[MD] Noncognitive babble

[Ian Glendinning]

I stopped being horrified 8 or so years ago Marsha (I read Pirsig)
.... now I prefer to find things I can do about it ;-)
Ian

On Sun, Sep 12, 2010 at 11:05 AM, MarshaV <valkyr at att.net> wrote:
>
> 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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