Matt said: Yeah, but this as critical point against me assumes that I'm suggesting that one _should_ begin with standards. I don't want to say that...
DMB said: Oh. Well I thought you were not only suggesting a set of standards, I thought you were also wondering what those standards should be. Matt: Yeah, I had a feeling we were talking past each other from the very beginning. Two posts ago, in fact, I tried to correct this perception by saying, "I didn't want to say that one _begins_ with standards, but that one _is_ standards." I confess to not knowing how I courted that full set of motivations in the first place, but with that understanding of what I'm doing, this is what I said on Sept. 6: "So what I'm thinking is that, aside from our love of doing whatever it is we are doing, is there a way of erecting a standard of excellence in amateur philosophy? By definition, it couldn't be for everyone (if it were, then we'd have a discipline), but this is the route of beginning at home, of beginning with self-definition, what one's own goals are and seeing how well one can live up to them. And perhaps the most important question for amateur self-definition: even if you would never make anyone else follow your own standard, what is _your relationship to others_? In a discipline, this has a clear answer. But in amateur philosophy, it might be something to continually meditate on." You hooked onto "erecting a standard of excellence," but I was talking about a heuristic, a way of thinking about ourselves as amateur philosophers. I didn't go on for a reason--it was about introspection, self-definition. Even if if the heuristic is not for everyone, I'm not sure how it violates Pirsigian philosophy. DMB said: You know, because no matter how freshly that girl saw the upper-left hand brick she still had to use words and grammar, the paper and pen, and all sorts of static, conceptually knowable elements. Matt: Maybe that's your closet ticket to unlocking what I mean by saying "we _are_ standards." 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
