[MD] Neopragmatism isn't pragmatic.

[ian glendinning]

DMB, you said
"I mean, if it's about power all the way down and there is no
evolutionary purpose or
rational point then it can all be deconstructed without consequence
... Doesn't the MOQ's hierarchy of levels suggest that power goes down
to biology rather than all
the way? See what I'm getting at here?"

I don't quite. What kinda thing did you mean by "point" or "purpose"
in the first sentence there ?

Ian


On 10/30/06, david buchanan <dmbuchanan at hotmail.com> wrote:
> gav said:
> really interesting following this thread. really getting to the core of the
> impasse.
>
> dmb says:
> I'm find it interesting too. And it does look like the two different
> starting points, the one's Hildebrand's book brings out, really do get to
> the core of the impasse. It seems to me that these two starting points
> reveal the fact that Pirsig and Rorty, despite a large area of agreement,
> are operating with two distinctly different epistemologies. I hope you and
> Matt and others will explore this area with me, not least of all because I'm
> doing a paper on it.
>
> Tell me more about Baudrillard's 'perfect crime' and the 'spectacle' of the
> situationists, will you? I have a hunch that the continental philosophers
> resemble Pirsig in the same way that Rorty does, that many of them would
> have the same kind of anti-realist approach that Rorty does. I've heard that
> Foucault and Rorty are two peas in a pod on this point, for example.
>
> Seems like an important distinction if it leads to the relativism Pirsig
> wants to avoid.
>
> Here's a line of questions for you, Gav. Think about the pomo idea that its
> "power all the way down". That sounds like a species of relativism to me.
> What happens if we take that rather cynical notion and think of it in terms
> of the MOQ? I'm thinking here about Pirsig's descriptions of the Giant. (You
> know I'm with you already on the idea that conspiracy theories can be
> explained as a way of telling stories about what the Giant is doing, what
> the Giant wants and such.) This way of thinking about social level values
> goes along pretty welll with the notion that its all about power. But then I
> remember Pirsig's descriptions of the ingratitude of liberal intellectuals
> like himself and how, because of the amoral, scientific worldview in which
> they were trapped, they took sides with biology and thereby put social level
> values in the crossfire. You know, Mead and Freud gave everybody permission
> to fuck their brains out like the animals Darwin says we are and the
> victorian prudes freaked out about it. They're still freaking out about it.
> (Picture Bel wearing a veil at Wreck Beach - I mean, JUST a veil.) This, I
> think, marks a difference between the MOQ and pure cynicism. I mean, if its
> about power all the way down and there is no evolutionary purpose or
> rational point then it can all be deconstructed without consequence. But if
> there is a point and a purpose, then unqualified deconstruction is likely to
> result in disaster. I think that why the MOQ says that power and authority
> and tradition should be re-examined in terms of what it has actually
> acomplished in the course of evolution. Doesn't the notion that its "power
> all the way down" express the same SOM ingratitude? Doesn't the MOQ's
> hierarchy of levels suggest that power goes down to biology rather than all
> the way? See what I'm getting at here?
>
> Thanks.
> dmb
>
> PS Oh, Gav, picked up some Dirty Three. Got lucky and bought the same album
> you played for me. I'll very likely end up owning everything they ever made.
> A fabulous discovery for me. Thanks again for that.
>
> PSS I've been sending my posts to Paul and Dean, by the way, and hope to
> hear from those pragmatists as well.
> >
> >  two realities seem two be opposed here but why can't
> >they co-exist?
> >
> >there is immediate experience - primary reality; then
> >there is the intellectual world - another reality,
> >created by language, which we overlay on primary
> >reality (as an expediency), so regularly that we can
> >forget about primary reality altogether.
> >
> >This is Baudrillard's 'perfect crime';  it is the
> >'spectacle' of the sitationists, and it is the reason
> >why julian jaynes likened 'consciousness' (meaning
> >that recently evolved capacity for the manipulation of
> >representational symbols in an abstract space) to
> >someone using a  flashlight in a very dark room:
> >
> >wherever the flashlight searches it sees light. it
> >can't see the dark. the intellect sees the reflected
> >'light' itself shines as proof that reality is only
> >'light', intellectual only. and since the intellect is
> >created by language, 'reality' is created by language.
> >
> >language creates intellectual reality: the realm of
> >analogues; an abstract plane. but the abstract has to
> >be abstracted from something...and that something is
> >pre-intellectual primary reality.
> >
> >we can't find primary reality with the intellect but
> >it is a necessary precondition for the intellect's
> >existence; and i am usually pretty sure the intellect
> >exists.
> >
> >
> >
> >
> >
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