Doug Renselle (renselle@on-net.net)
Wed, 18 Feb 1998 19:12:31 +0100
Magnus,
BRAVO!
Doug Renselle.
-------------------------
Magnus Berg wrote:
>
> Hi again Donny
>
> Donald T Palmgren wrote:
> >
> > Pretend all of you that you are the head of a university
> > philosophy department (a fate I wouldn't wish upon my worst enamy),
> and
> > the dean comes in and says, "I'm real sorry Professor Knows-a-lot,
> but
> > we've got these terible budget problems and I'm going to have to get
> rid
> > of the entier philosophy program."
> > And you say, "But Dean Tightwad, we need to study
> philosophy!"
> > And Dean Tightwad says, "Well, perhaps you can help me. See
> I was
> > a bussiness major, and I've never really understood what you do
> here."
> > Now, how are you going to respond? This guy wants to know,
> > bottom-line, what's the pay-off, and your job depends upon your
> answer.
> > What are you going to say?
>
> The day my interest in philosophy is dependent on budget, I hope I
> have
> the sense to quit. Another thing, budget is social SPoV. Science,
> including philosophy, is intellectual SPoV. So, according to MoQ, it
> is immoral for budget to inhibit science. Of course I realize that
> much
> of science today is dependent on budget, it is nevertheless immoral.
>
> A disturbing thing here is the emotional detachment that are very
> common among philosophers. They live with the illusion that all
> different philosophies can be "objectively" compared and ordered.
> That is not the case. It would mean that "objective" would be a
> definition made in some kind of meta philosophy. I'm not really
> sure, but if that is what Kant did with his a priori idea, then
> his philosophy is resting on itself, just as much as any other.
>
> Philosophers don't dare to get emotionally involved because then,
> their so called "objectiveness" gets polluted by their personal
> likes and dislikes, what we call value. And value is something
> that is totally forbidden in all "objective" science.
>
> That's why philosophers say that "Philosophy is the study of its
> own history". They're trapped in the church of reason and can't
> get out.
>
> No pun intended, but sometimes I'm beginning to doubt if you
> really read ZMM and Lila. All I said above is there, but much
> clearer than my ramblings. But if you're also trapped in the
> church of reason, I can understand your reasoning. There's no
> way to fit the MoQ within the church of reason.
>
> > >
> > > I substitute subject with knower, mind, subjective, insubstantial
> etc.
> > > I substitute object with known, matter, objective, body,
> substantial etc.
> > >
> > > I sense that you might not, please elaborate.
> >
> > Certainly. Pirsig makes the same equation you do without
> thinking
> > about it, and that's what I'm trying to show (else my discussion of
> Kant
> > will seem meaningless -- well, understanding Kant is a worthy goal
> in
> > itself, but it woun't seem especially connected to MoQ).
> > The differance is, as I said earlier, an idea is not a body
> --
> > it's not spacially extended. But it is a Gegenstand (an object).
> > Put this tool in your philosophical toolbox:
> > *** Whenever you have a dichotomistic distionction
> (everything
> > is either A or B) iterate it -- that is, apply it to itself and see
> where
> > it falls. ***
> > So: MBd is clearly a thought or system of thought. It is not
> > spacially extended, MBd has no body. It's an element of Mind.
> > But what about SOM (knower-known)? It's obviously not a
> knowing
> > consciousness; it's something (namely an idea) we know/are aware of.
> SOM
> > is an object -- a Gegenstand (literally "stands onver against"
> > consciounsness).
> > So I hope now that it's clear that SOM and MBd are
> different.
> > Pirsig missed that little point.
>
> I don't get what that was intended to prove exactly. The toolbox tool
> you
> gave us is by our vocabulary a philosopholical tool, not a
> philosophical.
> But that's not the point. The point, which I was trying to make last
> week,
> is that Pirsig did *not* miss that difference. What he did, was to
> wrap 'em
> all up in the same bag and call all of them SOM. I can imagine that
> there
> are more of these tools around. But I doubt if any of them are able to
> grasp the MoQ. It would be like trying to explain the taste of
> chocolate
> with numbers, a good old example.
>
> > If subjective and Mind are the same, and objective and Body
> are
> > the same, then I'd agree. But what I was trying to get at through
> all that
> > cloud watching is: they are not. Pirsig was held captive by a
> picture and
> > we all fall into the same "hypnossis" as he when we read him.
> > But "objective" means "brute fact." Objective-subjective are
> types
> > of truth not types of things. So, I don't say Pirsig wants to make
> > Quality a (known)object or a Body. I'm saying he wants to give it
> the
> > truth status of a brute fact. He himself says that this is how it
> all got
> > started -- How do you assign grades in a rhetoric class? Is it
> > subjective? Dosn't he clearly react against that? Dosn't he
> out-right say
> > he wants Quality to be absolute?
>
> No again, he said that it was neither subjective nor objective. He
> avoided
> both horns of his faculty's dilemma by saying that subjective and
> objective
> are both derived from Quality, *NOT* that Quality was objective!
>
> The church of reason says that if a truth is not objective, it is
> subjective.
> That's what SOM is all about. All philosophies in the SOM bag defines
> one
> and only one truth based on a certain mix of objectivity and
> subjectivity.
> You should really read some of Doug's posts about many truths, they're
> brilliant.
>
> And about the "brute fact" part. History, relativity and most of all,
> quantum mechanics should be enough to show that there's no such truth
> as a "brute fact" truth. Pirsig snapped *out* of that hypnosis, not
> into
> another.
>
> I think this is the time for a:
>
> Many truths to you Donny,
> (And that's a good :) thing)
>
> Magnus
>
> --
> "I'm so full of what is right, I can't see what is good"
> N. Peart - Rush
>
> --
> post message - mailto:lilasqd@hkg.com
> unsubscribe/queries - mailto:diana@asiantravel.com
> homepage - http://www.geocities.com/Athens/Forum/4670
>
>
-- "Now, we daily see what science is doing for us. This could not be unless it taught us something about reality; the aim of science is not things themselves, as the dogmatists in their simplicity imagine, but the relations between things; outside those relations there is no reality knowable."By Henri Poincaré, in 'Science and Hypothesis,' p. xxiv, translated from French in 1905 by J. Larmor, published 1952 by Dover Publications.
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