[MD] The Level of Intellectual Quality

[david buchanan]

dmb said:

The first thing I did was supply a general definition of both Royce's Absolute and the general idea of an Absolute.

Joh replied:
Ok, dave, I did not accept your definition of Royce's absolute.  I don't accept the wiki defintion. ...Kuklick in particular is  diametrically opposed to interpretation of Royce that you listed.  He says its invalid to picture Royce as outside the mainstream of Pragmatism AND it's invalid to convey pragmatism in oppostion to idealism.   If you insist on my diggin' through the archives to show you his quotes, then I can.

dmb says:

Okay, but Royce's relation to pragmatism is not relevant to the definition of the Absolute, unless you're saying that Royce rejected the Absolute altogether. Let me remind you that I used wiki for a basic definition because you would not say what it is. Remember, I double dared you to explain it? 


John said:Honestly, if you're gonna take on Royce then any published work ABOUT Royce, by somebody who has studied him intensely is fair.   I don't accept cursory summations in the SEP, Wiki, or anything that is a compendium of different philosophers.  I DID respond to this before, but perhaps you suffer from a little of the ole attention deficit disorder yourself.

dmb says:
Yes, I did use published work about Royce. Obviously, I'm not resting my case on a dictionary. I just used it to take up your slack. And I realize that you responded before but I objected to the very thing you're doing again. Don't you remember me asking you WHY these sources aren't good enough? To simply declare that you don't accept them is not a reason. And it is unreasonable to refuse such things because they are the ONLY things that CAN count as evidence in a dispute like this one. If we want to know what Royce thought of the Absolute and compare that to James's and Pirsig's thoughts about the absolute, what could be better than quoting James, Pirsig, Royce, or the scholars who write about them?
The SEP, by the way, is peer reviewed and as a valid source it is considered to be nearly as good as an academic journal. Anthologies are usually compiled by people who are at the top of their field and are also considered to be a totally valid scholarly source. 

John said:
And if we're stuck at the "well my sources are better than your sources" then I guess we're stuck.


dmb says:

But I don't recall ANY of your sources speaking to the issue, to the Absolute. That's a big part of why you got the double dare to explain it. But you never did. So I whipped out my wiki.
 

John said:
 ...the Absolute you're rejecting depends upon the definition of your Absolute.   Royce's Absolute isn't comprehended by either of you.


dmb says:

Oh, so you do admit that he has an Absolute in his system? Well, that's something. Teach me. Tell me. Help me comprehend Royce's Absolute. Apparently it's a big secret they're keeping from all the scholars I quoted on the topic and from those hacks over at Stanford. Plus I double dared you to.

John said:
And according to my understanding, "direct everyday experience" can't be contrasted with an  intellectualized Absolute, because it IS an intellectualized Absolute.

dmb says:

Huh? Look, the thing that has already been established for sure is that you like this Absolute thing and I don't. But that's not the issue. That's not the question. I quoted Pirsig on the Absolute because the dispute is about what he thinks of it. It's not even about whether he's right or wrong about it. I just want to establish the simple fact that Pirsig thinks Quality is direct everyday experience and that this is contrasted with the Absolute. I'd also add the answer I gave to gav, who'd asked about the "anti-theistic" comments in the Copleston annotations. That God the idealist are talking about that that Pirsig suggests we drop as a relic, that is the Absolute. He was rejecting yet another form of Hegelian idealism in those comments. Again, the issue is not whether his statements are true but simply that we have his view on record. Pirsig's statements about what he thinks are the best evidence we have for what he thinks. 

John said:
There's no "transcendance" in Royces definition.  His Absolute IS Experience itself!  You say that's not "much different" than a reality that's beyond experience, and I don't know what's wrong with your reading and reasoning powers...

dmb says:
Oh, I see. Well, if you've ever said that before I missed it. Do you have any source to cite on that? I can't just take your word for it, especially since my sources say otherwise. That's a reasonable request, no?


dmb said previously:
It's also worth noting the basic rules of radical empiricism because they practically tailor made to preclude the Absolute.



John replied:
Yeah, well that I probably agree with you on.  Considering who the arguments were aimed at, there's a great deal of truth in the assertion.  But in a dialectical arena, you can't understand the combat by watching only one side.

dmb says:

Well, there you go then. That's the only point, really. James was doing combat against the Absolute and you know perfectly well that he had a pretty good idea what that meant. Again, the issue is not whether James is ultimately right about the universe or if his reasons for rejecting it are valid. The only thing I want to establish is THAT James against it and apparently we agree on that much. 


dmb says:
James wants to reconstruct all of philosophy on the back of two simple restraints. If it IS known in experience, your philosophy can't ignore it. If it is NOT known in experience, you can't use it in your philosophy.


John replied:
And do you remember my refutation of this assertion?  I do.  It relates to intersubjectivity as the precondition of knowing.



dmb says:

Again, you are confusing two different questions. Plus James isn't asserting anything about conditions of knowledge. He's setting down some rules as a method. The method's validity is not the issue, but simply that he had one and that it ruled out entities that can't be known in experience. If you want to make a case that Royce's absolute is knowable in experience, then you'll have to show some evidence for that. Again, this assertion defies the essential thing about Absolutes as they're defined and described in every other source I've ever seen. I think that it is quite reasonable to be skeptical of this assertion. And I think its unfair to act like this conclusion constitutes some kind of prejudice or incomprehension or whatever. As far as I know, you're the only one who's ever made such a claim and you made it just this once without any support at all. 

I suspect that you're confused because the idealist see everything that happens as an act of the Absolute, but the argument against this idea is that we can experience the everything that happens but the Absolute itself is just an abstract idea about everything, not an entity or mind that's somehow underlying everything, as a unity which holds all of reality within itself. 




 		 	   		  
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