dmb, I think I'll let you and Ron discuss this with each other. I've already explained to you that I don't think you are an authority, and don't give much credence to your complaints and whining. Have fun...
Marsha On May 31, 2011, at 10:58 AM, david buchanan wrote: > > Ron said to Marsha: > You do realize that these quotes conflict with the assertion that reification > IS conceptualization. You may have won the battle but you lost the war in > this regard. just pointing that out. > > dmb says: > It's frustrating, isn't it? No matter how many times Marsha is presented with > this contradiction she just can't see it. > This is a good example where she uses "evidence" that contradicts the very > thing she's trying to assert. Look, all a person has to do is emphasize a few > simple and ordinary words..... > > Marsha quoted Alan Wallace: > "Everything in the world that we conceive of and experience is related to the > mind. WHEN that world is reified however, it appears to exist absolutely, in > its own right; and this mental distortion MAY lead one to wonder how nature > can be comprehensible to the human mind. ...The TENDENCY of reification > among mathematicians is particularly interesting. ...This attitude suggests > a formalists view of mathematics one the Davis and Hersh assert is GENERALLY > instilled into today's students. Yet in a later chapter they claim that > NEARLY all mathematicians hold PLATONIST conception of mathematics NEARLY all > the time. ...It would seem that MOST mathematicians, WHEN they philosophize > about mathematics, profess a formalist view, but the rest of the time > (especially when they are actually doing mathematics) they revert to a > realist stance. This MAY well be true of many scientists as well. The > natural TENDENCY of reification, which we have had since childhood, is > extremely DIFFICUL T > to eradicate from our habits of thinking and perceiving." (Wallace, B. Alan, > 'Choosing Reality, : A Buddhist View of Physics and the Mind',2003,pp.120-123) > > > dmb continues: > If Marsha were capable of understanding the MOQ she would be using this > evidence to support the MOQ instead of undermine it. The pragmatic theory of > truth rejects Platonism and it rejects scientific objectivity, the > correspondence theory of truth and instead says that truth is provisional, > plural and practical. It says the language and the culture supplies us with a > pair of conceptual glasses [SOM] through which we see the world AND it says > there is another way to see. It gives us an alternative. If reification was a > certainty rather than a tendency, then it would not have been possible for > Pirsig to construct the MOQ and it would not be possible for Wallace to warn > against it either. > > Again, Marsha's incoherent position is like betting cash that cash is no > good. She doesn't see the contradiction entailed in using concepts to condemn > conceptualization. Logic is not the main goal or anything and there is plenty > of room for paradox and subtlety but Marsha's reasoning here is just plain > bad. It won't work. It makes no sense. In Marsha's hands, perfectly wonderful > scholarship is transformed into self-centered, new-age drivel wherein ideas > mean whatever Marsha wants them to mean. Notice how many of her "definitions" > and key concepts begin with the phrase "For me,..." It just doesn't work like > that. Like dollar bills, words and ideas mean what they mean for US, not for > me. We don't have to believe that legal tender is fixed and eternal or > something other than a human invention in order to spend it. We can accept > the conventional, provisional, flexible nature of money and still see its > value, its point and purpose. > > Marsha walks into a store, plunks down a stack of counterfeit bills she made > herself (with crayons and construction paper) and then, while making > pronouncements about the illusory nature of currency and material reality, > she runs out the door with an arm load of goods. As the cops are putting the > cuffs on her, of course, she declares that there is no authorities over cash > and merchandise. That's how it feels. Kinda crazy and slightly criminal, yet > smug and self-righteous at the same time. > > If reification is a normal part of the conceptualization process then there > is no such thing as a concept that isn't inherently erroneous. But, > obviously, Pirsig, James and Wallace (and many others) are using concepts to > push back against the ABUSE of concepts, against the conceptual error known > as reification. The idea here is to put things in perspective, to show what > concepts can and cannot do and what they cannot do is give you a key to > unlock the riddle of the universe. And money can't buy me love. The point and > purpose is to guide experience, to serve life. Like cash, it is an > instrumental good and it has limits. There is no such thing as THE TRUTH or > eternal truth or a single exclusive truth. As in the art gallery analogy and > actual existence of alternative, non-Euclidian geometries, there can be many > truths. Their merit is measured by their practical uses and consequences not > their correspondence to the one and only external, objective reality or their > proximity to so > me ideal Form. Rejecting these claims is not a rejection of the > conceptualization process. It's a rejection of the reification process. > That's why its important to see that they are not one and the same. > Chemotherapy is not supposed to kill the patient but the cancer. In the same > way, rejecting subject-object metaphysics is not a rejection of intellect or > science. In both cases the idea is to heal, repair and reform the intellect, > to bring it back down to the earth of things, as James puts it, to loosen up > our theories. Even as MOQers, we don't say that Pirsig's painting is the only > true one or that all the other ones are wrong. But that doesn't mean everyone > in the world is a great art critic or a good painter. To say that truth is > conventional and provisional and plural is perfectly consistent with saying > there are lots of hack painters and some people can't tell the difference > between a masterwork and some uninspired mess that came out of a > paint-by-numbers kit. > > > > > > 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
