Hi Andre,

> Steve to dmb:
> What I am disagreeing with is the idea that we ought to privilege certain
> experiences as "primary" while trivializing others as "secondary" along the
> lines of concepts being distinct from rather
> than part of reality.
>
> Andre:
> That is not the issue. Of course concepts are not distinct from... issue is;
> to what extent do concepts grasp reality, assist us to understand reality,
> aim to be a useful finger to reality, do or do not slice up reality i.e
> damage reality.
>
> In other words to what extent does the description on the menu represent the
> food. That is the issue. And here you may judge whether a concept is useful
> or not. IMHO.

Steve:
Pirsig said with James that "truth is a species of good,"  and "In the
MOQ, and in William James’ pragmatism, truth is described as high
quality intellectual patterns," and "The tests of truth are logical
consistency, agreement with experience, and economy of explanation."
Conspicuously absent from hist talk about truth is the notion of
adequate correspondence with or representation of reality. dmb and I
actually agree upon that much.

Unlike dmb, pragmatists don't fault language for failing to properly
grasp reality because we don't see language as having that purpose,
and we don't see reality as the sort of thing that needs to be
"grasped." Menus are useful things, but the descriptions are not
representations of the food that are either adequate or inadequate to
the food. The descriptions are adequate or inadequate to the human
purposes for which they were created.

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

Reply via email to