Hi dmb,
Would you please present your definition of relativism?
Because:
Anthony writes:
“Intellectual values include truth, justice, freedom, democracy and,
trial by jury. It’s worth noting that the MOQ follows a pragmatic
notion of truth so truth is seen as relative in his system while
Quality is seen as absolute. In consequence, the truth is defined
as the highest quality intellectual explanation at a given time.
RMP:
"If the past is any guide to the future this explanation must be taken
provisionally; as useful until something better comes along. One can
then examine intellectual realities the same way he examines paintings
in an art gallery, not with an effort to find out which one is the ‘real’
painting, but simply to enjoy and keep those that are of value. There are
many sets of intellectual reality in existence and we can perceive some
to have more quality than others, but that we do so is, in part, the result
of our history and current patterns of values. (Pirsig, 1991, p.103)”
(McWatt,Anthony,MOQ Textbook)
and
“It was classic William James, imbued with a sense of the relativism of all
knowledge, a respect for and curiosity about alternative perspectives, an
instinct to analyze clearly and thoroughly but to develop a synthesis wherever
possible, and a conviction that the truth of any idea or thing is best
understood by observing its action in the world."
(http://www.pbs.org/wgbh/masterpiece/americancollection/american/genius/william_bio.html)
Marsha
On Nov 19, 2011, at 3:07 PM, david buchanan wrote:
>
> Dan said to dmb:
>
> ..And now I feel we need to grow the discussion into the idealistic side...
> the ghosts of reason:
>
> "Laws of nature are human inventions, like ghosts. Laws of logic, of
> mathematics are also human inventions, like ghosts. The whole blessed thing
> is a human invention, including the idea that it isn't a human invention. The
> world has no existence whatsoever outside the human imagination. It's all a
> ghost, and in antiquity was so recognized as a ghost, the whole blessed world
> we live in. It's run by ghosts. We see what we see because these ghosts show
> it to us, ghosts of Moses and Christ and the Buddha, and Plato, and
> Descartes, and Rousseau and Jefferson and Lincoln, on and on and on. Isaac
> Newton is a very good ghost. One of the best. Your common sense is nothing
> more than the voices of thousands and thousands of these ghosts from the
> past. Ghosts and more ghosts. Ghosts trying to find their place among the
> living.'' [ZMM]
>
> Dan comments:
>
> The MOQ states these ghosts are social and intellectual patterns that make up
> the mythos of our 21st century culture. These were the patterns (I think)
> that the discussion Matt and I were having was focusing upon... the
> philosophic idealism side of the MOQ and how one defends it against the
> critics who say: the MOQ is solipsistic. If there is a better way to do that,
> I would love to hear it. So far, all I've heard is we're supposed to suspend
> disbelief and assume the patterns of value we discuss like dog dishes and
> trees falling in forests are real just because someone says so. I don't think
> that's right.
>
>
> dmb says:
>
> There are different kinds of idealism but I suppose the kind most likely to
> result in solipsism would be subjective idealism. If one is skeptical enough
> to doubt the existence of everything except for one's own doubting mind, as
> Descartes did before he was rescued by God's benevolence, then solipsism is
> going to be a very tempting conclusion. But Pirsig points out that Descartes
> could think and doubt because he was part of the French language and culture,
> only because he could hear the voices of thousands of ghosts from the past.
> To say we are suspended in language or to say that the culture hands us a
> pair of glasses with which we interpret experience or to say we can't escape
> from the mythos are different ways of saying the whole blessed world is run
> by ghosts. The kind of subjective idealism that would lead to solipsism
> (wherein there is nothing real outside of the individual's subjective
> experience) is not going to be consistent with the historic and public nature
> of thou
> ght and language.
>
> Objective idealism and absolute idealism, as represented by Plato and Hegel,
> both get rejected as something that could be confused with what Pirsig is
> saying. Plato's Good was taken from the Sophists and converted into an
> eternal fixed Form or Idea. That's why they seemed to be saying the same
> thing up to a certain point. In ZAMM Pirsig tells us that Hegel's Absolute
> Mind was thoroughly rational but Quality isn't like that. In Lila, as he is
> identifying the MOQ as a form of pragmatism, he tells us that Quality is not
> some intellectualized Hegelian Absolute. Thanks to McWatt, we also see
> Pirsig's (mostly negative) reaction to Bradley's brand of Idealism in the
> Copleston annotations. It's also worth pointing out that pragmatism was
> largely a reaction against that kind of Idealism. James's radical empiricism
> more or less ruled it out and Dewey did a pretty good job of naturalizing
> everything on a Darwinian model, including rationality.
>
> But if we take "idealism" in the broadest sense then I think it just means a
> view that consciousness in the broadest sense is a fundamental feature of
> reality. This fits with the MOQ's assertion that even atoms can express
> preferences, that value goes all the way down from chemistry professors to
> quantum events. This picture produces a kind of panpsychism wherein, as James
> puts it, "mind" and "matter are co-eternal features of the same reality. On
> this view, consciousness didn't emerge at some point in the evolutionary
> development of the physical universe. Instead, consciousness was never
> entirely absent and has always been involved in the evolutionary process. I
> think the MOQ is a form of idealism in this sense.
>
> As I see it, the following quote strikes a blow against subjective idealism,
> the kind that can so easily lead to relativism and solipsism.
>
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