[lit-ideas] Re: It means nothing, absolutely nothing...

  • From: David Ritchie <ritchierd@xxxxxxxxxxxxx>
  • To: lit-ideas@xxxxxxxxxxxxx
  • Date: Wed, 22 Oct 2008 12:24:34 -0700


On Oct 22, 2008, at 11:34 AM, wokshevs@xxxxxx wrote:


Just a few, minor remarks ---------->


Quoting David Ritchie <ritchierd@xxxxxxxxxxxxx>:

[snip]

Such factors may well be causally efficacious
in the production of choice within heteronomous agents but rationality is not 
reducible to a narrative of such biographical factors.


[snip]

 But I grant that I may be missing the
point of David's argument here. (It may have something to do with Aristotle's woefully mistaken view that there is something like a "practical syllogism" where the conclusion is not a statement but an action. But if we grant the cogency of that, are we not led to ask whether David is suffering from weakness 
of will?)

[snip]
Regarding David's substantive claim: I aver that matters of taste and romantic attraction do not admit of rational assessment. To engage in the latter within these domains is irrational. Aristotle makes a similar point. There is nothing 
scalar here, as far as I can see.
Neither scales nor scalars fall from my eyes when I read this, grounded as I am in the present by the discovery that Fred Meyer now sells a thing that looks like a plumber's mate, but is made of the wrong stuff and thus fails to spring back after the first plunge-- very like a plumber's mate in the prime era of unionism, when you think about it--and in the past by thoughts on this afternoon's seminar, but totally lost in the world of heteronomous agents and irreducible rationality.
I think we shall have to return to the historic way of deciding things--trial by combat. A table tennis match whenever we meet, perhaps? 

David Ritchie,
Portland, Oregon
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