[MD] Intellectual Discussion and Dialectic - Finding agreement, Quality and beauty in the world.

[david buchanan]

"The tests of truth are logical consistency, agreement with experience, and economy of explanation. The Metaphysics of Qqulity satisfies these." (Pirsig in Lila, chapter 8.)


David H said to Marsha:
You do indeed follow your own logic.  Your logic follows what you value.. While I may disagree with large chunks of that logic it is still your own logic and you still do logically use the MOQ and its levels in your thinking.. 



Arlo said to David H:
By this "logic", the concept of "logic" is rendered meaningless. There is nothing "illogical" just and endless variety of "own logics". This, David, is a rather undiluted subjectivism.  If everything is "purple", and nothing is "not purple", then purpleness has no meaning. 


David H replied to Arlo:
If you'll read my post to dmb I explain that I think Marsha is actually (somewhat) logically using the MOQ to justify her thoughts. Of course, some logic is better than others - and of course what I deem to be logical - others do not - and vice versa. But that doesn't, as you seem to suggest, immediately imply that we devolve into a whole bunch of relative truths and 'own logics'. Why is that? Because logic is based on values and value is universal and thus so is the quality of one logic over another.

dmb says:

Wow. You just will not let go of it, David. Arlo and I have repeatedly objected to this notion but each time you simply repeat it. Look, at what just occurred. Arlo responded to the notion that Marsha follows her own logic by saying that "logic" is rendered meaningless by that notion. And what is your response? To make exactly the same claim, except with respect to yourself instead of Marsha. "If you'll read my post," you said to Arlo, "of course what I deem to be logical - others do not - and vice versa." Logic is rendered meaningless in exactly the same way by either statement. In both cases, you are making a wildly bogus claim about the nature of logic. Its value is intellectual and consists in NOT varying from person to person. It's a tool used to check the validity of both math and language, to check the consistency and integrity of equations and sentences and it simply doesn't matter whether you love opera, go to church, or rob banks for a living. The values involved here are intellectual. What possible reason could anyone give for saying that they DON'T think validity, consistency, integrity are very important intellectual values? How could these standards be altered by one's personal history? Pirsig doesn't pretend to have his own tests of truth but rather claims that the MOQ meets the standards that already exist in our language and culture - and logical consistency one he lists specifically. 

This is not even debatable. To have your own brand of logic is to reject logic. Like language and math, logic is a public property. Neither you nor I get to decide what the term means or how that tool works. And how did you arrive at this bizarre notion, anyway? 

"Because logic is based on values and value is universal," you say, "and thus so is the quality of one logic over another."

What? 

Every part of that seems quite wrong AND it doesn't add up either. 

Logic is BASED on values? No. It IS value. Period. Intellectual quality is just a certain kind of value, a certain kind of quality. Logic is one of many standards in the realm of intellectual quality. In the same way that theft and murder are violations of social level morality, incoherence and inconsistency are violations of intellectual morality. In both cases, the violations are destructive of those particular values, constitute a degeneration of those values to a lower level. 

Value is universal, logic is based on value, "and thus so is the quality of one logic over another." Huh?

And how does Marsha's lack of logical consistency get to be some other kind of logic? It's not. It's just a lack of coherence. Incoherence is NOT an alternative form of coherence. To equate terms that Pirsig opposes is NOT an alternative interpretation. It's just a contradiction in terms. It's just nonsense and nonsense is NOT an alternative form of sense. 

You repeat this several times more, David. It's pretty clear that you're not seeing the criticism being offered by Arlo and myself. Your responses just breeze right past the objections and amount to little more than a repetition of the bogus claim:  "Marsha has her 'own logic' which is created by the value she sees in the MOQ.  The key thing here is that what we call 'logical' *follows* our values. If we have different values then we are going to have a different logic.  How good or bad that logic appears will depend on our values."

That's what we're complaining, right there. To say that logic follows from or depends upon on our values, and so we're all going to have our own logic is, as Arlo calls it, "undiluted subjectivism". I'd even call it solipsism and sophomoric relativism. It's an extremely bad idea, David, for many reasons. Please pay attention to those reasons.



David H said:
Disagreements about the MOQ aren't so much about what is and isn't logical - but about what does and does not have value. 



dmb says:
At this point, I'm frustrated and a little angry. It looks like you're letting a bunch of bizarre metaphysical entanglements get in the way of seeing the obvious.  

This is a philosophical discussion group. We're talking about a philosophy that says logical consistency is one of the tests of truth and it claims to meet that test. How can anyone dismiss the value of logical consistency in such a context? How could contradiction or inconsistency ever be a good thing in such a context?

"The tests of truth are logical consistency, agreement with experience, and economy of explanation. The Metaphysics of Qqulity satisfies these." (Pirsig in Lila, chapter 8.)


"A metaphysics must be divisible, definable and knowable, or there isn't any metaphysics." (Pirsig in Lila, page 64.)

"Definitions are the FOUNDATION of reason. You can't reason without them." (Emphasis is Pirsig's. ZAMM, page 214.)


"The tests of truth are logical consistency, agreement with experience, and economy of explanation. The Metaphysics of Qqulity satisfies these." (Pirsig in Lila, chapter 8.)