Hi dmb,
> Steve said: > The problem is not a matter of being our of touch with reality but of needing > better concepts. > dmb says: > I think we need better concepts precisely because SOM creates a problem of > being out of touch. Steve: For pragmatists like myself, concepts are better and worse with respect to one or more of our purposes. Are you suggesting that "getting us in touch with reality" is a purpose that MOQers ought to have for our concepts? Surely not. I see the MOQ as a remedy for such misguided purposes. > Steve said: > ...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. ...Pirsig pushed the metaphor too > far in mentioning being able to take off the glasses altogether. > dmb says: > Pirsig's metaphor implies what he want to reject? Steve: Yes. That is what I just said. dmb: I think that accusation is both outrageous and ridiculous. Steve: I think Pirsig is as susceptible as anyone to making a bad choice in metaphor and not realizing how his words could be taken. dmb: The glasses metaphor is situated in a context where Pirsig denies all those implications quite explicitly. Steve: I can't see how to reconcile a denial of a "way things really are" with the notion of seeing clearly without the glasses that obstruct the vision of others. dmb: In order for your accusation to be true, Pirsig would have to be pretty oblivious to the meaning of his own words. It would be insulting if it weren't so implausible. Steve: I'd like to think that Pirsig would see my point as to why his choice of metaphor is problematic if I made my case to him. But neither of us can speak for him or feel insulted on his behalf. dmb: > As a matter of fact, the analogy adds a layer to the "ocular metaphors" that > concern Rorty fans like you and Matt. Pirsig's metaphor says that we don't > simply peer out at reality as it's given, that we see only what the culture > pre-disposes us to see, as in Pirsig's correction of Descartes. ""If > Descartes had said, "The seventeenth century French culture exists, therefore > I think, therefore I am," he would have been correct." Unlike SOM's claims > about objective reality and the corresponding objective truth, Pirsig's > analogy says that we are suspended in language. Steve: Why would the notion of being suspended in language be a problem for Rortians like Matt and I? The problem I have is with the notion that there is a way to NOT be suspended in language (to take off the glasses). We agree that "we see only what the culture pre-disposes us to see," but there is no "taking off the glasses" where we see from an acultural perspective. dmb: > You are reading Pirsig's anti-SOM metaphor as a SOM metaphor. Steve: I'd prefer not to read it that way, but I think that metaphor is problematic because it lends support for SOM better than it undermines it. dmb: This is sort of thing I was talking about when I said you and Matt have a habit of using Rorty's anti-Platonism against Pirsig's anti-Platonism. The glasses metaphor says that the so-called subjective self and the so-called objective reality is actually within the glasses, is an interpretation of reality rather than the starting point of reality. This was one of my main points in answering Matt earlier today. Steve: Yes, interpretations all the way down. That's not the problem. The problem is the "taking off the glasses" part which seems to suggest that interpretations bottom out somewhere. We can somehow aspire to the clear (uninterpreted) view of things, the way things really are, the reality that we are supposedly out of touch with. 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
