[MD] Noncognitive babble

[MarshaV]

On Sep 12, 2010, at 5:52 AM, Ian Glendinning wrote:

> Hi Steve, Marsha, I keep hearing clips and trailers to Hawking hawking
> his new book around, but haven't managed to catch one yet. That
> "philosophy is dead" attention grabber is surely just that, one in a
> long line starting with Nietzsche and taking in Pirsig's
> philosophologists. Arrogant enough to get a reaction.


And repeated often enough on this roadshow to sell the new Hawking 
book by the latest and greatest media-created scientific celebrity.  I 
was horrified.  Thumbs down to Stephen Hawking and Leonard Mlodinow.

Marsha 




> 
> Back to Steve's point.
> 
> Those 5 Putnam statements are definitive statements from the point of
> view of someone who believes the definition of a fact matters. The
> number of "real life" cases where that holds is vanishingly small -
> those repeatable laboratory cases where scientific method applies. The
> value of philosophy is surely to integrate the fact / value views, not
> help reinforce the divide.
> 
> The problem with the Hawking / Dawkins "arrogant science" view is that
> they believe that view IS "real life" and everything else has "lesser"
> value.
> 
> I do still believe we need to be tilting against the windmill Steve.
> Public media still has a thing about "what science says ..." being
> distinct from "what a politician says ..." Yes, young (inexperienced)
> people (unless they are scientists or analytic philosophers -
> inexperienced ones) will still form a mix of those that do or don't
> see or even care about the divide. In my experience they range from
> the whatever to the vehement, just like we grey beards do, only we
> should know better.
> 
> Ian
> 
> On Fri, Sep 10, 2010 at 8:53 PM, MarshaV <valkyr at att.net> wrote:
>> 
>> Btw, I was listening to an interview with Garry Parsons who
>> was a coauthor with Stephen Hawking on the new book 'The Grand
>> Design.'  The interview was on a pbs program.  One of the last statements
>> Parsons made was "Philosophy is dead!"  He then went on to say that
>> philosophy cannot tell us anything about the world we live in.
>> 
>> Pretty arrogant, yes?
>> 
>> 
>> 
>> Marsha
>> 
>> 
>> 
>> 
>> 
>> 
>> On Sep 10, 2010, at 3:43 PM, MarshaV wrote:
>> 
>>> 
>>> 
>>> Hi Steve,
>>> 
>>> Interesting, and reminded me of asking how many angels can
>>> dance on the head of a pin.  But fun!  And I image it has created  a
>>> quattuordecillion opportunities for papers to be published. And one
>>> can only wonder about those 'ideal conditions'?  Interesting...
>>> 
>>> I have often wondered about the difference between a static
>>> pattern of value representing a conventional truth (Tim is a
>>> human.)  and a static pattern of value representing a
>>> conventional judgement (Tim is an hypocrite), or something
>>> like that.
>>> 
>>> 
>>> Marsha
>>> 
>>> 
>>> 
>>> 
>>> 
>>> 
>>> On Sep 10, 2010, at 12:27 PM, Steven Peterson wrote:
>>> 
>>>> Hi All,
>>>> 
>>>> 20 years after Lila, I wonder how it would be read by someone new to
>>>> Pirsig. Would the ideas seem relevent? As we get more and more
>>>> distance from the positivists, I wonder how young people today would
>>>> read Pirsig's attacks on the fact-value dichotomy. Would they wonder
>>>> just who it is Pirsig thinks he is arguing against?
>>>> Maybe this aspect of SOM that attracted most of us to the MOQ is a
>>>> straw man. If Pirsig and the other antiSomers are successful, at least
>>>> at some point it will be a straw man, right?  Someday young people
>>>> just won't even know what Pirsig was going on about. At the time I got
>>>> into Pirsig, I really felt like the notion of objectivity was being
>>>> used to push values into some realm of noncognitive babble. Is that
>>>> still happening today?
>>>> 
>>>> Here are some examples of the views that Pirsig attacks with regard to
>>>> the dichotomy between facts and values taken from an article on Hilary
>>>> Putnam who also made such critiques on SOM:
>>>> 
>>>> http://www.philosophy.su.se/texter/putnam.htm
>>>> 
>>>> (1) No statement is both evaluative and factual.
>>>> 
>>>> (2) There is no logical connection between evaluative and factual statements.
>>>> 
>>>> (3) Factual statements are true or false independently of any value judgments.
>>>> 
>>>> (4) Facts can, and values cannot, be established beyond controversy.
>>>> 
>>>> (5) Evaluative statements are neither true nor false.
>>>> 
>>>> 
>>>> Are these dogmas ones that people still adhere to? Or have Pirsig,
>>>> Putnam, and the other critics of the fact-value dichotomy been
>>>> successful?
>>>> 
>>>> Best,
>>>> Steve
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>>> 
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