[MD] The Relativist's journey

[david buchanan]

Arlo said to Marsha:
If anything, you and DMB are having different conversations. He is using the term [relativism] as it has meaning within the discourse of the historical philosophical conversation, and you are using the term as it has meaning to you, ignoring every connotation of the word that doesn't fit into your desire to link the MOQ with that term and selecting only those that  do fit.

dmb says:
In philosophy, I suppose, the meaning of any term is debatable and negotiable. But what kills me is that we are talking about whether the MOQ does or does not qualify as relativism and yet Marsha's case begins by rejecting the meaning of the word as Pirsig himself uses it. Somehow, she figures that it's illegitimate for me to use the same meaning that Pirsig uses. That objection is weird and wrong and just plain silly, isn't it?

Arlo continued:
.., at the best it ends up meaning whatever anyone wants it to mean. The same thing is happening here with 'relativism'. You are so absolutely dedicated to demanding the MOQ is relativism that you aren't aware that within the larger philosophic conversation this is entirely problematic and advances the MOQ in no way. Indeed, it creates unnecessary confusion where there need be none.


dmb says:
The quotes from Hagen and from Ant's textbook are about the difference between static patterns and Dynamic Quality. They are about the discrepancy between concepts and reality and making sure that concepts are subordinate to reality, must answer to the primary empirical reality. And so they are describing concepts as "relative truth" in order to contrast our ideas with the "absolute truth" of the pre-conceptual, empirical flux. But Marsha is misreading this language of the Buddhist's two truths as an alternative to the pragmatic theory of truth, which it isn't. This is easy to see when we notice that the MOQ can easily contain the static-dynamic split and the pragmatic theory of truth at the same time. They go quite nicely together, in fact, because each intellectual truth exist in relation to all the other intellectual patterns and they are all subordinate to DQ. 

It's not just that there are better words to describe the MOQ's view of truth, although that's true too. Relativism is a term of abuse in philosophy. Words like "plural, provisional, perspectival, relational, contextual, evolutionary and historical" aren't the kind of labels that one is likely to take as a slanderous insult. Relativism is not just a dirty word in general. It's also the word that unfairly destroyed the reputation of Phaedrus's beloved Sophists. It's the word Pirsig applies to that famously defective value-free metaphysics we call SOM. It's the wrong impression that Richard Rigel has about the great author's first book. We can practically see that Pirsig is fighting relativism with everything he's got and yet this is the label Marsha wants to slap on the MOQ? 

That's weird and wrong and just plain silly, isn't it? We might as well insist that the MOQ is a form of objectivism, subjectivism, theism or any number of other things that it explicitly opposes. 

And, I strongly suspect that people with axes to grind are the only ones taking this nonsense seriously. (Yea. I'm looking at you, Steve.)