I NOTE THAT STRUAN HAS NOT REPLIED TO ME! - ELEPHANT
(waiting)
> From: "Struan Hellier" <[EMAIL PROTECTED]>
> Reply-To: [EMAIL PROTECTED]
> Date: Sat, 23 Dec 2000 19:39:58 -0000
> To: <[EMAIL PROTECTED]>
> Subject: RE: MD Strawman and Harmony
>
> Greetings,
>
> Nice idea Horse, I almost wish you were right. However, you are wrong. A
> strawman is a specific, if unusual, philosophical term with precisely the
> definition I gave it. Unusual, mainly because serious philosophers do not
> indulge in it. Your definition of a strawman is, in fact, a definition of a
> misrepresentation; a rather more simple, less interesting, but excusable
> fault.
>
> I suppose you still need corroboration so I give you Nigel Warburton's
> definition from his book, 'Thinking':
>
> "Straw Man: a caricature of your opponents view set up simply so that you
> can knock it down. Literally, a straw man is a dummy made of straw for
> target practice. Setting up a straw man is the opposite of playing devil's
> advocate. It involves a degree of wishful thinking stemming from widespread
> reluctance to attribute great intelligence or subtlety to someone with whom
> you strongly disagree. While it is often tempting to set up and topple easy
> targets, this activity has no place in critical thinking."
>
> Now to any reasonable analysis, this is precisely what Pirsig does at every
> turn. Being a fan of rhetoric, I would have expected him to be pleased with
> his excellent strawmen and suspect that he secretly is. I can now see that
> your misunderstanding caused you not to recognise the strawman critique as
> valid, Horse. Unless bloody-mindedness intervenes, I'm sure that you will
> now be able to accept it.
>
> Some of the most outrageous strawmen from Pirsig are (references are from
> the Black Swan Edition, 1991) :
>
> 1) 'All the universe is composed of subjects and objects and anything that
> can't be classified as a subject or object isn't real' (pg121) - Again,
> nobody has ever believed this. Gravity is seen by almost everybody as real
> ESPECIALLY the 'man in the street'. Likewise time.
>
> 2)'(SOM) . . insist(s) upon a single exclusive truth' pg122 - Rubbish. It is
> 'true' that water is composed of hydrogen and oxygen. It is also 'true' that
> water is wet. In another sense, it is 'true' that 2+2=4 and it is also true
> that 3+1=4. That H20 is water is a scientific truth and, while the genesis
> story is not a scientific truth, it is a religious truth. A fictional story
> is not literally true, but it contains a kind of truth. Of course SCIENCE
> insists upon one TYPE of truth, funnily enough this is known as scientific
> truth, but you will not find a scientist who doesn't recognise the truth of
> her love for her husband - unless she doesn't love him. And, of course,
> science is not a metaphysics, it is a tool and so this is not a metaphysical
> position. I have 'taught' this one to 13 year olds. The majority find it to
> be stark staringly obvious and usually 'taught' me instead.
>
> 3) 'Because they can't classify it (the platypus) experts have claimed there
> is something wrong with it' (pg125) - ??????????? Pah, Humbug!!!
>
> 4)'It has to make this fatal division because it gives top position in its
> structure to subjects and objects' (pg184) - Time? again!
>
> 5)'Free will v Determinism' (pg186) - This is a strawman as determinism and
> free will are widely seen not to be logically exclusive. Likewise
> indeterminism is no guarantor of free will, nor does it even make free will
> more likely. The 'mythos' of the 'man in the street' is that we have free
> will, so that alternative defence fails.
>
> Pirsig makes it far too easy so I shall stop.
>
> Bo. Naughty, naughty, I deliberately pointed out that no credit was due to
> me for the demise of Lila in the UK (as it obviously wasn't and I would be a
> total twat to claim that it was) and yet you still claim that I claimed it.
> No matter. I will also forgive you for following your master and inventing a
> couple more strawmen, in order to put me down, (that I don't differentiate
> between subject and object or recognise life and society). As yours is a
> metaphysics of misrepresentation, this is only to be expected. I also admire
> your SOM understanding which places the laughter as subjective and the
> facial contortions as objective; you really do have a very bad dose of
> subjectobjectivitis. Indeed, just reading it gave me an excellent experience
> of the wholeness of laughter - which is odd considering your claim that this
> wholeness can never be experienced. Well so be it, our brains work in
> fundamentally different ways; if the moq cures your own rather particular
> metaphysical angst then I congratulate you on having found it and hope that
> it helps you to enjoy a great Christmas.
>
> Boas Festas
>
> Struan
>
>
>
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