dmb,
> dmb says: > > I removed everything from your reply except the part that most directly > speaks to the point. It's pure Auxier as a result. > > > It does clear up the meaning of "ideals" as Auxier uses the term. I > thought you were talking about "ideals" as a conception of the best or a > model of the perfect but Auxier uses the term to refer to metaphysical > entities. Jc: Auxier uses the term to refer to social realities and hooks that up metaphysically. Or rather, Auxier argues that that is what Royce is doing with his "fictional ontology". It's process philosophy, all the way, Auxier argues. I can explain in depth, and will, at the bottom. dmb: > It's certainly true that James (Dewey and Pirsig too) rejects the > metaphysical version, rejects ideals as a concrete reality. But an > "inability to deal with abstract thinking" simply doesn't follow from that > rejection. That's Auxier's claim, apparently, and that makes no sense at > all. > > Jc: It puzzled me as well, the way he hooked logic and metaphysics together... I guess it's that if you're going to be logical, you have to be logical all the way down (or up!) and that puts you in the "high country of the mind". Metaphysics is about universals and James wants to stick with personals. However you can't do metaphysics without universals... That's the crux of the conflict between James/Dewey, vs Peirce/Royce. > > "The only value of universal characters is that they help us, by > reasoning, to know new truths about individual things." > — William James, The Principles of Psychology. > > yes, that's problematic for me. The value of universals is that they are, universal and not simply individual. Most especially when we're dealing with problems of high abstraction in logic and math. Something James/Dewey were simply not good at, and avoided for good reason. > To take ideals, abstractions, universals and the like as actual things is > the most persistent feature of Idealist (or Rationalist) philosophers. So to take Quality, as an "actual thing" (meaning existent, I assume) would fall under the same heading? For is not DQ an ideal? And an abstraction? and a Universal? I don't see how you can't see that. It's flabbergasting. > Plato turned the Good into an actual thing, a fixed and eternal thing. And > of course this is exactly what James and Pirsig are rejecting. If you're using "actual thing" in the term of a materialistic object of some kind, I agree, of course. But if you mean by "actual thing" an existent, for instance, ideas ARE actual things - they have meaning and weight of impact in the world- So good is an actual thing, by one reckoning but at the same time, not definable or containable by any objective definition. This all seems obvious to me, from the MOQ but then a lot of things that seem obvious to me, escape the notice of others and I don't mind going over it again. dmb: > Idealism will illuminate their empiricism and pragmatism by showing you > what empiricism and pragmatism are reacting to and rejecting. It will > illuminate the MOQ in the same way that theism will clarify the meaning of > atheism. > > To take ideals and universal as conceptual tools rather than ontological > realities certainly does NOT mean you can no longer use them as conceptual > tools. Jc: It shouldn't, but when the conceptual tool is, in fact, a choice in ontological reality, THEN to reject certain ontological realities because of their nature as ontological, is to get lost in a path that winds around the mountain but climbs no higher. Here,.. I actually already copied this out... so it's no trouble. "Royce was not a follower of Hegel, but the lesson of concrete universals was not lost on him; it became in Royce's hands the reality of concrete generals. Royce avoided nominalism without giving way to Hegelian or Bradleyan absolutism, but gave the Hegelians their due by allowing that philosophy does and must trade in these kinds of universals, but contrary to Hegel and Bradley, Royce does not accord to philosophy any kind of overall authority when it comes to acts of knowing. The point for the present is that ontologies, as acts of thought, are hypothetical descriptions we have to postulate for both practical and philosophical purposes. As Royce says "there is something dramatic, or often perhaps rather to be called romantic, in an ontology" We may postulate an ontology, make for ourselves a useful myth, but knowledge of precisely what to postulate in this domain is impossible for us. Such knowledge would require a view of the whole, that we don't possess. This isn't anti-intellectual. This is utilizing intellect in its proper place and context... Royce actually uses the word "myth" to refer to the act of making an ontology in a letter to William James at the same time he was writing these articles. Referring to these he says: "The sum of them all is that ontology, whereby I mean any positive theory of an external reality as such, is of necessity myth-making; that, however such ontology may have enough value to make it a proper object of effort so long as people know what they mean by it; that philosophy is reduced to the business of formulating the purposes, the structure and the inner significance of human thought and feeling; that an attempted ontology is good only in so far as it expresses simply and clearly the purposes of thought just as popular mythology is good in so far as it expresses the consciousness of a people; that the ideal of a truth-seeker is not the attainment of any agreement of an external reality, but the attainment of perfect peace of mind amongst truth-seeking beings." dmb: > So I still see no reason why nominalism would preclude the use of ideals > in our reasoning or thinking. It just means the pragmatist takes > abstractions as abstractions. In fact, as I've talked about many, many > times in this forum, this sort of Idealism or Platonism is rejected for > being the result of a conceptual error called reification. And in this > context, i hope, you can see exactly that means because that's what Auxier > is demanding of pragmatism! I must say, this argument really exposes the > man's ignorance of James's pragmatism. > > > Wikipedia on "Reification" (fallacy) > > "Reification (also known as concretism, hypostatization, or the fallacy of > misplaced concreteness) is a fallacy of ambiguity, when an abstraction > (abstract belief or hypothetical construct) is treated as if it were a > concrete, real event, or physical entity. In other words, it is the error > of treating as a concrete thing something which is not concrete, but merely > an idea." > > > He's very weak, this professional of yours. > > > > Really? He seemed like such a nice guy too... But I sorta thought Carbondale was some backwater school before I met him... you can't always go on first opinions.. you ever hear of a thing called wikipedia? He accepted a position at Southern Illinois University in 2000 and in 2001 was appointed the editor of the Library of Living Philosophers, the third in its history, following series founder Paul Arthur Schilpp (1938–1981), and Lewis Edwin Hahn (1981–2001). Since taking the post he has completed volumes on Seyyed Hossein Nasr (2001), Marjorie Grene (2003), Jaakko Hintikka (2006), Michael Dummett (2007), and Richard Rorty (2010). Auxier’s interest in philosophical personalism led him to become editor of the scholarly journal The Personalist Forum in 1997, later renamed The Pluralist in 2005. The Pluralist became the official journal of the Society for the Advancement of American Philosophy in 2010. He has authored or co-authored more than 100 papers and presentations around the United States and in several other countries, written many scholarly articles, book chapters, and encyclopedia entries, and edited numerous books. Subjects on which he has published range from John Dewey and Alfred North Whitehead to the limits of evolution, biker bars, and ministries related to homosexuality. His current work includes a book, Time, Will and Purpose: Living Ideas from the Philosophy of Josiah Royce, in press with Open Court to appear in 2010, and as co-editor of Bruce Springsteen and Philosophy, and The Wizard of Oz and Philosophy, both published in 2008 in the Popular Culture and Philosophy Series with Open Court. Auxier's creative works also include short stories, occasional poetry, and three music CD’s. Auxier is the editor-in-chief of The Library of Living Philosophers. Since 1938, the Library of Living Philosophers has provided a forum for criticism and analysis of the world’s greatest living philosophers, as well as a space for dialogue between these philosophers and their critics. Under his editorship, the journal has produced volumes on the philosophy of Marjorie Grene, Jaako Hintika, Michael Dummett, Richard Rorty, and Arthur C. Danto. Auxier writes a weekly blog for Radically Empirical, an online magazine that features essays and commentary on current and literary affairs. Auxier's areas of specialization are American philosophy, post-Kantian continental philosophy, process and systematic philosophy/theology, history of philosophy, metaphysics, moral phisosophy, and theology, political theory, and philosophy of education. He has been awarded the Jacobsen Prize in Process Metaphysics from the International Society for Universalism and the Douglas Greenlee Prize from the Society for the Advancement of American Philosophy. --- and he plays a mean guitar, too. John 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
