Steve said to dmb:
You are making huge unsubstantiated leaps here from Rorty's inability to "get
anything over on the Nazi" to relativism as the doctrine that we shouldn't make
judgments or that cultures can't be judged. Of course they can. Rorty says they
can and are judged ethnocentrically. Do you have a non ethnocentric way of
judging them. If you do, please provide it. If not, then please shut up about
Rorty being a relativist.
Ron replied:
Unfortunately Pirsig does say that cultures may be judged by their values; "a
culture that values intellectual patterns over social patterns is a superior
culture to one that does not" and that seems pretty ethnocentric to me
especially if one takes what Pirsig says about some patterns being
evolutionarily superior to others.
dmb says:
I'd certainly agree with Ron about the MOQ's ability to judge cultural values,
but I don't understand why saying this would be considered "unfortunate",
unless Ron means that it's unfortunate for Steve's case. I think that this
ability is much less limited than the ethno-centric judgements to which Rorty's
view would confine us. I think the MOQ's evolutionary morality is the
non-ethnocentric way of judging that Steve is asking for. This ability doesn't
depend on ultimate foundations of the kind that Rorty denies, and yet it
escapes the paralyzing confines of one's ideological tribe.
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
