Dear Matt,
Good that you have time and inclination to re-read old posts to make
sure you didn't miss anything! Most of the discussion on this list
goes so breathtakingly fast that I think only a few of the nearly 200
subscribers are in that position.
My contribution to this thread of 4/6 11:27 +0200 implied that your
question of 31/5 11:21:29 -0700 which I rephrased as "Why is DQ
'better' that sq?" can be answered on two levels:
1 on the meta-level
2 on the intellectual level
(By the way: is this a generally comprehendable way of writing time?
I'm afraid I still don't completely understand it myself.)
ad 1 An answer on the meta-level (answering a "why"-question) implies
agreement on a subject that determines the Meaning of life and
everything else. Without ageement on such a Supreme Subject, the
question becomes unanswerable because of the undefinability of DQ or
something of the sort. "DQ being the cutting edge of experience" (your
answer of 2/6 11:31:03 -0700), so new with every experience (?!), is
an answer in this last category of non-answers. It just begs the
(logically preceding) question "Whose experience?" ("Everyone's
experience!" you say? Well, let's just start with your and mine
experience and show me that the DQ at the cutting edge of your
experience is the same as that at mine. Pointers to the moon will
suffice for me.)
You seemed to recognize this necessity of a subject on this level too,
as you rephrased your initial "why"-question of 31/5 11:21:29 -0700 in
your contribution of 1/6 11:31:28 -0700 into a question starting with
"What/Who says that ..."
Can DQ fill this role of Supreme Subject itself by equating it with
"God"? I'll come back to that later if my social patterns leave me
enough time and if you-all don't write too much which I have to read
first.
ad 2 An answer on the intellectual level implies agreement on
metaphysics. We need to forget about "why" and rephrase the question
into an intellectual statement that can be proven true or false using
the agreed metaphysics. Proven to the satisfaction of mr. Oakeshott
that is, as it is his -supposed- opinion, that sq is 'better' than DQ,
we would like to change.
Agreeing on metaphysics with mr. Oakeshott doesn't seem the hardest
part to me, reading your information about him in your contribution of
4/6 12:28 -0700. (Was that when you sent it? My Dutch computer says
"4/6 21:28"...) As he seemed to value practicality and wasn't a real
philosopher, he will not nail us to the fine metaphysical details and
may well be tempted to agree on the metaphysics of William James
(pragmatism he will have knows as an academic, we could sneak in
radical empirisism).
Having thus found common ground (Pirsig legitimizes MOQ as a
continuation of James' thinking at the end of chapter 29 of Lila) I
would proceed by pointing out to mr. Oakeshott that the Victorian
social patterns he presumably values have developed from earlier
social patterns with -he'll surely agree- lower value. I'd hesitate to
bring up the development of social from biological from inorganic
patterns, for he might be a creationist and go up the wall from that.
What do you think? The historical development of social patterns up
till Victorian ones might be enough as a basis for proposing to him to
define DQ as that which is responsible for the difference in value
between historically successive social patterns. Of course fall-backs
to lower value social patterns occur sometimes, but that can be
attributed to the pull the sq of those earlier eveloped patterns still
exert. We wouldn't want to attribute that to DQ, would we? We could
just leave it at that and have him agree on DQ being 'better' (in
terms of the 'best' social pattern he sees) than sq. As he apparently
sees knowledge as subordinate to social patterns (valuing practical
knowledge as a means of passing on valued practices by authorities
and -hopefully- acknowlegding that technical knowledge sometimes -not
always- facilitates practical learning; he wouldn't want to abolish
schools for a apprenticeship system, would he?), we wouldn't have to
alert him to the existence of a separate intellectual level with
interest of its own apart from improving social patterns. As he seems
to identify with social patterns, he probably is not aware at all of
this intellectual level.
I would leave the exact wording of our argument to convince mr.
Oakeshott to you of course, as you seem to be very good at rhetorics,
but this would be the general drift of it, I propose. Don't you think
it might work?
I'll leave this game for the moment now. (Social patterns calling...)
I'll come back to it later giving you time to reply. There's lots
waiting in my head to be written yet. Please be patient with me.
With friendly greetings,
Wim Nusselder
MOQ.ORG - http://www.moq.org
Mail Archive - http://alt.venus.co.uk/hypermail/moq_discuss/
MD Queries - [EMAIL PROTECTED]
To unsubscribe from moq_discuss follow the instructions at:
http://www.moq.org/md/subscribe.html
