[MD] Rorty's Relativism

[Ian Glendinning]

Ant said "Unsurprisingly, I tend to agree" with DMB.

I say, unsurprisingly I tend to agree with Ant.

And tend is the right word, because I also say that we are tending to
philosophology here in debating a term like "relativism".

My interests anyway, are in MoQ as a living philosophy, but I can
wait. As you were guys.
Regards
Ian

On Fri, Aug 21, 2009 at 6:35 AM, Ant McWatt<antmcwatt at hotmail.co.uk> wrote:
>
>
>
> Dave B stated to Steve Peterson, August 18th:
>
>
>
> " To cite the most relevant and familiar example, Pirsig also felt the need
> to deny relativism in both books despite his rejection of SOM. He felt the need
> to dispute this not just for his critics or people like Rigel but he also
> disputes Plato's charges against the Sophists…"
>
>
>
>
>
> Ant McWatt comments:
>
>
>
> Unsurprisingly, I’d tend to agree.  From my reading of texts such as Mario
> Untersteiner's "The Sophists" (1954), it seems highly unlikely that
> Sophists such as Protagoras were relativists (as Pirsig understands the
> term).  In this context, texts such as Plato's "Theaetetus" are
> a form of propaganda designed to sway the reader towards dialectic rather than
> rhetoric; towards the “bean counter” rather than the poet…
>
>
>
> Plato's works are, of course, available on the Internet or, your local bookshop
> while, on the other hand, Protagoras's works (such as "The Truth")
> are largely lost or stuck in libraries buried in lava (such as the “Villa
> of the Papyri” in Herculaneum) or politics (such as the texts held by the
> Vatican).  Until someone has the skill/inclination/finances/political will
> to retrieve Protagoras's texts, we're stuck with what Plato (a hostile witness)
> chooses to tell us about them.
>
> However, if you read (the roots of the MOQ in) F.S.C.
> Northrop’s “The Meeting of East and West”, you will see that it is towards a
> universal intellectually guided world-view (to underlie a universal moral code)
> rather than a relativist free-for-all (largely guided by socially orientated
> local traditions) that Northrop (and, subsequently, Robert Pirsig, his pragmatist
> student) was striving for.
>
> Moreover, if you keep in mind that Pirsig replaces Truth
> with the Good as the primary metaphysical chess piece in the MOQ then you won't
> go far wrong in understanding why he thinks his form of pragmatism is not a
> form of relativism.  For instance, “man
> is the measure of all things” because human beings can analyse and grade all
> four levels of static value patterns (from the inorganic to the intellectual)
> while animals such as pigs largely follow instinct (i.e. pre-coded biological
> patterns) and are, therefore, limited to valuing only the lowest two static
> levels (i.e. inorganic and biological patterns).
>
>
>
> Finally, why is Pirsig correct in his thinking and Plato wrong (about the
> priority of the Good over the Truth)?  I’ll leave this question to Dr
> Christoph Bartneck (of Eindhoven University) and the following paragraph taken
> from his recent academic paper about the MOQ:
>
>
>
> “While one could use dialectic reason to discuss if the good is absolute or
>
> relative, it cannot be used to justify the superiority of truth above
>
> the good. Plato’s premise that dialectic (or reason) “comes before
>
> everything else” is clearly erroneous. Dialectic presupposes knowledge
>
> of what is valuable and good, else why choose dialectic as a method and
>
> not the tossing of a die [25]. Scientists sometimes refuse to target
>
> their science towards utilitarian goals and demand that science should
>
> be conducted out of pure curiosity. Science should be aimed at the
>
> understanding of the world and free of values. But following Plato’s
>
> error this is impossible. Preferring to know about the world is already
>
> a value judgment.”
>
>
>
> www.bartneck.de/publications/2009/designScienceMetaphysicsQuality
>
>
>
>
>
> .
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>
>
>
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