FURTHER GOOSES
ROG
> Whitehead was a 20th Century philosopher who based his ideas on modern physics and
> evolution as opposed to quaint Newtonian mechanistic materialism.
.......and the tension mounts in our virtual round of "So You Want To Be a
Millionaire?" as ROG is
sweating out the answer to the following question.
" Since the seventeenth century, the strictly scientific effort to found mechanics as
the basis for
physical science passed over into a more general frame of mind- an attitude or
disposition that the
modern philosopher Whitehead aptly labeled?..... What?"
A. chaos theory
B. quantum mechanics
C. scientific materialism
D. continental drift
"Quiet audience! ROG what's you're answer?"
"REG, I want to eliminate two answers, now."
" OK, and the remaining answers are, C. scientific materialism.....and D. continental
drift.
"Oh, OH! I know this, my science teacher taught us to take the first letter of each
word and relate
it to another term to help us remember. So everyone knows what a CD is, so it has to
be S&M." My
answer is, " C. scientific materialism."
"Is that your final answer?".." Yes, C. scientific materialism".....
"You're right ROG, you win $32,000 "...(the applause is deafening)
"Now, ROG are you will to risk it all for $64,000 smackeroos? (ROG drools emphatically)
And the question is, " What 20th century American philosopher echoed Whitehead's words
in "Death of
Soul, from Descartes to the Computer." "Was it?"
A. Pope John Paul
B. Tina Turner
C. William Barrett
D. Minnie Mouse
"Your answer., ROG.'
" Well, Polish logic would eliminate A, Tina lives in France, and mouse has something
to do with
computers, but that's probably a trick so I'll go with, C. William Barrett"
"Final answer?" Final answer REG.
"ROG, you've just won 64k" ( beer cans rain from the stands.)
"ROG, how about we eliminate all the other questions and go for the big kahoona right
now?"
"Right on, REG?"
" In the internet discussion of the Metaphysics of Quality, Jon recently asked our
opinion on the
following topic. "Subject-Objects metaphysics gets blown waaayyy out of proportion by
supporters of
Pirsig's MoQ. Struan stressed the importance of this apparent folly repeatedly. He
said that no
"serious" philosophers make any kind of big deal over the SO division, and that this
was perhaps
Pirsig's biggest blunder of all." So question is,
"What did William Barrett say about this in the first paragraph of Chapter Two of his
book ' Death
of the Soul ' ?"
"Your answer, ROG!"
"Whoa! REG, what are my choices?"
"Hey ROG, were talk'n a million bucks here, you don't get no stink'n choices."
"REG, I always knew you were a b*th*le, (audience gasps, while nodding affirmative)
but I'm going to
call my helper, Dave."
One ringy dingy- " Dave, speaking"
" Dave did you hear the question?"
"Sure, I wrote it, and the answer is,"
"The rift between ourselves and the cosmos- between SUBJECT and OBJECT- is, then, one
troubling
legacy that the seventeenth century bequeathed to us. Contemporary philosophers, OF
ALL SCHOOLS, and
in their differing ways, have protested against this subject-object split. They would
like, if
possible, to get rid of these troubling notions altogether. And so the philosophers at
the the
beginning of our epoch, particularly Descartes, are taxed with having introduced an
unnecessary
dichotomy into our thinking."
"ROG, do you think Dave is right?"
" Well REG, almost, I don't think Barrett put those all capital words in the middle of
the sentences"
"Right ROG, my EMPHASIS."
" So with those corrections, is that you're final answer?"
" Right REG."
" ROG, was this a setup?"
"Right REG," you see, " I think that there is a modern school of philosophers that
believe dualism
(whether implicit or explicit) really is a problem." and Pirsig correctly named it,
regardless of
Struan or Jon's OBJECTions, he was RIGHT ON, REG."
"Now where's my million bucks?'
DLT
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