[MD] Rhetoric

Wed Nov 23 05:27:02 PST 2016

Can't be so that it is forbidden to ask horse 's approval to expand a bit on
politics,as a cure for depletion.
I would support the idea, but the theatre is Horse's area.

2016-11-23 12:59 GMT+01:00 David Harding <david at goodmetaphysics.com>:

> Hi dmb,
>
>
> Ahhh yes - Rorty.  I’m sure you’ve seen all the latest news about him…
>
>
> http://www.nytimes.com/2016/11/21/books/richard-rortys-
> 1998-book-suggested-election-2016-was-coming.html
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> I’ve ordered the book as it appears to have been very astute analysis.
> It’s a shame we can’t discuss politics much here as the MOQ provides such a
> great language to discuss it.
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> Sent with Unibox
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> > On Nov 23, 2016, at 5:05 AM, david <dmbuchanan at hotmail.com> wrote:
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> > ________________________________
> > David Harding said to dmb:
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> > I do wonder if you agree with the words you write when you’re
> continually referring to what ‘Pirsig says'. Do you agree with Pirsig?
> What’s your opinion?
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> > dmb says:
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> > Yes, I agree with Pirsig in particular and with Classical Pragmatism in
> general. I like to quote Pirsig in order to present and explain the ideas
> rather than defend them. It seems to me that nearly every "critic" of the
> MOQ ends up attacking ideas that are NOT actually features of the MOQ but
> rather products of the critic's misunderstanding. Since there's no point in
> defending a distorted idea that Pirsig never endorsed, it's better to
> answer the critic by offering an undistorted version of that idea. In this
> case, for example, Tuukka was operating with conspicuously incorrect
> conceptions of "dialectic" and "rhetoric". Pirsig's own comments on the
> topic serve as the perfect antidote to poison, I think.
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> > David Harding said:
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> > On this point I’m not so sure but in your first paragraph you write that
> a traditional understanding of rhetoric and sophistry is fine as there are
> so many hucksters out there. But on this I disagree. I would argue that
> it’s precisely because of our traditional understanding of these terms that
> there are so many hucksters and deceivers out there. ...
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> > dmb says:
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> > Think of it this way: People use the term "vandalism" to describe
> pointless destruction and that's find because there are people who destroy
> thing for no particular reason but we can also speak historically about the
> Germanic tribe called "Vandals" and make a case that the conventional term
> is slanderous toward actual Vandals. In the same way, we can use
> "sophistry" to describe Trump or talk radio hosts but still make a case
> that this is slanderous toward the actual Sophists of ancient Greece. I
> mean, if you're talking to Pirsig and he says you're a great rhetorician
> then you should know that you have not been insulted. Quite the opposite.
> In that context, you would have been very flattered. But it you're down at
> the local bar and some dude accuses you of sophistry, then you have been
> insulted (and I would not mind meeting the kind people who hang out there
> because that's my kind of insult).
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> > David Harding said:
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> > What’s missed by Socrates is that he, and not the Sophists, is being the
> deceptive one by claiming he doesn’t know what is good. That’s why I think
> it’s our current day Metaphysics, built upon Socrates assumption, that
> creates this deceptive attitude. One in which the words we speak can be
> meaningless so who really cares about them anyway? And Quality forget that
> - what’s that? Furthermore, how can you be honest and speak to the
> wholeness of experience without perceiving and speaking directly of its
> Quality? And how better to continually do this than with a Metaphysics
> which points out that all things are built upon it, and so are it? But you
> were probably just giving a throwaway line and I’m reading too much into
> this but figure it’s worth a chat anyway :)
> >
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> > dmb says:
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> > It's not clear what you mean, David, but I'll give an indirect answer
> and just hope that some of it addresses your concern.
> >
> >
> > Socrates actually ends up looking pretty good. That short epigraph from
> the front of ZAMM - Do we need anyone to tell us what's Good and what's not
> Good? - that line is put into the mouth of Socrates (in Plato's Phaedrus).
> It's really Plato himself - or rather Platonism in general - that is so
> much at odds with the MOQ. This isn't just because of the vicious slander
> against the Sophists but also against the view that Truth is eternal and
> separate from the world as it appears to us finite mortals. By contrast,
> Pirsig says that Man is the measure of all things, a participant in the
> creation of all things, and that means that there is no eternal Truth
> beyond appearances but only humanly constructed truths within a human
> context. As William James put it, 'The trail of the human serpent is over
> all.' This anti-Platonism is a common feature of Pragmatism, the meaning of
> which has been enriched by reading people like William James, John Dewey,
> and even Richard Rorty.
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> > "At the same time as I was worrying about this tension within Platonism
> – and within any form of what Dewey had called 'the quest for certainty' –
> I was also worrying about the familiar problem of how one could possibly
> get a noncircular justification of any debatable stand on any important
> issue. The more philosophers I read, the clearer it seemed that each of
> them could carry their views back to first principles which were
> incompatible with the first principles of their opponents, and that none of
> them ever got to that fabled place 'beyond hypotheses'. There seemed to be
> nothing like a neutral standpoint from which these alternative first
> principles could be evaluated. But if there were no such standpoint, then
> the whole idea of 'rational certainty', and the whole Socratic-Platonic
> idea of replacing passion by reason, seemed not to make much sense." --
> Richard Rorty, 1992
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> >>
> >>
> >> On Nov 21, 2016, at 9:47 AM, david <dmbuchanan at hotmail.com> wrote:
> >>
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> >> Hello, MOQers:
> >>
> >>
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> >>
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> >> I suppose everyone knows that people are suspicious of the emotional
> language in "rhetoric" and consider "sophistry" to be a form of
> manipulative deception. The conventional meaning isn't likely to change
> anytime soon and that's fine because there is empty speech and there are
> plenty of manipulative deceivers that deserve the name. In telling the
> story of philosophy Pirsig turns those meanings upside down.
> >>
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> >> “Plato’s hatred of the rhetoricians was part of a much larger struggle
> in which the reality of the Good, represented by the Sophists, and the
> reality of the True, represented by the dialecticians, were engaged in a
> huge struggle for the future mind of man.” -- Robert Pirsig
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> >> As the story is usually told, rhetoric is too emotional to be
> considered serious about the truth. Our feelings have no bearing on the
> truth, this story goes, and clear thinking is about cool logic and putting
> one's passions aside. But, Pirsig says, this story doesn't make as much
> sense as it used to.
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> >> “It’s been necessary since before the time of Socrates to reject the
> passions, the emotions, in order to free the rational mind for an
> understanding of nature’s order which was as yet unknown. Now it’s time to
> further an understanding of nature’s order by reassimilating those passions
> which were originally fled from. The passions, the emotions, the affective
> domain of man’s consciousness, are a part of nature’s order too. The
> central part.” — Robert Pirsig
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> >> At certain points in the re-telling and inversion of this old
> slanderous story Pirsig is downright angry about it. He finally realizes
> that the Platonic demand for passionless dialectic has the effect of
> excluding Quality, which is the whole thing for Pirsig.
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> >> “Phædrus’ mind races on and on and then on further, seeing now at last
> a kind of evil thing, an evil deeply entrenched in himself, which pretends
> to try and understand love and beauty and truth and wisdom but whose real
> purpose is never to understand them, whose real purpose is always to usurp
> them and enthrone itself. Dialectic - the usurper. That is what he sees.
> The parvenu, muscling in on all that is Good and seeking to contain it and
> control it."
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> >> And he's feeling triumphant about this discovery because it turns out
> that the Sophists weren't demagogues, hucksters, or confidence men. They
> were teaching Quality and they were teaching it the same way he had been
> teaching it to his student in Montana.
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> >> "Lightning hits! Quality! Virtue! Dharma! That is what the Sophists
> were teaching! Not ethical relativism. Not pristine 'virtue.' But areté.
> Excellence. Dharma! Before the Church of Reason. Before substance. Before
> form. Before mind and matter. Before dialectic itself. Quality had been
> absolute. Those first teachers of the Western world were teaching Quality,
> and the medium they had chosen was that of rhetoric."
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> >> And this re-telling of ancient history is part of the book's central
> project, which is a root expansion of rationality. The criticisms of
> rationality that he offers almost always involve the problem of objective
> truth. Value-free science has got to go, he says. Attitudes of objectivity
> make our thinking stiff and narrow and entail a denigration of subjectivity
> so that Quality is JUST what you like, is JUST your opinion or assessment
> of some thing or other. But this is part of that same old slander against
> the Sophists and rhetoricians, Pirsig says, and our form of rationality
> would actually be vastly improved by putting Quality at the cutting edge of
> all experience and all thought. Quality is right there at the very roots of
> our thinking and by including Quality our thinking is broadened and
> deepened and enriched by the inclusion of the emotional and aesthetic
> quality that pervades our thought regardless of whether we acknowledge it
> or not. You gotta have a feel for the work, he says, and that's not just
> about fixing motorcycles. It's about everything. All the time.
> >>
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> >> For Pirsig, "rhetoric" simply means excellence in thought and speech.
> Rhetoric is truer than objective truth because it includes the heart as
> well the head, so to speak. To talk truthfully will mean that the claim is
> supported by evidence and its expression logically sound, just as before,
> but that's no longer good enough. Speaking truthfully also means that you
> care about the truth, have feelings about that truth and maybe your
> expression shows the power or the beauty of that truth. To move or persuade
> another is not a sinister manipulation or a deception. It's a good thing
> and we should love it somebody does it right.
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> >> ________________________________
> >>
> >>
> >>
> >>
> >>
> >> Moq_Discuss mailing list
> >> Listinfo, Unsubscribing etc.
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> >> Archives:
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> >> http://moq.org/md/archives.html
> >>
> >
> > MOQ Online - MOQ_Discuss<http://moq.org/md/archives.html>
> > moq.org
> > Robert M. Pirsig's MoQ deals with the fundamentals of existence and
> provides a more coherent system for understanding reality than our current
> paradigms allow
> >
> >
> >
> >>
> >>
> >> MOQ Online - MOQ_Discuss<http://moq.org/md/archives.html>
> >>
> >
> > MOQ Online - MOQ_Discuss<http://moq.org/md/archives.html>
> > moq.org
> > Robert M. Pirsig's MoQ deals with the fundamentals of existence and
> provides a more coherent system for understanding reality than our current
> paradigms allow
> >
> >
> >
> >>
> >>
> >> moq.org
> >> Robert M. Pirsig's MoQ deals with the fundamentals of existence and
> provides a more coherent system for understanding reality than our current
> paradigms allow
> >>
> >>
> >>
> >>
> >>
> >>
> >>
> >>
> >>
> >>
> >>
> >>
> >>
> >>
> >> Moq_Discuss mailing list
> >> Listinfo, Unsubscribing etc.
> >> http://lists.moqtalk.org/listinfo.cgi/moq_discuss-moqtalk.org
> >> Archives:
> >> http://lists.moqtalk.org/pipermail/moq_discuss-moqtalk.org/
> >> http://moq.org/md/archives.html
> >>
> >
> > MOQ Online - MOQ_Discuss<http://moq.org/md/archives.html>
> > moq.org
> > Robert M. Pirsig's MoQ deals with the fundamentals of existence and
> provides a more coherent system for understanding reality than our current
> paradigms allow
> >
> >
> >
> >>
> >>
> >>
> >>
> >
> > Moq_Discuss mailing list
> > Listinfo, Unsubscribing etc.
> > http://lists.moqtalk.org/listinfo.cgi/moq_discuss-moqtalk.org
> > Archives:
> > http://lists.moqtalk.org/pipermail/moq_discuss-moqtalk.org/
> > http://moq.org/md/archives.html
> > MOQ Online - MOQ_Discuss<http://moq.org/md/archives.html>
> > moq.org
> > Robert M. Pirsig's MoQ deals with the fundamentals of existence and
> provides a more coherent system for understanding reality than our current
> paradigms allow
> >
> >
> >
> >
> >
> > David Harding said to
> > Moq_Discuss mailing list
> > Listinfo, Unsubscribing etc.
> > http://lists.moqtalk.org/listinfo.cgi/moq_discuss-moqtalk.org
> > Archives:
> > http://lists.moqtalk.org/pipermail/moq_discuss-moqtalk.org/
> > http://moq.org/md/archives.html
> >
> Moq_Discuss mailing list
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> http://lists.moqtalk.org/listinfo.cgi/moq_discuss-moqtalk.org
> Archives:
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> http://moq.org/md/archives.html
>

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