[MD] Indeterminate?

[david buchanan]

dmb said:
Pirsig's "ghost" story is not intended to undermine his own conception of intellectual static patterns, of course. His aim is to undermine the "law of gravity" insofar as it is conceived as an eternal feature of the one only objective reality. When it is taken like that, then there is only one exclusive truth about gravity and Newton was the guy who discovered what was always there.



Marsha asked:
Oh really?  Just the law of gravity?


dmb answers:
No, not JUST the law of gravity. The "law of gravity" is just one example of a "ghost" in Pirsig's ghost story. You should be able to see that from the larger context of my comments, which was about knowledge and truth in general being determinate or not. That's is the central point and one which was apparently lost on you. I sincerely wonder if you have ever successfully grasped the point of anything I ever said. 


I provided several examples of the determinate truth positions that Pirsig rejects. By contrast, the MOQ “does not insist on a single exclusive truth," Pirsig says. On this view, I said, "truth and knowledge are not determinate. They are indeterminate. Truth and knowledge do not exist in relation to a realm beyond our experiences, they do not correspond to a fixed and eternal reality. Instead, truth and knowledge are human constructions derived from experience and they are expected to grow and evolve just as we do."

As usual, Marsha, you have failed to address the criticism or even identify it as such. In a nut shell, your mistake is to use the concept of "indeterminacy" against the MOQ's version of truth and knowledge, which is already an indeterminate position. The error consists in using Pirsig's critique of SOM against Pirsig himself. Pirsig's "ghost" story is not intended to undermine his own conception of intellectual static patterns! His static patterns are intended to undermine SOM and other determinate positions. So long as intellectual static patterns are understood to be humanly constructed tools rather than fixed and eternal realities, they are NOT false or illusory. Pirsig's ghosts, analogies and static patterns are ways of understanding physical laws that prevent the false illusions. "Pirsig's patterns prevent the reification of concepts LIKE gravity," I said. 




Marsha said:
How about "It's all a ghost,...".   Isn't the law of non-contradiciton one of the laws of logic?  "Ghosts and more ghosts."   




dmb says:

You're just repeating the same mistake, Marsha. You are invoking these Pirsigian ghosts while being confronted with the criticism that you have made contradictory statements. You have misconstrued the rejection of determinate truth as somehow granting you permission to spew contradictory nonsense! This is just a more specific instance of the way you misconstrue static quality generally, as false, as illusions, etc..  And since the MOQ itself is nothing but a set of static quality patterns, this mistake leads you to misconstrue and distort just about everything about the MOQ. 

It almost seems like you WANT to be confused and mixed up, as if it ruin your reputation to grasp a point or to make sense in responding to it. Good luck with your culture of one.