[MD] Philosophy and Abstraction

[118]

Hi dmb,
A question for my clarification below.
Mark

On Thu, Dec 2, 2010 at 10:17 AM, david buchanan <dmbuchanan at hotmail.com> wrote:
>
> Steve said to dmb:
> Platonism... is something that we have to make a continual effort to avoid if we wish to stay clear of it. While "direct experience" and "primary empirical reality" need not be taken as a sort of Platonism and may be useful teaching tools for getting out of Platonism, it is easy to nevertheless construe them as more Platonism, so Matt and I see such terms as best dropped.
>
> dmb says:
> Yes, I understand how certain terms will raise red flags and I agree with the continual effort to avoid Platonism. BUT I think that such vigilance ought to be dropped when we are talking about James and Pirsig because they are anti-Platonists too. That sort of anti-Platonic sensitivity makes much more sense in a larger context. Like I've said, I use terms like "pure experience" and "primary empirical reality" simply because they accurately make reference to the texts we are here to discuss. There are many alternative terms for the same idea and so they could easily be avoided. But I don't think it's necessary. We can simply move forward knowing that Pirsig opposes Plato (the law of gravity is one of many ghosts), that he explicitly rejects the correspondence theory (the art gallery of truth). Mere reference to the evidence is enough for you guys, eh? We can move forward by discussing the meaning of his terms as he meant them, not as they might be construed by a scientific realist or a Platonist or a SOMer. We should be able to move forward knowing that Pirsig and James are offering Pragmatism and Radical empiricism as an alternative to those things. In that sense, we all share the same enemy. By transferring Rorty's anti-Platonism into this context, you just end up making enemies where there aren't any, see?

[Mark]
It would seem to me that the levels and the control imparted by such
levels on other levels as has been suggested, is a Platonist or even
an Aristotelian approach to MOQ.  If it doesn't fall into that
category, how is it different?  It would seem that such levels are
ghosts in themselves.  I am just trying to understand what you are
saying above.

Thanks, Mark
>
[Big SNIP]
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