[MD] suspended in language

[MarshaV]

Hi John

I think of 'absolutes' as an empty category.  Yet what you wrote reminds me
of Tom Robbins quote from ' Even Cowgirls Get the Blues':


I believe in nothing,
Everything is sacred.
I believe in everything,
Nothing is sacred.
        

Marsha




-----Original Message-----
From: moq_discuss-bounces at lists.moqtalk.org
[mailto:moq_discuss-bounces at lists.moqtalk.org] On Behalf Of John Carl
Sent: Friday, November 13, 2009 12:21 PM
To: moq_discuss at moqtalk.org
Subject: Re: [MD] suspended in language

"When Jame and Royce taught at Harvard the issues between Pragmatism and
Idealism were perhaps most muddied because the two men were pictured as
opponents.  I shall try to show, however, that Royce was a pragmatist as
early as 1880 and that it was easy for him to develop an idealistic ontology
*because* he was a pragmatist.  As Royce later called his doctrine Absolute
Pragmatism, we may interpret James as a pluralistic idealist. The
epistemological disputes between the two men were over specific and highly
technical points, but they shared certain peculiar beliefs whose central
feature we may label pragmatic and whose affinities to idealism we ought to
recognize."

Kucklick's Intellectual History of Royce


When I was still in SDA boarding school, my one good friend and
philosophical antagonist, Johnny E, and I debated the question back and
forth while playing basketball.  Are there any absolutes?  He took the side
of no, I said yes.  The way I our debate formulated these terms for us then
is that either you believed that everything is relative, there are no
absolutes or there is an absolute and everything is relative to it.

Now if you believe that everything is generated by Quality, then this term
stands for an indefinable absolute and you must not be a relativist.  Since
I recommended ZAMM to him after college, it became his favorite book and
thus I figure I won the debate.

I don't remember who won the basketball game.  Probably me also.
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