From: Matt the Enraged Endorphin (mpkundert@students.wisc.edu)
Date: Thu Apr 17 2003 - 16:15:25 BST
Steve,
Steve said:
But they actually do experience that reality, right? That's the part I
don't understand. I think they have been successful in creating a
self-consistent system, but I can't see where it takes them or how they
could find it to be consistent with experience.
Matt:
According to the old, metaphysical perspective, I think it is required that
post-moderns like myself actually do experience that reality, whether we
know it or not, the operative language being "whether we know it or
not." I think Platt and Squonk used "you're not in touch with reality" as
an epithet to put there position on a higher moral plane. But, I think if
we follow Pirsig, we'd have to admit that everyone is everywhere and always
in touch with Quality.
But that's from a metaphysical Quality perspective. It begs the question,
so there's not much I need to say from my own perspective. As for your
second two points, post-modern are consistent with experience because we
never let it slip away from us. We never could. Reality, redescribed as
"causal impresses" or "value preconditioning," is always keeping us in
check, is always pushing us around. We couldn't get away from it if we
wanted. The deal for Rortyan types like myself, is that we don't take
these causal impresses as reasons to do anything, we take them as forcing
us to do things. They force us to believe certain things like, "There's a
tiger over there." Reality forced us to have that belief, its done its
job, we don't need to match up our beliefs with it anymore.
As for where this "self-consistent system" is taking us, I don't know and I
think that is the point. Platt sees post-modernism as leading to an
intellectual blackhole, but I see it as freeing up creative thought. Many
times those are the words used by conservatives and progressives to
describe a single event, "blackhole" and "creative," so I take it as a good
sign.
Steve said:
How can we really know that something is better than something else without
making metaphysical assumptions? If we decide that some assumptions must
be made, how can we choose between possible sets of assumptions?
Matt:
Though I resist conflating "metaphysics" with "assumptions," I do think we
must make assumptions. We inherit them from our socio-historical
positions, but I read them as "final vocabularies" rather than
"metaphysics." The choice between assumptions, I think, is simply made by
how much value you see in the assumptions, a very Pirsigian thing to
say. On a choice between sets of assumptions, as you may have seen between
conversations between Scott and I, there is a lot of betting
involved. Scott bets one way, I bet another. I doubt our bets will be
resolved in this lifetime, some I'm betting that Scott'll have to pay up in
heaven or someplace, when the time comes.
Matt
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