasis I think is > right and at odds with your occasional philosophical > authoritarianism). > > Fish is rejecting "first principles" as Archimedean points, which > is to reject Platonism and Cartesianism. It be like suggesting > that Euclid's axioms destroys Riemann's because Euclid's were > "first principles." That's not how we interpret geometrical > axioms, however, as Pirsig can well tell you. > > Matt 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
