[MD] Intellect's Symposium

[Ham Priday]

On 2/6/2010, 2:31 PM, DMB wrote (to Marsha):

> As I understand it, the MOQ agrees with contextualism
> (we're suspended in language) and it agrees that these contexts
> are constructed (analogy upon analogy) but it says these contexts
> are not constructed arbitrarily (Quality is not arbitrary or
> capricious) and the pragmatic theory of truth does not abandon
> empirical restraints (it has to agree with experience and function
> in experience). These non-linguistic constraints distinguish the
> MOQ from this relativism.

Marsha replied:
> Where does the MoQ agree with contextualism?   I thought
> the MoQ agreed with Protagoras' Measure Doctrine.
> Arbitrary and capricious?  Is 'arbitrary and capricious' your
> definition of relativism?

DMB explains:
> All of the stuff I put in parentheses references Pirsig quotes.
> I can't tell you what page it is where Pirsig agrees with the notion
> that "we're suspended in language", where Pirsig says our world
> is built of analogies, where Pirsig says that Quality is "not arbitrary
> or capricious". But you've seen them. You know they're in there.
> And how can you ask about the measure doctrine as if I hadn't
> just quoted Pirsig on that? He said virtue "was absolutely central
> to their teaching, but how are you going to teach virtue if you teach
> the relativity of all ethical ideas?" and "QUALITY! VIRTUE!
> DHARMA! THAT is what the Sophists were teaching!
> NOT ethical relativism."?
>
> But anyway, around here truth is the pragmatic truth.
> It's provisional, self-correcting and grounded out in actual
> experience.  Truth and falsity are what happens to an idea
> in the course of experience. It's contextual and perspectival
> but reality, which is to say experience, has a way of keeping us
> honest and that's what prevents the MOQ from being a relativism.

Gav asks:
> Isn't this splitting hairs? I mean if truth is contextual and perspectival
> isn't that a form of relativism? 'Truth is relative'... another way of
> saying that [it] might be 'context-dependent'.
>
> Plato: good is relative; truth is absolute
> Pirsig: truth is relative; good is absolute
> Is this summary accurate?

David is, indeed, splitting hairs.  But so is Pirsig, by making Plato's 
Virtue a different sort of "good" than pragmatic or empirical truth.

This whole discussion, in my opinion, hinges on what one believes is the 
nature of Experience.  David says "reality, which is to say experience, has 
a way of keeping us honest and that's what prevents the MOQ from being a 
relativism."  But that's because he believes Experience=Reality (in the 
universal or objective sense).  I suspect that Marsha and Gav believe that 
Experience is subjective, which makes "man the measure" of Goodness, hence 
supporting the relativity (or provisional nature) of empirical truth.

The argument that "we're suspended in language" is begging the question. 
It's not the context of language that determines the validity of truth; it's 
experience.  And experience is not universal but relative to the individual. 
What "keeps us honest" in our precept of experiential truth is the 
universality of empirical principles.  The question we need to ask is: are 
Quality, Goodness and Virtue "absolute truths"?  Plato says no, Pirsig says 
yes.  But if Experience=Reality, then Quality (moral or esthetic goodness) 
cannot be absolute because experience is relative to the individual.

There is no "contextual" way around the fact that the reality of experience 
is relational.  THAT is an empirical truth.  If you want or need to believe 
that there's Absolute Truth, you have to extend your belief system beyond 
experiential existence.  In other words, you have to accept the metaphysical 
concept that the source of experiential reality is absolute and 
unconditional.  Be forewarned, however.  Because such a belief transcends 
subject/object perspectives of Truth -- including the truth of Quality 
itself -- it contradicts the fundamental premise of Pirsig's MoQ.

Essentially speaking,
Ham

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> dmb says:
>
> The whole book is structured around the quest for Quality and
> yet that's exactly what's missing from the story. In the post,
> the story is construed as a contest between Plato's absolutism
> and the Sophist's relativism. Matt quotes a passage that SEEMS
> to support this view. "Their object was not any single absolute truth,
> but the improvement of men. All principles, all truths, are relative,
> they said. 'Man is the measure of all things.' These were the famous
> teachers of 'wisdom', the Sophists of ancient Greece." If Pirsig had
> stopped there, I might be able to go along with Matt's reading
> but he didn't. In fact, Pirsig goes on to say the very opposite,
> that they were NOT relativists and that coming to such a conclusion
> about the Sophists doesn't make much sense.
>
> On the next page (374) he says, "the one thing that doesn't fit what
> he says and what Plato says about the Sophists is their profession of
> teaching VIRTUE. All accounts indicate that this was absolutely central
> to their teaching, but how are you going to teach virtue if you teach
> the relativity of all ethical ideas?" He explores the issue for a couple
> of pages and then says, (377) "Lightning hits! QUALITY! VIRTUE!
> DHARMA! THAT is what the Sophists were teaching! NOT ethical
> relativism. NOT pristine 'virtue'. But ARETE. Excellence. DHARMA!
> Before the Church of Reason. Before substance. Before from.
> Before mind and matter. Before dialectic itself. Quality had been 
> absolute.
> Those first teachers of the Western world were teaching QUALITY,
> and the medium they had chosen was that of rhetoric. He has been
> doing it right all along." (Emphasis is Pirsig's)