Marsha asked Arlo:
Have you lost sight of our language being all about the a subject and a verb
acting on a direct or indirect object?
dmb says:
You're conflating grammar with metaphysics. Using the english language does not
entail a commitment to SOM, as we plainly see in Pirsig's philosophical novels.
In fact, he uses the english language to dispute and replace SOM.
Marsha asked Arlo:
How do you know that the structure of our language has greatly enriched human
agency? Did you use active imagination? Projection? Because you thunk it?
dmb says:
Language gives you the power to ask that question, although you've used that
power quite badly. Your question demonstrates the very thing you mock. It's
like doubting your capacity to doubt. It's more than a little bit hair-brained.
Marsha said to Arlo:
I have not spoken of becoming brain dead, just not elevating language when it
is much of the problem.
Arlo replied:
I am not "elevating" it either, as I said it is not about glorifying or condemn
language (or any "structure"), but to see that you can't have the expanded
potential structure brings without constraints. These are not opposed forces,
language enriches and constrains, and the durability of language historically
demonstrates quite clearly that the value it brings outweighs the constraints
it places upon us.
dmb says:
Right. Marsha is making a wildly invalid inference, taking a giant leap. She
takes the MOQ's claims about the limits of language to be a condemnation of
language as such. Its structure is not an evolved capacity, but a prison. It's
not just that it is unable to say anything about the ultimate truth, whatever
THAT is. No, it hides the truth, she says, and by this she must mean that
ultimate truth. "We can think and characterize reality only subject to
language, which is conventional," she says, "Language occludes the way things
really are." I think this is quite confused and the conclusions are rather
drastic.
Guys like Pirsig and James are not condemning language because it gets in the
way of realizing the ultimate truth. They're saying there is no ultimate truth.
They're saying truth is a species of the good, an intellectual good. To say
this pragmatic truth is conventional and not ultimate is true enough but how
does that make it any less good? Is there an unstated premise here, an
assumption that conventional reality is to be hated, dismissed or otherwise
condemned? Is there some other reality we're supposed to like better? Smells
like the same old, same old, same old otherworldly Platonism to me.
DaveUSA, Planet Earth
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