[MD] Rorty's Relativism

[MarshaV]

Hi Ant,

Somewhere there is RMP/MoQ talk of many-truths, do you remember where?  Or
am I mistaken?


Marsha



-----Original Message-----
From: moq_discuss-bounces at lists.moqtalk.org
[mailto:moq_discuss-bounces at lists.moqtalk.org] On Behalf Of Ant McWatt
Sent: Friday, August 21, 2009 12:36 AM
To: moq discuss
Subject: Re: [MD] Rorty's Relativism




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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