[MD] On Pragmatism

[plattholden at gmail.com]

Matt:

"Quality, on which there is complete agreement, is a universal source of 
things." (Lila, 6)

What Fish really "meant by 'first principle' " is anybody's guess.

Platt


On 16 Mar 2010 at 13:06, Matt Kundert wrote:

> 
> > According to Fish, pragmatists would dismiss the MOQ's first principle of 
> > universal Quality
> 
> That's not true.  What Fish meant by "first principle" is not 
> what Pirsig meant by Quality.  Fish means a Platonic Form 
> by which A) there is a method which B) we can find out 
> what this Form is and C) kill off all other intellectual lifeforms 
> because (A) certifies that our principle is the _real_ principle 
> (as opposed to all those other fake ones).
> 
> When you use "universal," Platt, you typically mean this WMD 
> version of Quality--Quality is the real deal, and therefore 
> everything else is bunk.  I don't believe Pirsig, however, 
> means this by "universal," but something more like "covers 
> everything," which when you are constructing a metaphysics, 
> of how things hang together, is just an articulation of 
> generalizability.  And "first principle," in this sense, is just the 
> first axiom of an articulated system of hanging things 
> together--of a portrait in James' hallway that people judge, 
> partly according to various aesthetic principles you are 
> otherwise so intent on emphasizing (an emphasis I think is 
> right and at odds with your occasional philosophical 
> authoritarianism).
> 
> Fish is rejecting "first principles" as Archimedean points, which 
> is to reject Platonism and Cartesianism.  It be like suggesting 
> that Euclid's axioms destroys Riemann's because Euclid's were 
> "first principles."  That's not how we interpret geometrical 
> axioms, however, as Pirsig can well tell you.
> 
> Matt