From: Matt Kundert (pirsigaffliction@hotmail.com)
Date: Sun Feb 27 2005 - 22:32:31 GMT
Mark,
Mark said:
The most important element from the TLS article is not the question Sam
highlights. The philosphers and scientists writing behind the artilce are
doing so from a SOM percpective. This is the most important point to
highlight.
Matt:
If any conversation between Pirsigian philosophers and the rest of
philosophy, past or present, is going to move forward, we need to stop
simply assuming that everyone else is "SOMic." What counts as SOM (and
therefore degenerate) or not is a contested notion, mostly because Pirsig
spreads out his description of SOM in many different places and because he
pushes at least two (maybe more) seperable theses under the SOM banner. As
such, the epithet, as Pirsig uses it, is a lot narrower than most people
assume. Also, other philosophers have theses that, even if they hold SOMic
theses, do not have anything to do with SOM theses and can be logically
seperated from them.
If you do not agree with this previous paragraph, that is perfectly
acceptable and desired for conversation. But, ipso facto, it simply means
that SOM _is_ still a contested notion.
To my mind, the authors called the "cognitivists," particularly Solomon,
Nussbaum, and Rorty, are not SOMic. They display neither any use for the
correspondence theory of truth or a reductionistic materialism (the two
easiestly extracted pieces of SOM). If you want to claim that they _are_
SOMic, you are first going to have to explain what you mean by "SOMic," and
then do more than dogmatically assert your claim.
If an open dialogue is going to happen where we hear other opinions and
viewpoints, we need to stop shutting them out because they talk differently.
This is the MoQ _Focus_, not the MoQ Discuss. We need a higher level of
argumentation and discussion here if we are going to differentiate this
branch at all.
Matt
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