Steve said perhaps this was just an off-hand literary flourish that we ought
not take too seriously:
"...The same is true of subjects and objects. The culture in which we live
hands us a set of intellectual glasses to interpret experience with, and the
concept of the primacy of subjects and objects is built right into these
glasses. If someone sees things through a somewhat different set of glasses or,
God help him, takes his glasses off, the natural tendency of those who still
have their glasses on is to regard his statements as somewhat weird, if not
actually crazy. But he isn't. The idea that values create objects gets less and
less weird as you get used to it. Modern physics on the other hand gets more
and more weird as you get into it and indications are that this weirdness will
increase. In either case, however, weirdness isn't the test of truth. As
Einstein said, common sense-non-weirdness-is just a bundle of prejudices
acquired before the age of eighteen. The tests of truth are logical
consistency, agreement with experience, and economy of explanation. The
Metaphysics of Quality satisfies these."
Steve said:
The question I have about this quote is what would it mean for someone to take
his glasses off? .., how should we understand what taking one’s glasses off
means here? I don’t think there is a way to take off the cultural glasses by
finding the right metaphysics since intellectual patterns depend on social
patterns for their existence. ...I don’t think we should think of the MOQ as
helping us to see more _clearly_. ...But then again, I don't know what to make
of seeing without the glasses when we have denied the SOM picture of a single
truth...
dmb says:
Since the glasses are intellectual and represent a way to interpret experience,
then taking the glasses off leaves you with DQ, with pre-intellectual,
uninterpreted experience. He tells us quite a lot about this pre-intellectual
experience elsewhere, of course, but this passage is about the MOQ as an
alternative set of glasses, an alternative way to interpret experience that
passes "the tests of truth", which "are logical consistency, agreement with
experience, and economy of explanation".
The MOQ's distinction between concepts and reality (sq&DQ) shows up here again
and so Steve and Matt are going to be confounded. It only goes to show that you
misunderstanding of the MOQ's most basic distinction has very far-reaching
consequences. It will continue to cause trouble everywhere you go, no matter
what facet or feature you try to explore.
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
