Hi dmb, On 11/23/11, david buchanan <[email protected]> wrote: > > Steve said to Mark: > > dmb has long been trying to use the term relativism as a way of trying to > criticize certain perspectives including mine, Matt's, Rorty's, and > Marsha's, but dmb doesn't have anything that we don't have that can, say, be > used against the arguments of the Nazis. He doesn't claim any foundation > that we can't claim. Whether are are talking about moral or epistemic > issues, there are no arguments that he can make that the rest of us > so-called relativists are prevented from making. With regard to relativism, > there is just no pragmatic difference between his own philosophical position > and the ones he criticizes. > > Dmb says: > I disagree. The difference between Rortyism and the MOQ is very much like > the difference between no empiricism and radical empiricism, between zero > empiricism and total empiricism. I've been trying to explain this to you and > Matt for several years and so there are lots and lots of arguments. You can > claim to remain unpersuaded but you can't claim there are no arguments. That > would simply be a lie, one that can be exposed as such by searching the > archives.
Steve: I am NOT saying that there are no differences between Rortyianism and Pirsigianism. (One obvious way in that Pirsig's philosphy is different from all others as Pirsig pointed out in the Bagini interview is that that Pirsig's begins with the question, "what is quality?") The point is just that the term "relativism" gets you nowhere in saying what the difference is between the thoughts of these two thinkers since neither is an SOMer who could buy into the SOM premise of absolutism/relativism. Neither has any knockdown arguments to convince Nazis not to be Nazis, and neither is immune from having their thoughts co-opted by Nazis. When you accuse others of being relativists, you seem to be claiming to have something that we don't have. What is it? What sort of foundation for your claims to ethical or epistemic truth do you think you have that others (Matt?, Marsha?, Rorty?, me?) can't also claim to have? 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
