Steve, Well said.
Sent from my iPhone On Dec 4, 2011, at 8:23 AM, Steven Peterson <[email protected]> wrote: > Hi Dan, Matt, > > It seems that your conversation and mine with dmb have converged to a > similar place. DMB has long seemed to me to be confused about what > Rorty means by intersubjectivity and conversational constraints on > knowledge as if there is something dangerously relativistic about his > notion of justification. At the same time, he insists that "truth" > needs to be disentangled from the notion of objectivity in favor of > the pragmatic theory of truth which says that saying something is true > means no more nor less than that the belief is justified in a > particular time and place. Justification cannot be distinguished from > truth, he says. Otherwise, the only alternative is the SOM > correspondence notion of truth. > Obviously I disagree. Just as Pirsig's calling inorganic and > biological patterns "objective" and social and intellectual patterns > "subjective" was an attempt by Pirsig to continue to get some mileage > out of the terms after dropping the subject-object picture, > "intersubjectivity" is Rorty's attempt to make some pragmatic sense of > objectivity. And I think these two moves amount to pretty much the > same thing in preserving usage of truth as distinguished from > justification. In Pirsig's cosmology, what supports the superiority of > biological over inorganic patterns and so on is there place in an > evolutionary hierarchy. So Pirsig's moral structure depends on > thinking that inorganic patterns existed before anyone existed to > verify them. > For Rorty, (and also obviously for Pirsig), "what guarantees the > objectivity of the world in which we live is that this world is common > to us with other thinking beings. Through the communications that we > have with other men we receive from them ready-made harmonious > reasonings. We know that these reasonings do not come from us and at > the same time we recognize in them, because of their harmony, the work > of reasonable beings like ourselves. And as these reasonings appear to > fit the world of our sensations, we think we may infer that these > reasonable beings have seen the same thing as we; thus it is that we > know we haven't been dreaming. It is this harmony, this quality if you > will, that is the sole basis for the only reality we can ever know." > Of course we know that this is also how Pirsig sees the situation as > well since he wrote that bit in ZAMM. Apparently Pirsig didn't see any > non-conversation constraints on knowledge, either. I would add here > when Pirsig says that the piles of analogues upon analogues is the > only reality "we can ever know," that that reality is all we ever mean > by "reality." We only get into SOM when we think of comparing that > reality to some more real reality. > > By the same token, to say that the dog dish exists whether or not > anyone is there to verify it, just as to say that the world was > roundish even before people were in any position to justify that > belief, is _not_ to backslide into SOM. It is merely to value some > reasoning that harmonizes well with our sensations and other valued > sets of reasonings. It is not to assert (nor to deny) a _real_ reality > compared to which our conceptions are mere shadows. > > Like pragmatism, based on the above from ZAMM, the MOQ is neither > realism nor anti-realism (such as idealism), but a third way. On the > other hand, I think in LC Pirsig more recently identified the MOQ with > idealism, so I could be wrong. When I have time, I'll try to dig up > more quotes that might answer whether the MOQ is, like pragmatism, a > "neither/nor" with respect to realism/anti-realism. In the mean time, > I'd be interested in your thoughts. > 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 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
