Hi dmb, > > dmb says: > I was covering this same ground with Steve, who was saying that DQ "is what > it is regardless of what we think about about it". But I think the issue is > very much about bad interpretations and whether or not we have good concepts. > The MOQ's point and purpose is to ditch Platonism in general and SOM in > particular. That's what we get in the conceptual glasses handed to us by the > culture and those glasses have a blind spot with respect to DQ. Those are the > glasses that produce attitudes of objectivity, that tell us truth and science > should be value-free, that reality is what it is regardless of how we feel > about it and morality is just a comforting fiction. The glasses we wear are > formed by the history of our culture.
Steve: You are objecting to my claim based on the glasses metaphor that DQ "is what it is regardless of what we think about it." That's not what I said. I said "OUR RELATIONSHIP to DQ is what it is" regardless of our concepts. It is what the MOQ says it is, i.e. the first division of Quality is DQ/sq. I agree that it is our concepts that can be good or bad, and I've been saying that all along. (The problem is not a matter of being our of touch with reality but of needing better concepts.) It is interesting though that in your mis-attribution of the "reality is what our is" idea to me and your objection, you have stumbled upon a way for you to understand the problem I have with the glasses metaphor. You are on the right track in seeing that idea as objectionable and built into the SOM glasses, but that's not all that's going on. My point is that SOM itself is also built right into the glasses metaphor. That metaphor implies what Pirsig wants to reject, i.e. that reality is what it is regardless of what we think about it. The lens metaphor is an old SOM metaphor that describes our situation as having something intervene between the mind and the object it wants to understand--a reality that is what it is regardless of what we think about it. The idea of the subject either correctly perceiving reality (no glasses) or having a distorted view of reality (with glasses) is precisely the SOM picture Pirsig wants to drop. That is not to say that the glasses metaphor has no teaching value for the MOQ when comparing philosophical systems as like different pairs of glasses. It is just that Pirsig pushed the metaphor too far in mentioning being able to take off the glasses altogether. 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
