LS Re: Lab-rat and Gloria


Magnus Berg (qmgb@bull.se)
Wed, 4 Mar 1998 20:20:43 +0100


Hi Donny

> If it makes you feel better Magnus, a few years ago a friend
> caught me spelling MY name Palmgrne rather than Palmgren.

No worries, it's never hard to see what you mean. I just wish I had
the patience it must require.

> Magnus, it seems to me that you're so bussy hunting this demon,
> objective philosophy (or subjective philosophy), that you neglected to
> pause and reflect: What does it mean to say someone is being objective?
> And, What is Phil.? (Which also asks: What's the pay-off in-- and what
> counts as understanding in-- )

Not really, I'm not hunting objective or subjective philosophy. I'm hunting
the presumption that if something isn't objective, it must be subjective.
I'm not really interested in what it means to be objective, because the
search for pure objectiveness leads only to infinite regression. I thought
I answered the other questions one or two weeks ago.

> "Quality is reality" is *a* truth but not *the* truth. As I said
> in my first e-mail to the LS: We know what it means for F=ma to be true.
> We know what it means for something to be scientifically true. What does
> it mean to say, "Science is True!"? And it is true. That proposition is
> only non-sense if we take "true" to mean "scientifically true." There are
> rules for winning a game just as there are rules for proof -- but how
> would you prove the truth between two rival systems of proof? The
> creation-evolution debate will never be resolved (as such) because one
> side looks to Biblical proof, and the other looks to scientific proof --
> it's like a football team playing a basketball teal and nobody can agree
> on which game is being played. The debate is meaningless!

Yes, the search for *the* absolute truth is meaningless. We agree.

> No, waaaay off. Actually he's the most iconoclastic prof. I know
> and he's *at least* as deeply suspicious of the Church of Reason as P is.
> I honestly don't see why you think that move is suposed to display
> some kind of special objectivity. I don't get that out of it. Rather it
> helps me put these dichotomies in their place. Look, is the distinction
> between subjectivity and objectivity itself subjective or objective? If
> it's subjective then that means we can dissagree over whether Dr Lab-rat
> is being objective or not, right? If not, then what? One's
> objectivity is a brute fact? Recognizable by all. But what if there are no
> objective people around? What if we're all drunk as skunks in the lab?
> Isn't it objective people who have to decide whether I am objective or
> not? Isn't that like asking, Are good table manners ob or sub? Wouldn't
> that mean that objectivity exists *only* reciprically? How long will Donny
> keep talking in interogitives?

:) Ok, the tool doesn't really mean anything other than a help to
remember them. But I can't help wondering if all philosophers are
as relaxed about such tools as you are.

> Or (and here's the one that gets me going), is the
> abstract-concrete distinction itself abstract or concrete? An abstraction
> is something timeless or universal, like 1+1=2. Something which is
> concrete has a history, it exists in time, it changes... it "lives," one
> might say. (Now this is a logical distinction, not a metaphysical claim.)
> Walter Neely's got this book, *The History of Logic*. It's written like a
> history of math: "Joe *discovered* X." Like it was already there somehow.
> Can you imagine someone discovering the ab-con distinction?
> Bottome line: Logical distinctions exist in discorse. The way the
> rules of a game exist in its exicution. Nobody discovered baseball.
>
> Was that way too much at once, or way too tanjental? Sorry.
> What I ment to say was: Magnus, the iteration of a distinction is
> a nice tool, but don't take at as anything more than that, and if you
> don't like it or you think it's part of some evil plot, don't use it.
> There are no philosophical laws, only pointers. Phil. is an art, not a
> science. (That too is worth reflecting on.)

And why does art and science have to be separated? One of Pirsig's
major goals with ZMM and Lila was to join them.

BTW, I liked Maggie's note about concrete-abstract, (and of course you
may interrupt Maggie, that's the point of mailing lists.)
In MOQese, abstract things are intellectual SPoV and concrete things
are inorganic SPoV. This means that abstract things are ultimately
dependant on concrete things, which I think is what you said by,
"Logical distinctions exist in discourse".

Another thing, do you think it's possible to define a logic
independent of a metaphysics? I see that you make a clear
distinction between logical distinction and metaphysical claim
and I can't say I do. I think a metaphysics is the discourse
where logical distinctions are made.

> It's been fun.

Always is.

        Magnus

-- 
"I'm so full of what is right, I can't see what is good"
				N. Peart - Rush

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