[MD] The Level of Intellectual Quality

[david buchanan]

Steve said to dmb:
I do still plan to get back to our long running battle for the soul of pragmatism. I don't expect our differences to be resolved any time soon, so I'm sure it can wait while I work on some other things.


dmb says:

Okay. A few days ago I stumbled across a William James quote in which he asks exactly the same question about "truth" that I asked you so many times. I only thought it was a reasonable inference to regard that concept of truth as meaningless but he said so explicitly. I also recently learned that the clash between the pragmatic theory of truth and analytic truth theories is common. Misunderstanding just like the one we had, are common. That cat on the mat stuff, and that truth about the snow being white stuff, that doesn't have much to do with pragmatic truth unless you're talking about Rorty, who comes out of the analytic tradition.


Steve said:
I think the issue here may be about equating the terms God and theism. There are those even among Christians such as retired Episcopal Bishop who argue that theism as the belief in a supernatural deity existing apart from creation ought to be rejected. Theism like deism, mysticism, pantheism, panentheism, and polytheism are all  often viewed as ways of conceptualizing about God. None ought to be equated with God.

dmb says:

Well, the MOQ is a form a philosophical mysticism, which says reality is not conceptual. This distinguishes it from all these other isms and even from theistic forms of mysticism, which takes the mystical experience to be an encounter with God as an external supernatural being. The philosophical mystic only claims that a mystical experience is a non-conceptual experience. 


Steve said:Also, Dave, if you come across any pragmatists writing about death, dying, and the significance of life, I'd appreciate it if you pointed to anything you interesting.



dmb says:

I figure that being dead is just like being not yet conceived. I'm just making this up but it seems to me that if practical differences and actual experience is the measure of things, then dying sucks but being dead is just meaningless. It's nothing. Loss and grief, however, are the worst kind of pain most people will ever know. That pain is experienced every minute of every day somewhere in this sweet old world. I wonder if that is mostly the ego's refusal to let go, a failure to identify with the ongoing process of life itself, which has been going for billions of years and who know how far into the future life will go? I'm having a pretty nice life and I'd be reluctant to give it up anytime soon but somehow I just don't think death is all that bad. Deadlines motivate people at school and work and then they get this idea that death is the ultimate deadline. Oh, so much existential angst about authenticity in the face of your own mortality! Ah, big raspberries to that. That's a philosophy for 19 year olds. Just look around. Death is normal. It's the rule, the totally expected inevitable thing. And yet we freak out about it. I always thought that was kind of weird. And I always felt weird for thinking that it's weird. You know?


 		 	   		  
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