[MD] Analogies = Turtles?

[david buchanan]

In the "perceptions" thread, Adrie said to Marsha:
...l have to say Dmb was correct that you took an indeterminate knife to undercut an indeterminate  philosophical approach as were the debate determinism/indeterminism already was clear, not only in Pirsig's statements, but also in the mainstream today's commons understandings of the issue.   Your mistake was to make the undercut using a double negation, not so uncommon.



dmb says:
Thanks, Adrie. It's good to know that somebody gets the point even if poor Marsha can't see it. It's sort of interesting to watch her obliviously repeat this same mistake - this problem of undercutting the MOQ by using Pirsig's criticisms (of SOM, Platonism, etc.) against the MOQ itself. This time it's about the turtles. Notice how she equates Pirsig's analogies with the proverbial turtles, as in the phrase "it's turtles all the way down"? 


In the thread titled "perceptions," Marsha said:
"It's analogy all the way down and all the way out, and not a problem if we cannot always understand each other."



In the thread titled "turtles, or fun with metaphysics," Marsha said:
"Being that it's turtles all the way down, it is interesting to see where one draws the line. .... But in the end the line is drawn like the spinning seed pods of the maple tree, self-generating whirlybirds drifting on a lazy, lovely breeze.


This looks like another instance of Marsha using philosophical terms and concepts that she doesn't really understand. In this case, she is ignorantly and inadvertently using anti-foundationalism against the MOQ, which is already a form of anti-foundationalism. Once again, this makes everything too slippery and loose by about 100%. This poisonous double dose - wherein anit-foundational criticisms are used against the MOQ's analogies or static patterns - coverts the MOQ from anti-foundationalism into full blown nihilism and relativism. 

The same arguments that I made in criticizing Marsha's use of concept of "indeterminate" could be used against her use of turtles without hardly any modification. Like the determinate concepts of truth rejected by the MOQ, foundational philosophies want to ground their truth in something certain and eternally fixed. If you look up anti-foundationalism in an encyclopedia, you find familiar names like William James, John Dewey, Nietzsche, Nagarjuna and I think it's pretty clear that Pirsig fits right in with such thinkers. Pragmatism is an anti-foundational theory of truth. But Marsha wants to use anti-foundational critiques even against Pirsig's pragmatic truth. Thus Marsha, foolishly mistaking the cure for the disease, administers the poisonous double-dose. Good thing she's not a doctor, eh?