[MD] Dawkins a Materialist (is watching?]

[Arlo Bensinger]

[Ham]
Now who's being dismissive?  I consider that a flippant response.

[Arlo]
It wasn't mean to be flippant. Plato's and Socrates' philosophies 
worked for them. It satisfied their needs. It gave them meaning. What 
more can one say? You want me to say they were "right" or "wrong", 
and I can't and I won't. I will say I find the MOQ "better".

[Ham makes a bunch of remarks about Arlo's nihilism]
I started the "definition process" years ago.  What's ailing me right 
now isn't metaphor; it's your abject nihilism. ... Spoken like a true 
nihilist.  I can't have an intelligent conversation on
philosophy with someone who acknowledges nothing as real.  I should 
have followed my initial instinct and aborted this discussion at the 
git-go. (Come back to me when you believe in something.)

[Arlo]
Nihilist? Why? Because I don't think one needs to lie to oneself and 
think they can "know" what you call "absolute reality"? Not everyone 
needs a defined "source" to give their lives meaning, Ham. But if you 
consider someone who understands that all philosophies are 
culturally-bound metaphorical systems attempting to make sense of an 
undefinable undefined, then, sure, call me a "nihilist". You said in 
our initial exchange I was "scrappy". Is this where you start acting "smug"?

[Ham]
He posits it as "the primary empirical reality."  That's fine in my 
book; I describe Value (metaphorically) as the stuff we 
intellectualize as physical reality.  I also like Bo's concept, "the 
value of the S/O divide."  But both the value and the divide are 
derived from a primary source.  You sleigh this as so much metaphoric 
talk and refuse to tell me your conception of
this source; yet it is the foundation on which philosophy is built.

[Arlo]
There is a passage in David Granger's book I'll share here.

"All the same, we should not forget that the static-Dynamic division 
of the lived world reflects only one of many possible approaches to 
making that first cut into reality. Since the process of reflection 
is inevitably conditioned by numerous contingencies, by the competing 
ideals, values, beliefs, and customs of a certain cultural time and 
place, there can be no definitive or a priori way to do this, even as 
the subject-object division seems so ingrained in Euro-American 
culture. This is why I spoke at the outset of finding a better or 
worse way of viewing reality, not a view that is right or wrong in 
any absolute sense. Metaphysics, as Dewey and Pirsig see it, is an 
experimental enterprise. The concepts and other instrumentalities it 
utilizes are in no sense ontologically superior to the "gross, 
macroscopic, crude" things of primary experience. They are artifacts 
of inquiry, fashioned within a specific context of available means 
and valued ends, just like other human tools. And when the need 
presents itself, these tools, too, must be refashioned-as we see in 
Pirsig's shift from romantic and classic to Dynamic and static and 
the avowed provisional status of Dewey's generic traits." (Granger, p. 33)

[Ham]
Of course it falls short of the experience!  But I don't dismiss Bach 
because a verbal analysis of his music doesn't live up to a concert 
performance.  Why should you dismiss the progenitor and prime mover 
of the universe simply because you can't explain it?

[Arlo]
I don't dismiss "it", I just don't deceive myself into believing I 
can, in any literal sense, "define it". Philosophies are, for me, 
pragmatic tools for making sense of experience. No single one is 
"Truth" or "Right".

[Ham]
So, because you can't explain it, it doesn't concern you.  You don't 
think about it, ponder over it, relate to it, talk about it, or even 
acknowledge that there is a primary source.  I find that a peculiar 
posture for an intellectual in a philosophy forum.

[Arlo]
I do all these things, but always from a stance of knowing I am not 
uncovering "Truth" or defining in an absolute way what "it" is. I'm 
sorry you see that as unintellectual. I don't.

[Ham]
Exactly what pleasure or contentment do you get from being a nihilist?

[Arlo]
I dunno. Annoying those who think they have articulated The One True 
Philosophy.