[MD] [Bulk] Re: Rorty's Relativism

Wed Aug 19 08:53:20 PDT 2009

meeeeooooowww

----- Original Message ----
From: MarshaV <valkyr at att.net>
To: moq_discuss at moqtalk.org
Sent: Wednesday, August 19, 2009 11:51:44 AM
Subject: Re: [MD] [Bulk] Re: Rorty's Relativism

Ron,

Read your last [MD] Rant (, July 17, 2009 9:00 AM), where based on a list of
your sophisticated experiences you try to convince the group that your hat
size is 10.

Marsha

-----Original Message-----
From: moq_discuss-bounces at lists.moqtalk.org
[mailto:moq_discuss-bounces at lists.moqtalk.org] On Behalf Of X Acto
Sent: Wednesday, August 19, 2009 9:18 AM
To: moq_discuss at moqtalk.org
Subject: Re: [MD] [Bulk] Re: Rorty's Relativism

Quality is not relative 

relativism is an intellectual pattern about dynamic experience

dynamic expereince is what we all share

absolutely

THAT is Qualitys one absolute truth.

Static perceptions are relative.

you see too much injustice
and evil in the world to be a relativist

it makes a great intellectual weapon

in which to mount a rhetorical attack.

THAT is what Plato despised

Pirsig concludes that there is no relativism

that everything is bias in some manner, it's what composes all reality!
every last bit!

Quality, an ethical moral heirarchy of patterns of value!

Thats what Pirsig and Dmb are trying to say
about the sophists, they were teaching dynamic
excellence not static intellectual relativism
as Plato painted them.

but maybe it is not your intention
to understand.

you seem to be on the search for the ulimate philosphical weapon
in which to rest secure in it's ultimate superiority.

so that you may level those with perfect justification
and security.

Greek excellence (Quality)

is excellence biologically
and socially.

It's intellectually supporting biological quality
with the dominance of social quality

Relativism renders excellence meaningless

It paralyses Quality

Pirsig places the blame on it for the crisis western culture is in

but if it works for you in your private war

bon apitite

----- Original Message ----
From: MarshaV <valkyr at att.net>
To: moq_discuss at moqtalk.org
Sent: Wednesday, August 19, 2009 12:12:04 AM
Subject: Re: [MD] [Bulk] Re: Rorty's Relativism

Dmb,

Within the MoQ truth (conventional) would be _relative_ to the particular
quality event where Dynamic Quality and static (inorganic, biological,
social & intellectual) quality intersect.  That is relativism.  

Marsha

-----Original Message-----
From: moq_discuss-bounces at lists.moqtalk.org
[mailto:moq_discuss-bounces at lists.moqtalk.org] On Behalf Of MarshaV
Sent: Tuesday, August 18, 2009 11:28 PM
To: moq_discuss at moqtalk.org
Subject: Re: [MD] [Bulk] Re: Rorty's Relativism

Dmb,

I have read the chapter many, many times, and it doesn't reject relativism.
It rejects a extreme ethical relativism only.  It's like you stating that
John Smith rejects ice cream when John Smith has said he really likes ice
cream but not lima bean ice cream.  

The rest of the chapter has to do with Aristotle who ridiculed and
discredited the Sophists calling their relativism irrational. And that only
he, Phædrus, a madman, saw the horrors of what Aristotle had done to
sophistic relativism and rhetoric.  

The evidence that I presented, that 'Man is the measure of all things.', is
a statement of relativism, and that Phædrus goes on to state "Yes, that's
what he is saying about Quality." is equating Quality with the sophists
thinking about relativism.  Even ethical relativism of a less extreme form
does not preclude making ethical judgments relative to their value.  

For the record and from wiki relativism also mean: 'The term often refers to
truth relativism, which is the doctrine that there are no absolute truths,
i.e., that truth is always relative to some particular frame of reference,
such as a language or a culture.' 

Marsha

-----Original Message-----
From: moq_discuss-bounces at lists.moqtalk.org
[mailto:moq_discuss-bounces at lists.moqtalk.org] On Behalf Of david buchanan
Sent: Tuesday, August 18, 2009 10:34 PM
To: moq_discuss at moqtalk.org
Subject: Re: [MD] [Bulk] Re: Rorty's Relativism

Marsha said:
...And you are ignoring my evidence that 'Man is the measure of all
things.', is a statement of relativism.  And Phædrus goes on to state "Yes,
that's what he is saying about Quality."  This is my evidence the RMP
embraces relativism.

dmb says:
The line you are citing as evidence of relativism comes from the same book
that I'm citing for evidence against relativism. Do you think we ought to
just pick our favorite line, just pick the one that supports our view and
ignore the other one? No, of course not and neither do I. But I'll point out
that the lines I'm quoting come later in the text and the apparent
discrepancy is merely the result of not following the issue through. I mean,
the structure of ZAMM does this sort of thing all the way through. He's not
just contradicting himself when he says later, "Quality! Virtue! Dharma!
That is what the Sophists were teaching! NOT ETHICAL RELATIVISM." He's
developing these ideas step by step, not only to make it palatable but also
for the sake of dramatic tension. He's trying to get across the struggles of
trying to figure things out and the excitement of finally discovering what
he is looking for. It's just like those waves of crystalization where he
moves from the teaching of rhetoric, to metaphysics to mysticism. He gets
closer and closer to those final discoveries and the text progresses.
Between the lines you're quoting and the lines I'm quoting, he discovers
that all important missing piece of the puzzle, which then allows him to
say, "That is what the Sophists were teaching. Not ethical relativism."

If you would read the chapter as a whole, you'd easily see this. He's
accusing Plato of slander for calling them relativist. You can quote Wiki to
commit the same slander, but that was how this disagreement got started. I
sited the same lines to show you that Pirsig disagrees with Wiki and Plato.
Here's how the chapter ends....

"And rhetoric. Poor rhetoric, once "learning" itself, now becomes reduced to
the teaching of mannerisms and forms, Aristotelian forms, for writing, as if
these mattered. Five spelling errors, Phædrus remembered, or one error of
sentence completeness, or three misplaced modifiers, or -- it went on and
on. Any of these was sufficient to inform a student that he did not know
rhetoric. After all, that's what rhetoric is, isn't it? Of course there's
"empty rhetoric," that is, rhetoric that has emotional appeal without proper
subservience to dialectical truth, but we don't want any of that, do we?
That would make us like those liars and cheats and defilers of ancient
Greece, the Sophists...remember them? We'll learn the Truth in our other
academic courses, and then learn a little rhetoric so that we can write it
nicely and impress our bosses who will advance us to higher positions.

Forms and mannerisms...hated by the best, loved by the worst. Year after
year, decade after decade of little front-row "readers," mimics with pretty
smiles and neat pens, out to get their Aristotelian A's while those who
possess the real areté sit silently in back of them wondering what is wrong
with themselves that they cannot like this subject.

And today in those few Universities that bother to teach classic ethics
anymore, students, following the lead of Aristotle and Plato, endlessly play
around with the question that in ancient Greece never needed to be asked:
"What is the Good? And how do we define it? Since different people have
defined it differently, how can we know there is any good? Some say the good
is found in happiness, but how do we know what happiness is? And how can
happiness be defined? Happiness and good are not objective terms. We cannot
deal with them scientifically. And since they aren't objective they just
exist in your mind. So if you want to be happy just change your mind. Ha-ha,
ha-ha."
Aristotelian ethics, Aristotelian definitions, Aristotelian logic,
Aristotelian forms, Aristotelian substances, Aristotelian rhetoric,
Aristotelian laughter -- ha-ha, ha-ha.

And the bones of the Sophists long ago turned to dust and what they said
turned to dust with them and the dust was buried under the rubble of
declining Athens through its fall and Macedonia through its decline and
fall. Through the decline and death of ancient Rome and Byzantium and the
Ottoman Empire and the modern states...buried so deep and with such
ceremoniousness and such unction and such evil that only a madman centuries
later could discover the clues needed to uncover them, and see with horror
what had been done. --"

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