Hi Matt
On 29 July you wrote:
> Members of the MD,
> As you might be able to tell from the title, I am, with heavy heart,
> relinquishing my place in the sanctuary. Im not sure who first
> compared the MoQ to religion and, though Im sure it was meant
> despairingly, I find the analogy fitting and use it as an apt
> description, rather than an off-hand denunciation. Though certainly
> not as shocking as, say, Bo or Platt leaving the fold, it is a tad
> shocking for myself, having been there for all the thoughts and essays
> and misfired essays Ive had over the past two years. Though not as
> vocal in the MD forum as the two aforementioned priests, I was a
> staunch advocate and was in the process of carving out my own little
> place in the Forum. In fact, my silence for the past year is part of
> why Im writing now.
This is the week of confessions obviously, and you have delivered a great
and touching piece. Your observation (about us shifting to the MOQ ground)
is correct and if Rorty's point is as you present it he seems to say that such
a move is valid. I just remember him writing off Pirsig in a reply to Wavedave
- by doing so he claims to see things in a still wider context than the MOQ,
in the same way as science - by making religion a subject for "research" -
claims to have a higher perspective than faith.
> The last several posts I had written were about two things Ive been
> thinking about a lot lately: Rorty and argumentation. As I had
> commented a while ago during a pragmatism thread, Ive been reading a
> lot of Rorty lately and Ive finally come to a realization: Pirsig was
> doing to me what Plato did to Pirsig. For Pirsig, Plato created the
> Western philosophical nightmare called Professional Philosophy,
> amongst other things. But through Rortys eyes Im finding that Pirsig
> is attempting the same thing, rather than really fundamentally
> changing anything. To turn Pirsigs eloquent phrase back on him, the
> halo is gone from Pirsigs head. This is not to say that Im still not
> an avid Pirsig supporter. But Im finding that the better parts of
> Pirsig are to be found in ZMM, not Lila.
So do I, not as much the Pirsig who wrote LILA, but the "annotating" Pirsig
doesn't (always) follow up on the greatness of the MOQ ...the way it must
be interpretaded to be great!
> Reading Rorty, however, put this uneasiness I felt with argumentation
> into focus. Rorty believes that the self is a centerless web of
> beliefs and desires. This web includes a set of words which they
> employ to justify their actions, their beliefs, and their lives. These
> are the words in which we formulate praise of our friends and contempt
> of our enemies, our long-term projects, our deepest self-doubts and
> our highest hopes. They are the words in which we tell, sometimes
> prospectively and sometimes retrospectively, the story of our lives. I
> shall call these words a persons final vocabulary. (from Contingency,
> Irony, and Solidarity) Rorty feels that the centerless web of beliefs
> and desires that we label the self is changed, not rationally, but
> causally. This means that arguments are of little practical use
> because a persons final vocabulary is self-justifying. Its the end of
> the road and, for all practical purposes, final. A rguments proceed by
> common ground, but if common ground is not had, then logical
> argumentation is superfluous. If an argument does work, it is not
> because it was rational or logical, but because it was persuasive. At
> root, people have a fundamental incorrigibility of their final
> vocabulary, so, in Rortys words, we must tempt the rising generation
> with our words.
Rorty is of course above all this? His arguments are of practical use and not
self-justifying? Just joking, because here something important is touched
upon. He says (in your words) "...we must tempt the rising generation with
our words". Right. Remember Phaedrus of ZAMM who had an affinity for the
Sophists and hated Socrates and Platon? The former were "persuaders with
words". This put in the perspective of the MOQ (where the intellectual level
is SOM) makes it crystal clear ....
... Socrates and Plato were the spear-heads of a new value level, that of
INTELLECT (an objective truth above the subjectivity of the sophists) which
is now seen as the representatives of SOCIAL value. Phaedrus' sympathy is
because any level's tendency to join forces with the one below its "natural
born enemy" (Intellect and Biology's common cause against Society). This
proves my eternal claim that the Quality Idea is an intellectual pattern which
is not at home with its parents and thus sees Society its ally.
So Rorty is merely repeating the dangerous "social" stand-point that it's all
persuasion and that "man is the measure of all things", and thus speaking
from a point of view below Pirsig.
> This is essentially what I see being played out on a daily basis in
> the MD forum. Two or more positions come together, clash, and
> eventually, through finding that arguing with a brick wall is
> tiresome, end the debate. The debate is found to be exasperating
> rather than elucidating. The debates that rage over the supremacy of
> the MoQ over some other usurper (SOM, Wilber, etc.) or vice versa play
> out this type of clash, but they also illustrate the
> self-justification of alternate paradigms. Two recent examples come to
> mind: the Beasley/McWatt clash (and its subsequent backlash on the MD)
> and a relatively minor skirmish between Platt Holden and Glenn
> Bradford.
Glad you did not mention any of my "minf...ing" debates that so enraged the
endorphins of Killerblade. I have read the rest of your message - every word
of it and am greatly impressed. Yet, I can also assure you that you seeing
the worshipping tone of some (this person included) is not so terribly
offensive. Yet, in the MOQ this gets a wider perspective. As said if the
Quality Idea is something "out of intellect" it naturally sympathizes with
Social value and as those values par excellence are religiously expressed it's
no wonder that it (the MOQ) assumes some of its attitudes, but ......ah
enough.
Bo.
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