[MD] Taking the glasses off

[MarshaV]

Gotcha...  Thanks.


On Oct 15, 2011, at 2:20 PM, Steven Peterson wrote:

> Hi Marsha,
> 
> Marsha:
>> Can I venture an analogy.  When one takes off the cultural glasses
>> they are cleaned to various degrees depending on intensity of the
>> experience of having them off.  Then when one puts them back on,
>> they are altered by being cleaner and producing a clearer view.
> 
> Steve:
> This is the usual interpretation of ocular metaphors for knowledge as
> well as for Enlightenment, but it is metaphors such as this for what
> knowledge is like that pragmatists eschew. Pragmatists want to get
> philosophers to stop describing knowledge as seeing clearly, as seeing
> things for what they really are, of gettig our thoughts in proper
> correspondence with things. Instead they want to substitute the notion
> of knowledge of X as having the power to use X and to put X in to
> relation with Ys. That is why I have trouble seeing Pirsig as a good
> pragmatist in such passages as the cultural glasses one where
> knowledge seems to be described as seeing things for what they REALLY
> are beyond the mere appearances of the views filtered through various
> lenses. I am sure that that is no problem at all for you, but dmb
> wants to read Pirsig as a pragmatist. That means he wants to avoid
> reading him in such a way as your analogy above suggests. I tend to
> agree with your interpretation and see Pirsig as not completely
> compatible with pragmatism (for better or worse) as a consequence of
> that interpretation.
> 
> Best,
> Steve


 
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