Steve, Sure. Truth is not absolute. Truth is not relative. Truth is a static pattern of value - delusion. Throw it out and you experience divine silence.
Marsha On Dec 15, 2010, at 8:10 AM, Steven Peterson wrote: > Hi DMB, > > >> Matt said: >> Hey, you smell scientific materialism all over analytic philosophy. I smell >> Platonism over a lot of the formulations of mysticism. Both of us want to >> say that, for the most part, those smells are wafting from adjacent >> compartments to the ones we're actually interested in. >> >> dmb says: >> I don't think that's fair. I only described Sellars and Rorty using the >> terms they use for themselves and those labels don't just "smell" like >> scientific materialism, they declare it quite openly. (Verbal behaviorism, >> non-reductive physicalism, eliminative materialism are terms they use. >> Again, these are not my cups of tea and I think that's a very different >> perspective but it's not slanderous to point this out.) > > Steve: > It's pretty easy to formulate materialism in a non-reductive > un-scientistic way. Rorty can say that everything CAN have a material > description while denying the scientistic view that everything ought > to only ever have a material description. Rorty of course would never > want to argue about whether or not material descriptions are adequate > to reality. The issue for the pragmatist is adequacy for given > purposes. Rorty would point out that material descriptions are > inadequate to the purposes for which we write love poems but very good > for predicting and controlling things. > > > dmb: > Platonism, on the other hand, is explicitly attacked in all kinds of > ways by Pirsig. He even goes after Plato personally, by name. > > Steve: > Huh? Obviously Platonism is a favorite punching bag for Rorty too. > > > dmb: >> In this case we have one pragmatist who says the fundamental nature of >> reality is outside of language and another who says it's language all the >> way down. > > Steve: > And it would be just as wrong to read Pirsig's statement as implicitly > saying that reality has a fundamental nature of which language is > inadequate to capture as it is to read Rorty as saying that that > kicking a rock is the same as kicking a sentence. > > > > dmb: > See, I don't quote Rorty's critic's to use "relativism" as mere > slander. And it doesn't even matter if it's exactly true or not. > That's the sense that I get from reading his texts and from reading > about his text and relativism does not suit my tastes in philosophy. I > think that relativism is a charge against which Pirsig and James have > to be defended. > > > Steve: > I'm glad you finally recognize that Pirsig and James are likewise open > to charges of relativism just as Rorty is. > > The problem is that the charge can't be answered directly. The > question, "are morality and truth absolute or relative?" is a version > of the question, "is the quality in the subject or the object?" Both > Rorty and Pirsig need to attack the premises underlying the question > rather than take one side or the other on the question. Unfortunately > for both of them, anyone buying into to the subject-object picture > will see them both as relativists until they can be convinced to stop > asking the question, "is the quality in the subject or the object?" > > Best, > Steve > 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 ___ 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
