[MD] Truth and the Linguistic Turn

[Platt Holden]

> [Platt]
> Right. "But that the quality is low is absolutely certain. It is the 
> primary empirical reality from which such things as stoves and heat 
> and oaths and self are later intellectually constructed." (Lila, 5)
> 
> I like Pirsig's description -- "absolutely certain."  Postmodernists 
> would rather die than write those words, indicating Pirsig is no 
> postmodernist.
> 
> [Arlo]
> Which only proves how truly ignorant you are of the Great Evils you 
> squalk against.

Which only proves when you're challenged and can't win an argument, you 
resort to a personal attack. 
 
> But let's consider this. "Absolutely certain"? Firewalkers routinely 
> walk across burning embers and do not find the event "low quality", 
> indeed they would describe it as a "high quality" experience. Many 
> people across the globe subject themselves willingly to "pain", to 
> things that others might call "low quality", from piercings to 
> brandings. We can also interject the case of people with no nerve 
> sensations. They could sit on the stove until they died of burn 
> wounds and never have a "low quality" perception of the stove.
> 
> What Pirsig is referring to here is "from the vantage point of that 
> particular person" they determine that the event is absolutely low 
> quality. It says nothing about "all people and all times". Yes, a 
> person who finds that event "low quality" will be "absolutely" sure 
> of it. But all this does is show completely that its all relative.

A particular person? Then why does Pirsig write, "Any person of any 
philosophic persuasion who sits on a hot stove will verify without any 
intellectual argument whatsoever that he is in an undeniably low-quality 
situation: that the value of his predicament is negative." (Lila, 5) Get it 
-- ANY PERSON. Did Pirsig make another mistake, like acknowledging
the validity of teleological theories? Your bending the MOQ to your 
preconceived postmodernist views is something to behold.   
 
> And considering the end of this very sentance, " from which such 
> things as stoves and heat and oaths and self are later intellectually 
> constructed", I'd say this firmly places Pirsig into the 
> "Postmodernist" camp (not that I think there is such a "camp", but 
> Pirsig aligns strongly with what many so-called "postmodern" writers 
> have been saying, especially in that "our intellectual description of 
> nature is always culturally derived" and "we are suspended in language".)

I have no doubt that language is a social pattern. If that puts me and 
Pirsig in the postmodernist camp, so be it. But, that's about as 
intellectually revealing as learning eyes are sensitive to light. Duh.