dmb said:
Pirsig's "ghost" story is not intended to undermine his own conception of
intellectual static patterns, of course. His aim is to undermine the "law of
gravity" insofar as it is conceived as an eternal feature of the one only
objective reality. When it is taken like that, then there is only one exclusive
truth about gravity and Newton was the guy who discovered what was always there.
Marsha asked:
Oh really? Just the law of gravity?
dmb answers:
No, not JUST the law of gravity. The "law of gravity" is just one example of a
"ghost" in Pirsig's ghost story. You should be able to see that from the larger
context of my comments, which was about knowledge and truth in general being
determinate or not. That's is the central point and one which was apparently
lost on you. I sincerely wonder if you have ever successfully grasped the point
of anything I ever said.
I provided several examples of the determinate truth positions that Pirsig
rejects. By contrast, the MOQ “does not insist on a single exclusive truth,"
Pirsig says. On this view, I said, "truth and knowledge are not determinate.
They are indeterminate. Truth and knowledge do not exist in relation to a realm
beyond our experiences, they do not correspond to a fixed and eternal reality.
Instead, truth and knowledge are human constructions derived from experience
and they are expected to grow and evolve just as we do."
As usual, Marsha, you have failed to address the criticism or even identify it
as such. In a nut shell, your mistake is to use the concept of "indeterminacy"
against the MOQ's version of truth and knowledge, which is already an
indeterminate position. The error consists in using Pirsig's critique of SOM
against Pirsig himself. Pirsig's "ghost" story is not intended to undermine his
own conception of intellectual static patterns! His static patterns are
intended to undermine SOM and other determinate positions. So long as
intellectual static patterns are understood to be humanly constructed tools
rather than fixed and eternal realities, they are NOT false or illusory.
Pirsig's ghosts, analogies and static patterns are ways of understanding
physical laws that prevent the false illusions. "Pirsig's patterns prevent the
reification of concepts LIKE gravity," I said.
Marsha said:
How about "It's all a ghost,...". Isn't the law of non-contradiciton one of
the laws of logic? "Ghosts and more ghosts."
dmb says:
You're just repeating the same mistake, Marsha. You are invoking these
Pirsigian ghosts while being confronted with the criticism that you have made
contradictory statements. You have misconstrued the rejection of determinate
truth as somehow granting you permission to spew contradictory nonsense! This
is just a more specific instance of the way you misconstrue static quality
generally, as false, as illusions, etc.. And since the MOQ itself is nothing
but a set of static quality patterns, this mistake leads you to misconstrue and
distort just about everything about the MOQ.
It almost seems like you WANT to be confused and mixed up, as if it ruin your
reputation to grasp a point or to make sense in responding to it. Good luck
with your culture of one.
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
