From: Platt Holden (pholden@sc.rr.com)
Date: Mon Feb 24 2003 - 14:26:29 GMT
DMB, Matt, Sam, All:
> DMB says:
> META PHYS ICS noun plural, but singualr in construction. (1.) The branch of
> philosophy that treats of first principles, includes ontology and
> cosmology, and is always intimately involved in epistemology. (2.)
> philosophy, esp. in its more abstruse branches. (3.) The underlying
> theoretical principles of a subject or field of inquiry. (4.) a treatise by
> Aristotle dealing with first principles, the relation of universals to
> particulars and the teleological doctrine of causation.
>
> It seems that Pirsig can call what he's doing metaphysics by this
> definition, which is from the random house dictionary of the English
> language. Well, maybe not the fourth. That's all I'm saying. To insist that
> the word has to mean something else just seems silly to me. Pirsig can
> employ the common meaning. Why not? If its foundationalism or absolutism is
> really what you object to, why not just put it that way. For the sake of
> clarity, why use a definition that is not found in the dictionary when
> other such words are available? That's all I'm saying.
Well said. The attempt to rid the world of "metaphysics" appears to be
one of Rorty and company's metaphysical "first principles." Although
postmodernists love to point to irony, the irony of their own irrational
positions escapes them.
Platt
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