[MD] Intellectual activity

[Platt Holden]

> [Arlo]
> To clarify, I don't believe there is an "interplay/isolate" dichotomy.
> The Yin and Yang, for example, are only rhetorically "dichotomous"
> because without one the other would not exist. As for dichotomies are
> useful analytic-rhetorical tools, I think they can be used this way, so
> long as said dichotomy is always remembered to be nothing more than one
> rhetorical slice of the knife, and not representative of the way
> "things" actually are. Furthermore, my issue is with those who make a
> rhetorical dichotomy, and then pair it with Absolute Good and Absolute
> Evil. In this case, to worship the Individual and vilify the collective
> is to miss the important, dialectical value of each.
> 
> Finally, my read of Pirsig leads me to believe he'd be the first to say
> that the  Dynamic-static "dichotomy" is, while useful, a rhetorical
> dichotomy of a whole where neither Dynamic nor static could exist
> without the other, and from whose co-relation both attain value.

So dichotomies are "useful rhetorical tools" sometimes, but   
at other times, depending on your political persuasion, are to be 
shunned because there is no such thing as "absolute evil." To quote 
from Pirsig:

"Taken by itself that seems obvious enough. But what's not so obvious 
is that, given a value-centered Metaphysics of Quality, it is 
absolutely, scientifically moral for a doctor to prefer the patient.  
This is not just an arbitrary social convention that should apply to 
some doctors but not to all doctors, or to some cultures but not all 
cultures. It's true for all people at all times, now and forever, a 
moral pattern of reality as real as H20." (Lila, 13)

No "shades of grey" when it comes to societal morals in this case.   
 
> [Platt previously]
> I think I know how the objection to hard and fast dichotomies arises.
> It's almost a given among humanities professors that nothing is
> absolutely true -- that truth consists of shades of grey. At the same
> time they hold that shades of grey are absolutely true, thus
> contradicting their own assertion. Either that or they tumble into the
> mad abyss of infinite regress.
> 
> [Arlo]
> Another jab at the Academy. Damn those villainous "humanities
> professors"! Why can't they think more like Rush Limbaugh, who sees the
> world clearly and correctly?

Arlo is back again to bomb-throwing, exhibiting typical liberal anger 
and hate. He can't help but inject venom and demonizing into an 
otherwise civil conversation. He just doesn't seem to accept that 
someone other than his nemesis, Limbaugh, can have a low quality 
opinion of relativist thinking that dominates in university humanities 
departments. Perhaps when he reads what Ken Wilber has to say in the 
quote below, he'll have a change of heart. But I doubt it.

"The extreme cultural relativists thus maintain that 'truth' is 
inherently basically what any culture can come to agree on, and thus no 
'truth' is inherently better than another other. There was a certain 
vogue for this type obscurantism during the sixties and seventies, but 
its profoundly self-contradictory nature became apparent with, to give 
the most notorious example, Michel Foucault's book 'The Order of 
Things.' In this work Foucault maintained in essence, that what humans 
come to call 'truth' is simply an arbitrary play of power and 
convention, and he outlined several epochs where the 'truth' seemed to 
depend entirely on shifting and conventional epistemes, or discursive 
formation governed not by 'truth' but by exclusionary transformation 
principles. All truth, in other words , was ultimately arbitrary. The 
argument seemed quite persuasive, and even caused a bit of an 
international sensation. Until his brighter critics simply asked him: 
"'You say all truth is arbitrary. In your presentation itself true? 
Foucalt, like all relativists, had exempted himself from the very 
criteria he aggressively applied to others. He was making a series of 
truth claims that denied all truth claims (except his own privileged 
stance) and thus his position, as critics from Habermas to Taylor 
pointed out , was profoundly incoherent." (Ken Wilber, "Sex, Ecology, 
Spirituality," p. 29)   

[Arlo]
> Intellectual patterns, whether metaphysical or mathematics, are never
> "absolutely true", they are culturally-derived symbolic-metaphorical
> ways of describing experience. Is the MOQ, for example, "absolutely
> true"? Consider Pirsig,

When Arlo claims "never absolutely true" he merely repeats the 
relativist doctrine of humanities professors which Wilber demonstrates 
is "profoundly incoherent." Even Pirsig has fallen under the influence 
of culturally-derived truth by stating, "There are many sets of 
intellectual reality (read "truth") in existence, and we can perceive 
some to have more quality than others, but that we do so is, in part, 
the result of our history and current patterns of values."

Pirsig saves himself by hedging his statement with "in part," meaning 
some truths can be considered "absolute" -- like H20. 

Lest it be forgotten, the statement "There are no absolutes" is 
profoundly incoherent. 

Finally, Arlo hates Limbaugh because Limbaugh is effective in 
puncturing his liberal collectivist theories. Why else does he keep 
heaping derision on the man? He probably blames Limbaugh for the 
liberal defeats 2000 and 2004. On the other hand, he says individuals 
like Limbaugh and brujo are no more important than anybody else in 
society. Cognitive dissonance anyone? 

Platt