RE: MD What is a fact?

From: David Buchanan (DBuchanan@ClassicalRadio.org)
Date: Sat Apr 05 2003 - 20:25:10 BST

  • Next message: Dan Glover: "Re: MD Philosophy and Theology"

    Rick, Platt and all:

    PLATT said:
    ...is not intellect basically social?

    RICK responded:
    I think this is what Pirsig was talking about when he wrote things like...

    PIRSIG (LILA ch12 p179)
    The intellectual level of patterns, in the historic process of freeing
    itself from its parent social level, namely the church, has tended to invent
    a myth of independence from the social level for its own benefit. Science
    and reason, this myth goes, come only from the objective world, never from
    the social world. The world of objects imposes itself upon the mind with no
    social mediation whatsoever. ...it isn't so.

    DMB says:
    Firstly, I think it's pretty clear that Pirsig here is using "myth" in the
    common sense, as a widely held misconception. And what he's talking about
    here is the error in SOM that does not recognize its own dependence on the
    social level. You may recall the quote I posted recently where Pirsig
    identifies the failure to make the distinction as one of its big
    problems....

    "Phaedrus thought the metaphysics of substance fails to illuminate the gulf
    between ourselves and Victorians because it regards both society AND
    intellect as possession of biology. It says society and intellect don't have
    substance and therefore can't be real. It says biology is where reality
    stops. Society and intellect are ephemeral POSSESSIONS of reality. In a
    substance metaphysics, consequently, the distinction between society and
    intellect is sort of like a distinction between what's in the right pocket
    and what's in the left pocket of biological man. ...In a value metaphysics,
    on the other hand, society and intellect are patterns of value. They're
    real. They're independent."

    Thanks,
    DMB

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