From: David Buchanan (DBuchanan@ClassicalRadio.org)
Date: Sun Aug 31 2003 - 00:34:36 BST
Matt and all:
Matt said:
Its not asanine that you're following a path of mysticism, or people are
Pirsigian. What's asanine is that you call materialists dogmatic because
they don't agree with you. The problem I've tried focusing on in our
debates is that the materialist and the mystic will _never_ convince the
other by using argumentation because the materialist and the mystic do not
hold enough of the relevant premises (i.e. beliefs) in common. They both
beg the question over the other.
dmb says:
I think the issue is much more simple than that. I think that Pirsig is a
mystic and Rorty is a materialist. Scientific materialism is one of Pirsig's
main targets. Its the heart of the thing he hopes to replace. It hardly
makes sense to interpret the MOQ through Rorty's eyes.
DMB had said:
And since its pretty clear that scientific materialism is assumed by Rorty
and friends, it just seems that all these guys have really done is abandon
the most interesting questions in favor of physics and such. If that's not
SOM, nothing is.
Matt replied:
Right, right. Rorty assumes one thing just as you assume something else.
Pointing that Rorty assumes something is fairly pointless in of itself...
dmb says:
Pirsig's enemy is SOM. Rorty's ideas rest on SOM assumptions. You don't see
the point of that? It's not that Pirsig's view is God's own truth, but
haven't you brought a Klansman to a meeting of the NAACP? Why wouldn't you
expect some objections to such a bad mix, an incompatability Rorty himself
has confirmed. That's the point and I think its quite enough.
Matt:
Well, all I was saying about Plato was that he certainly thought ordinary
experience was an illusion. Hence, the "via our senses" part. However, I
don't remember anything in Plato about direct experience leading to the
underlying unity of reality.
dmb says:
Modern interpretations of Plato have all but erased all references to myth
and mysticism. The culture is hostile to mysticism generally and is one of
the things we tend to filter out. But when we look at Plato's work in the
context of his own time and culture, it is increasingly easy to see that his
work is saturated with references to myth and he belonged to a long
tradition of mysticism and mystery religions.
More later,
dmb
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