[MD] Metaphysical issues: DQ

[Ian Glendinning]

A one-point-respone for now DMB .... exellent piece BTW (and yes I
will follow-up on Rosenthal ... thanks) ....

Your main point
"hey, wait a minute, that's a fine explanation and I don't dispute it
but let's not forget that these abstractions are just that;
abstractions. This god's eye view is so pervasive, so ingrained in our
thinking, that ... They want to bring things back down to the concrete
realities from which these abstractions were derived in the first
place. Perspectivalism, then, wants look at experience from the
ground-up, from within the scene, rather than an imaginary position
outside reality."

If that's "perspectivalism" ... then sign me up, I'm there already.

The practical (ie pragmatic with a small p) problem is that the
abstractions are nevertheless useful to everyday life (and I
appreciate you're not saying otherwise). They are a kind of short-hand
from having to work at the immediate experience level all the time,
not least in language itself.

The problem (where I agree with you) is that people forget it was just
useful short-hand, think it is some privelidged (god's-eye) view of
the world, and an excuse to ignore or devalue that ground-up
experience ... which of course it isn't. Progress.

Ian

On Wed, Oct 15, 2008 at 7:39 PM, david buchanan <dmbuchanan at hotmail.com> wrote:
>
> Mel, Krimel, Ian and all:
>
> Your riff on water and the scientist was well written and I've been enjoying your contributions, but I think you've missed my point. Since everybody seems to have missed the point, it must be my fault so I'll take another crack at it.
>
> I'm certainly NOT saying that scientists are stupid or oblivious or anything like that. It's not an attack on the profession, the motives of people like Hawking. I'm not saying that science is wrong about water or that the periodic table of elements is anything less than beautiful, amazing and EXTREMELY useful. It's also worth pointing out that this H2O example (where I'd said, "to physicists and chemists, water is nothing but H2O but such assertions forget to mention that water is experienced as wet, cool, slippery, thirst-quenching, crop-saving, cleansing, flowing, etc..) comes from John Dewey's book, THE SUPREMACY OF METHOD, and it was used by Dr. Sandra Rosenthal last week to illustrate the difference between scientific objectivity and Dewey's "perspectivalism". Classical Pragmatism is perspectivalism and Nietzsche was a perspectivalist as well. I've become convinced that the MOQ can also rightly wear this this label.
>
> I haven't looked for Dr. Rosenthal in cyberspace, by the way, because I'm lucky enough to have her here in the flesh. She used to teach at Loyola University in New Orleans but she's in her 70s now, has retired and moved to Denver a few years ago with her husband, a retired physicist who takes classes in the graduate program just for fun. They're friends with the program director at my school. Anyway, she has been a guest lecturer in a couple of my classes and is the editor of a text book assigned to students of Pragmatism. That book is titled "CLASSICAL AMERICAN PRAGMATISM". I'm a big fan because she thinks Richard Rorty is a relativist and, because he dismisses Radical Empiricism, she thinks he doesn't even deserve to be called a Pragmatist. In the world of academic Pragmatism, she's kind of a big deal. When she lectured the other day I was scribbling notes like a madman because everything she said was pure gold, pitch perfect. Anyway, that should be more than enough for Ian or anyone else who wants to look into her work.
>
> Now I should say that my little attack on Rorty isn't just a self-indulgence. There is a bit of a war within the world of Pragmatism and it has everything to do with the criticism that Pirsig levels in Lila. In fact, Rosenthal used the NAZIs to highlight the difference between relativism and perspectivalism. Pragmatists are grateful to Rorty because he is largely responsible for the current revival of Pragmatism but they are also horrified by him for exactly the same reasons that Pirsig is horrified. Both of them reject the idea of a single exclusive truth, objective truth but Rorty thought that this meant intersubjective agreement is the best we can do but in her lecture she pointed out, just as Pirsig did, that the NAZIs had that kind of agreement. Rorty's brand of Pragmatism results in a kind of cultural solipsism, with no way to judge such things. Was the end of slavery, to use another of her examples, just a matter of shifting consensus? Or was it really and truly a moral improvement? I think the answer is completely obvious. The point here is simply that the rejection of objectivity doesn't have to lead to relativism and the classical Pragmatist reject both in favor of perspectivalism.
>
> Okay, now back to the main point.
>
> The other day I was trying to explain to my 8 year-old son why it is we can't go to the end of a rainbow to find that pot of gold. As I'm sure you know, seeing a rainbow depends on the spatial relations. It's about where you are in relation to the sun and the rain. And one of the best ways to show how this relationship works would be to draw a picture of the viewer of the rainbow with the sun behind him and the falling rain in front of him and then maybe draws some lines showing how the light shines into the raindrops and is reflected back into the eyes of the viewer. And so if the viewer moves toward the rainbow he is changing the spatial relationship between those elements so that, in effect, the rainbow moves as the viewer does. I was lucky enough to see this in real life rather than just on paper. Normally the movement would be almost undetectable but I was driving at about 80 miles an hour in a big wide valley (South Park) and watched as the rainbow "moved" through the landscape with me. I could see where the rainbow apparently touched the ground and of course it is no coincidence that it moved at 80 miles an hour too. I must have chased the thing for nearly an hour. And since I'm not eight years old, I understood why it seemed to follow me. Still, I was straight trippin'.
>
> You see where I'm going with this yet?
>
> I'm not really talking about rainbows, see. I'm talking about the view from nowhere, the god's eye view. In order to explain what a rainbow is and how it works I have to take on an imaginary a position out in space somewhere so that I can see the relationship between the sun, the rain and the viewer of the rainbow. One could just as well use a movie theater to make this same point, where you imaginatively "see" how the light from the projector shines onto the big white screen and bounces back into the eyes of the people watching. The capacity to imagine the total scene from outside the scene is quite useful, of course. The problem is that this god's eye view has more or less infected our whole way of thinking. And this characterizes scientific objectivity. It has a way of taking us outside of the scene so that we habitually imagine things from a position or vantage point that no one has ever actually experienced. Its an imaginary point of view. And so the classical pragmatists like James, Dewey, Pirsig, Rosenthal and myself want to say, hey, wait a minute, that's a fine explanation and I don't dispute it but let's not forget that these abstractions are just that; abstractions. This god's eye view is so pervasive, so ingrained in our thinking, that a whole new school of philosophy was invented to counter it. Instead of asking about the conditions that make rainbow viewing possible, they want to simply ask what the experience itself is like. They want to bring things back down to the concrete realities from which these abstractions were derived in the first place. Perspectivalism, then, wants look at experience from the ground-up, from within the scene, rather than an imaginary position outside reality.
>
> And that's what the H2O example was meant to get at. The structure of the water molecule remains the same no matter where you are, who you are, when you are or what you are experiencing. Thus, the introduction of crop-saving, thirst-quenching, slippery danger, etc.. The point is simply that water is first and foremost known directly in experience itself and these experiences are charged with an immediately felt quality with many various meanings. The perspectivalist insists that these meaning are not less real or true than the chemical description, that the physical properties of water are not THEE Truth about water. Nietzsche thought we are ready for a new kind of "objectivity", one founded as many perspectives as possible. The more eyes the better.
>
> And speaking of water, Mel, let's drink a few pints together sometime. You know, the kind with barley, hops and bubbles in it. It would be nice to chat with a MOQer. Obviously we have some common interests and I'm sure we'd have plenty to talk about. You're in the Denver area, no?
>
> In any case, thanks,
> dmb
>
>
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