Hi Marco, elephant, all.
I have to admit this discussion has been slipping off my control. Some philosophical
questions and issues have been raised to which I am not prepared to reply (not that
I want to be prepared to everything - I mean that, I do not lack an opinion, but
rather, more substantially, a concrete understanding of the questions themselves). I
also feel that, in some cases, I was drawn to the keyboard more by a naive
enthusiasm for the discussion than because I had good ideas that urged to be
expressed. I ask you to forgive me and will henceforth take it slower and learn when
to retreat - or sit back.
As a side note, not that it has much to do with metaphysics, but I am a "he", not a
"she" (Andrea is a tricky italian name, derived from the greek "aner-andros" and
retaining that meaning - "man").
> ANDREA:
> > Couldn't that be that the idea that there *is* something out there (or in
> > there, in our "heart" so to speak) and that we cannot make a good report of
> > it, is really a false idea?
>
> ELEPHANT:
> No, not really, or there wouldn't be any point trying to speak our hearts.
> Words are tools, not the weilders of tools. Something needful comes first,
> before language, even if not a discrete fact: something (with a waive of the
> hand).
Well, here is a place where I got things a little mixed up. My point was possibly
not even really about language - or, it was about language is too much a broader
sense with respect to the prior discussion. So here is my point.
Think of the mystics concept of "Truth beyond words" first. You "see" the truth but
cannot describe it in words. The truth you see has a pre-linguistic or
non-linguistic (or continuous) "taste" that gets lost in verbal reports. What the
mystics seem to agree, also, is that this Truth beyond words is the *same* for
everyone. Note: not that there "is" an absolute truth, not only that: that everyone
perceives it in the same way.
I think this assumption is at least worth a little doubt. Each of us is "limited" by
his/her own "horizon": context, experience. Even language. We can function at all,
embedded as we are in a continuous world, with a discretizing mind, because our mind
sets up a framework, limiting our vision (and our freedom). There are premises from
which I move (to do or think or say anything) that I don't even know are there, or I
would be paralyzed by the infiniteness of choices. My doubt was that possibly, not
even we cannot verbally describe the "Tao" we see; also, the Tao *I* see comes with
all the built-in, invisible (to me) limitations of my "mind" (in its broadest
sense), and thus it is (somehow) different from yours.
> It is one thing to say that our descriptive use of language isn't a report
> (doesn't describe a pre-existing discreteness), and quite another to say
> that nothing at all anti-dates the linguistic. There is something which
> discrete language tries and fails to report: the continuous experience of
> value.
So the question becomes: is the continuous experience of value the same for
everyone? Of the course the "discrete" one is not. Take a discrete expression of
value - e.g., a law, a song, a movie - we can have different opinions. But there are
still two options:
a) we perceive the same DQ - and here a definition of "perceive" is needed, but I
guess it has to do with mystical intuition - but we come to disagreement when we
discretize it into static quality;
b) we did not perceive the same DQ from the beginning, but rather a (non-verbal)
different "projection" of DQ dependent of our inner limits.
What has this to do with language? I "feel" a connection but could be wrong, hence I
chose the "sparse-trivial" thread for this posting :)
> ANDREA:
> > I agree that science is a dance (to mention the positivists one last time, I
> > don't think their "system" works in any useful way - not even that it can
> > really be applied to science as it actually is). But I think I disagree that
> > is logical (not that I mean it is *less than...*, just *not exactly*, or *not
> > only*).
> ELEPHANT:
> By 'logical' I only meant 'obeys logic', not 'derived from' or 'wholly
> coextensive with' logic (of course not!). (Gravity is logical in that it is
> not a contradiction in terms, not in that it is derived from the law of
> non-contradiction!)
This was my mistake. My point here was that I don't believe language can be used
precisely when speaking metaphysics. Simple as that. There is a difference with
science in the sense that the language of science is precise. With that I am
referring to "pure" sciences (mathematics, physics), while admittedly, for sciences
working at higher abstraction levels (phychology, sociology, etc) it is perfectly
reasonable to ask ourselves if they are sciences at all (and then we should also
reply to this "reasonably" - perhaps with a weak yes rather than a strong no).
Mathematics obeys logic, and its language is completely defined. Possibly, because
it has no "semantic" in itself; that is, mathematics works with symbols and then
leaves it to anyone else to attach meaning to the symbols. Truth is tautology and
falsehood is contradiction - simply. Physics is a mix, but not in the sense that its
language is underdefined. Admittedly, science bridges phenomena to logics, where
phenomena come from a continuous world, and before they get in the hands of science,
they have to pass through the "discretizing/verbalizing" gate. Thus the objects of
science are created by science's context itself, by science's language. This has a
lot of interesting consequences (to begin with Kuhn's paradigms), but what makes the
language of physics precise is that science current context, while it may differ
from tomorrow's context, has a precise definition of how these objects are created
(e.g., measure instruments).
I don't think the same can ever hold for metaphysics. Here "objects" are extracted
from the flux by a "discretizing machinery" that is individual and built in each of
our minds, different in each. When we use metaphors, we possibly do so with the
intent of instructing our listener as to how to operate the machinery, and it seems
this works better than saying out things plainly and expecting others to understand
us just like that. Still, metaphors will yield different results in different
people's minds.
To this point, again and for the last time, I should emphasize that I do not mean
that we cannot communicate. There is a reason why I enjoy a philosopher more than
another and why MOQ interests me while dianetics doesn't. While no sentence can
exactly sound the same to all, there is a degree of empathy that can be built, up to
the point that we can argue, from the ideas we exchange, that we our metaphysic
brain machinery is working in similar ways.
As a matter of fact, I don't think, for example, that you can cut neatly between the
metaphysical and the emotional.
> ANDREA:
> > Yes. If we have to deal with maps, and of course we have, I think sageness
> > amounts to something that Fritjof Capra (The Turning Point) calls "a playful
> > relationship with the self"
> ELEPHANT:
> I like that, and now I think we are perhaps exchanging notes about what
> metaphors happen to work best for us. I would only want to add, on the
> 'play' metaphor, that in Buddhism and Platonism the lack of seriousness with
> which it is possible to treat the self is the flip-side of a very serious
> (by which I don't mean 'humourless', exactly, but might well mean 'earnest'
> or 'whole-hearted') attention to enlightenment or 'the truth'.
I too believe we agree on the "daily-life-application" aspects of MOQ and similar
concepts, and this is what I care for the most.
As regard eastern religions/philosophies, as compared to MOQ: eastern religions are
pivoted on the idea of this dramatic, individual, istantaneous, somehow
"out-of-nowhere" change that is termed "enlightment". (Also, they assume that two
enlightened individuals live the same Truth). I think this is their flaw, or, why
the term "philosophy" is really used "cum grano salis", and improperly, to refer to
these thought systems. This is also why I'm fighting on the metaphysics side: I
prefer a ladder that brings you a bit higher and that anyone can climb, rather than
a teleport, directly to the top that only a few will be able to use.
> ANDREA:
> > But, any metaphysical truth is static quality.
> ELEPHANT:
> You mean 'has static quality?' Well, that's not addressing your point, but
> I do see where you are going. You mean that having only static quality, it
> could never be a final answer (that there is no final answer)? Yes, I see
> the point. This connects with some passages I like to emphasise in Lila
> about the impossibility of perfect chess. A perfect all embracing picture
> of the world is impossible, because peoples needs change, their starting
> positions change, the sorts of things it is most useful to tell them change,
> and so on. All that is true. But supposing that we are not talking about
> an all-embracing picture of the world, and supposing we are not talking
> about a route-map from here to there: supposing we are just talking about
> 'there': and that in some way that discussion isn't even a 'map'? What
> then? Shown, not said? Well a lot of the things that can be shown to be
> true about the form of the good don't amount to 'saying' very much: they
> look more like denials of wrong maps than a mapping exercise as such. This
> connects with the thought that analysis is 'dry' and 'cold'. Synthesis goes
> from the simple to the complex, and analysis goes in the opposite direction.
> This isn't a logic with which you create pictures, it's a logic with which
> we un-create them.
To this, I can only reply in a most trivial way, although I stay a bit concerned to
be simply too short-minded here. Just like I don't think you can state an absolute
metaphysical truth, to me, you cannot state an absolute metaphysical falsity.
Contradiction of terms exist, but but I think a metaphysics where truths are
tautologies and falsities are contradictions of terms doesn't lead us anywhere
useful. It's really just logic. Metaphysics (not just MOQ) has to do with value, and
since value has no definition (you can't even define non-value!)...
BTW, I agree with Capra's interpretation of the rotation-symmetry of the Ying Yang.
My opinion (although I have nothing like a "proof" handy) is that any sentence which
expresses a truth, even in the form of the falsehood of something, and unless it is
a tautology (or contradiction; hence something that takes it truth or falsity from
logic, cold, symbol-level structure rather than meaning/value) does so within a
context, and, in an extended context (with extended meanings attached to words)
becomes the opposite (a falsity).
(I understand taking a position w/out producing any proof is not too much of a
useful move in metaphysics. You may consider it just as, more or less, a metaphor:
an insight of my machinery at work).
[Quote from Lila by Elephant]
>"Of the two kinds of hostility to metaphysics he considered the mystics'
>hostility the more formidable. ... The central reality of mysticism, the reality
that Phaedrus had
>called "Quality" in his first book, is not a metaphysical chess peice.
>Quality doesn't have to be defined. You understand it without definition,
>ahead of definition.
>Quality is indivisible, undefinable and unknowable in the sense
>that there is a knower and a known, but a metaphysics can be none of these
>things. A metaphysics must be divisible, definable, and knowable, or there
>isn't any metaphysics. Since a metaphysics is essentially a kind of
>dialectical definition and since Quality is essentially outside definition,
>this means that a "Metaphysics of Quality" is essentially a contradiction in
>terms, a logical absurdity.
>[...]The trouble was, this was only one part of him talking. There
>was another part that kept saying "Ahh, do it anyway. It's interesting."
>This was the intellectual part that didn't like undefined things, and
>telling it not to define Quality was like telling a fat man to stay out of
>the refrigerator, or an alcoholic to stay out of bars. To the intellect the
>process of defining Quality has a compulsive quality of its own. It
>produces a certain excitement even though it leaves a hangover afterward,
>like too many cigarettes, or a party that lasted too long. Or Lila last
>night. It isn't anything of lasting beauty; no joy forever. What would you
>call it? Degeneracy, he guessed. Writing a metaphysics is, in the
>strictest mystic sense, a degenerate activity.
>I think this expresses rather well my own thought that metaphysics is not
>something local and illiminable (like a game), but the essential project of
>all intelligence everywhere. Although they might not use the word,
>everybody has a 'metaphysics', and all aim in this metaphysics at
>establishing something that ought to be agreed on (the 'truth'). That said,
>we can consider some recent developments.
I think Pirsig's passage also conveys the idea of the "limitations" of metaphysics.
Not that it states there is anything better. Nevertheless, it does not even state
that there is a truth for metaphysics to pursue or that such truth can actually be
revealed. I feel perfectly at ease with the way Pirsig expresses his thoughts here.
You can even find some hint of the problem I mentioned earlier: mystics is an answer
for the wise elite, not for the man in the street (the one that gets a hangover from
smoking too many cigarettes). Ladder steps are useful, and I see metaphysics as the
art of providing those ladder steps.
ELEPHANT:
>Now,
>About metaphysics as a 'language game'....
>About the denial of absolute truth as a 'move' in a 'language game'....
ANDREA:
> Now, "there is no Absolute Truth", as a part of language, has a meaning, or
> more precisely a *role*, within an interaction. Wittgenstein would say that
> it is a *move* in a game.
> [...]At least "Absolute" and "Truth" have no obvious, exact definition, and I
don't think
> any of us would have an easy job finding one.
ELEPHANT:
>The last is a good point, also, perhaps, to be made about the various
>answers to the questions: 'does god exist?' and 'is Plato's theory of forms
>false?' and the like. And you are right: neither "absolute" nor "truth"
>have any obvious definition. But that isn't an argument to show that they
>couldn't have a definition if we actually tried to give them one, and it
>isn't, either, to show that such a definition couldn't be completely exact.
>In fact that was a project that the posting that started this thread, on
>Plato and Parmenides, was a continuation of, or postscript to.
>Take a look at my postings on Plato, truth, essences, forms (round about new-year I
>think). Such a discursive definition of truth as I give there (attributing
>it to Plato) isn't based on an attempt to capture the continuum in discrete
>terms, but on purely analytic considerations. There is such a thing as a
>contradiction in terms, as you know, and pointing such a thing out is more,
>I'll warrant, than merely a move in a 'game'. It is one of the rules for
>'being serious' (Plato is always telling us to 'stop kidding'). But we'll
>come back to that - because of course Wittgenstein (and Andrea) will say
>that 'being serious' in this way is just another kind of 'language-game'.
ANDREA:
> The postmodernists' motto is really a move in a game. You cannot say what it
> *means*; you can give an interpretation, that is, reformulate it in other
> words. For example, here is a possible translation (that I'm not ascribing
> to the postmodernist or anyone else): "I would feel abused if anyone tried
> to impose what s/he believes to be the Truth on me;
> and I also wouldn't believe that s/he has means whereby s/he can prove,
> beyond doubt, to be speaking the Truth
> and/or to have the right to impose it." Here's another, possibly coming from
> a Nazi doctor working in a concentration camp: "You can't judge my acts, for
> there is no Absolute Truth".
ELEPHANT:
>I'd say that it was an awareness of that latter type of argument which got
>me worried enough (as a boy) to be interested in Philosophy in the first
>place. Compare Orwell's 1984. Compare Iris Murdoch's observation re
>Wittgenstein: "Is there any reason why a 'language game' could not be a
>totalitarian state?" None. Wittgenstein would doubtless offer that not all
>language games are totalitarian states, and that the ability of an account
>of language use to describe totalitarian language use is one point in its
>favour. But that rather misses Murdoch's point, I feel. Her point is that
>in a sense *all* language is a totalitarian state, once it is conceived of
>simply as series of games. 'Game' is a nice friendly sounding word, but the
>problem with games is that they are what they are invirtue of agreement on
>the rules. But in Philosophy, or alteast in Philosophy as Phaedrus and
>Socrates would both conceive of it, what we are trying to do is question
>just those rules. If language is just a series of games, why then, and
>fatally for Socrates, you may feel justified in saying that anyone who
>doesn't do things the way you want them done is simply playing some other
>game: and not the game which you play. It seems that the possibility of
>genuine communication, or interogation, of Socrates having something to say
>that might make you alter your way of life, is gone. Socrates may be
>resposible for corrupting the youth by playing the wrong games with them,
>but nothing he can say can really be about the truth.
Perhaps, I shouldn't quote philosophers :). I see a misinterpretation of my thoughts
and my goals here, which may be perfectly consistent with the assumption that I was
using the expression "language game" exactly as Wittgenstein did (which by the way
is not possible in my view).
Again my point is simpler, and I think we came to identify the basic disagreement
between us. Saying that doing metaphysics we play a game, I just mean that since
words are not exactly defined, we are not doing mathematics, and not discussing
based on "truth" (again in the sense of tautology - non-contradiction). We are
discussing about issues involving value and meaning, and thus we each discuss
something different. Nevertheless, it is possible that a discussion is useful - that
what you say adds to my view and vice versa. In this game that there are rules we
implicitly set forth. These rules do not constitute the essence of the discussion,
simply its syntax. If we are good enough, we can all play by exactly the same rules;
if we are all trained for the same rules, etc. Academic philosophy has a main
purpose of teaching us all the same rules. But in the meaning realm, which includes
"why am I saying this", "do I think this is good news or bad news", "does this make
my metaphysics better", "how does it affect my life" and more and more... there we
can at most reach some sort of "empathy".
See the two sides of my position here: martians could discuss metaphysics with
completely different rules, perhaps they could be completely incompatible with us
from a syntactical point of view. But - for what concerns meaning, we could be close
(thus I assume a "truth", or more exactly a value, independent of rules). Also, if I
read martian books over and over, sooner or later I could understand their dance and
be able to understand and express myself within its rules. Sentences in the martian
dance could be falsities in the earthly philosophy framework. Metaphysics is within
a framework, and more than that, it is about expanding the framework - removing its
limits one by one as they are revealed by analysis.
Elephant, I may get back to your "truth" postings and maybe discuss these issues
later, after I realize your points. But my impression now is that if you think that
you can set rules for metaphysics - and that these rules may make metaphysic "logic"
- and if within this rules you can do a MOQ which works as a science - it is
unlikely that I ever agree on that. Nevertheless, I can discuss it and enjoy the
discussion.
>What differentiates a move in a language game from the invention of a new game
within which the 'move' is
>not a 'move' but a 'rule'? I have asked these questions of Wittgensteinians for
many a year without an answer. Mostly, >they seem to think that if this is a
general problem, then it is merely one more problematic facet to be
>added to The Human Condition, and no way to argue against Wittgenstein. For the
conception of Language games >aren't just arrived at for no reason: there is the
famous Rule-Following Argument to contend with. I have things to say
>about that too, but for now I leave it to Andrea to explain that argument.
Here I retreat, honestly. I just can't remember the RFA (at least not by name
alone). I think Wittgenstein took the "game" thing very seriously, and your
questions would be meaningful to him, but I also think they go beyond that game
thing in the way I used it.
If we can take a step back into the meta- level of all this, you can actually see an
example of what I'm talking about. I can read Wittgenstein *without* understanding
every little bit of its metaphysical building (if there is one). Still some bits
might make sense, a lot of sense for that matter. So Wittgenstein's philosophy is
not adding to mine in the sense that new science builds on old science, being
completely logically coherent with it. It is adding to mine in the sense that I see
something I find of value, and I take it.
That doesn't mean I will just paint my ideas with others' mottos (I possibly did
this in these posting, but I didn't mean to, and I beg forgiveness). Finding value
in others' philosophies is not something about picking up sentences and metaphors
out of context. I won't just like anything that fits my purposes because it does fit
my purposes. I won't like a logical contradiction. I won't find too much value in a
single sentence that *can* be read in a way I like it to be. I will experience value
when I see a system of thoughts, each providing some context for the others, that
collectively work nicely for me. The bigger the part of the building that I see
fitting my view, the more I will like it. Above all: *the more it will expand my
view*, the great more I will like it. This is the dance I referred to as concerns
metaphysics. As I said above, I understand you consider this view reductive and you
wouldn't really call it metaphysics. This is our disagreement. (Right? Don't you
reject this idea of taking something - without understanding how it connects to
absolute truths and can be proved from them somehow, without even requiring or
expecting there is such a connection?)
ANDREA:
> Could language be associated to meaning by something less loose? The
> positivists tried, and they came out with the idea (that I agree with) that
> language may have an exact meaning (provided you do a little positivist
> mirror-climbing to conceal minor problems here and there) as long as you
> speak of "scientific facts". To speak of scientific facts, you have to do
> two things: first, think SOM; then, speak only of functions and never of
> value. Language from any other standpoint and directed towards any other
> purpose is not precise.
ELEPHANT:
>Pirsig successfully argues, as have many other Pragmatists, that this 'never
>speaking of value' is a delusion (the mirror climbing you speak of?).
>Objects and Facts come from value, and anybody who speaks of facts is
>ultimately speaking of value. But it should not be forgotten that Plato,
>2000 years ago, when he said that all the objects of this world (of
>becoming) are apprended 'in the light of the good', was saying *exactly the
>same thing*. And Plato thought that this idea was perfectly compatible with
>some extremely precise reflections about what this Form of the Good is and
>is not. In the Republic we deal mostly in metaphor (the sun, the fire, the
>divided line etc), but there are other dialogues (theatetus, sophist, to
>name but two) where the language used to describe the forms is made very
>precise indeed. Why should awareness of the fundamental reality of value
>work against precision in anything? This I do not understand. Is it a
>hang-over from the old idea that value is subjective, relative to the
>subject and 'personal opinion' and so on? Well that type of reasoning has
>no place in either Platonic Metaphysics or MOQ: value is more real than any
>subject, and here we are talking of that reality itself, of The Good by
>itself.
Not because it is personal and subjective. Because it is undefinable. And not
because just value is undefinable, but also any value-related concept. Anything that
has to do with meanings other than SOM, positivistic meanings.
(These are our positions. Again, I will try to work on this myself, and maybe
rejoin/restart the discussion later).
ANDREA:
> In retrospect, why should we care about language being precise? I don't
> think we should.
ELEPHANT:
>Well we should only care about the language being properly understood,
?precise or imprecise. Agreed. But in point of fact it turns out that it's
>often impossible to be sure that someone else has understood you without a
>very great deal of precision in your exchanges with that person. And
>although this doesn't happen all the time, it happens most of all in
>Philosophy. No?
My point is that it is *always* impossible to be sure that someone else understood
you *whatever* the precision you try to have in your exchanges. Even stronger: that
it is always impossible that someone else understood you completely. But as I happen
to have to defend this position again and again, let me also state, again, that I
don't think this is the most relevant thing about philosophy. I'm not saying that
"thereof we must remain silent". I still think, as I said, that we can usefully
communicate. The fact that language is never completely understood is a very big
problem, and forces you to drop philosophy, only if you think that if something is
not precise, then it's nothing at all (positivist). I'm *not* in that camp. To make
an extreme comparison, you're probably not very precise when talking love to your
lover, yet one can argue you are not precise because you are communicating at a
*higher* level than a logic one. With all the limitations this entails if your
purpose is that of stating truths beyond doubt, with all advantages if you want to
talk about your whole self and world - including those parts that are beyond logic.
ANDREA:
> I think we should consider language as a part of reality,
> as you say, and even forget the distinction between language and reality.
> That would be true if you used language as a purely social tool, as they
> probably do in some cultures around the world. But as it comes, western
> thought (the one that gave birth to positivism, among other things), have
> taught us to use it as an intellectual tool to discuss and investigate about
> what life is, what the world is, as you do in metaphysics. I can't see how
> could you doubt that. That doesn't mean that "language" itself is outside of
> the domain of discourse, of course.
ELEPHANT:
>If I understand correctly, I agree completely (are you perhaps saying what I
>said just previously?). But one has to add a caveat and a precisification
>here, to be sure of being understood. When we talk about language being
>'inside the domain of discourse' I think we mean something, or somethings,
>quite specific and precise, if only we could express them precisely. I
>think we mean both (1) that as a collection of characters on a computer
>screen/utterances/social phenomena language is one of the things we can
>describe in synthetic terms, using a rich vocabulary to express our
>'observations' of a 'natural phenomenon', so to speak, but also (2) the
>analytic truth that uniquely amongst the phenomena of the world Language is
>responsible for appling the discrete, the samenesses and differences, unlike
>Dynamic Quality which is continuous and thus by itself lacks the discrete
>identies which could be 'the same' or 'different'.
>Now it seems to me that different Philosophers pay different levels of
>attention to (1) and (2). Of these two conceptions of language as 'within
>the realm of discourse' Wittgenstein concentrates undeniably on (1). Plato
>concentrates on (2). I would suggest that insofar as Wittgenstein is
>talking about language-within-the- realm-of-discourse- as-a-natuaral
>-phenomena, and Plato is talking about language-within-the- realm-of-
>discourse-as- a-creative-power, they are talking about two different things,
>and that the kinds of discourse they are talking about are also different.
>Wittgensteins, ultimately, is the discourse of the natural sciences (He's
>still wrapped up in those positivistic mirrors). Plato's is the discourse
>of logical analysis. But logical analysis isn't positivism, as can be seen
>from the fact that positivism is an ontology that doesn't make any sense,
>when logically analysed.
Well put, and agreed (for what I understand of it). (Your Plato vs Wittgenstein is
an example of my uneducated use of "language games").
ANDREA WROTE:
> If you state that the gap between language and reality does not exist, that
> this is a false duality, to that I agree in general. This means that your
> reality *is* your language. (Like, Pirsig stated that Newton "created"
> gravitation).
ELEPHANT:
>[...] Marco was talking (correct me) I think about
>langauge having a presence in the Dynamic Quality-reality in just the same
>way that an aeroplane does. With that I agree. I also agree with Andrea
>that your reality is your language, in the sense that the totality of valued
>objects in the world is the totality of valued objects created in language.
>However I think that this conception of the world as equivalent to the
>totality of linguistically synthesised objects gives us a neat boundary to
>'the world' here, which exactly paralells Plato's distinction between the
>realm of becoming (the world) and the realm of being (the transcendent
>forms). Because if language is doing this job of creating, so that Newton
>'creates' the Law of gravity, then ultimately there must be some resources
>for such acts of creation which precede all the individual acts of creation
>are are themselves uncreated. I'm not talking about a first cause here, but
>I am talking about the fact that you can't do a job without tools.
What I meant with "your reality is your language", I tried to explain in the first
paragraph of this post. It was meant as a question more than an affirmation, and the
words were misleading. I was wondering if your limitedness affects your direct,
prelinguistic perception of Quality. If we all live in different worlds except for
Quality or including Quality. A silly question perhaps. As a separate issue, I was
also stating that the fact that there is something that metaphysics is trying to
express - that exists prior to metaphysics *and* can be reached by metaphysics is no
obvious truth to me, or at least it is worth examining further. Note, both points:
something that exists independent of m.p. and can be reached by it. I could probably
agree if just one of the propositions was assumed to be true. It's both of them that
causes me problems.
ANDREA:
> But I also think that when you begin talking metaphysics, you
> "pretend" not to believe this [that your reality is your language], or you're
not in the game......
ELEPHANT:
>A bit of precision which Plato used might help us here. To do metaphysics
>you don't have to pretend that 'the world' as in 'the world of valued
>objects' is not the same as your language: it is the same: that's one of the
>conclusions of our metaphysics.
>What you have to 'pretend' is that 'the world' as in 'Being, the forms themselves'
>are not automatically the same as what we might happen to say about them.
>And that's quite a different matter, and not something which really qualities as a
'pretence' either.
>For we have already seen that it isn't a matter of 'pretence' to suppose that there
are necessary beings
>underlying the contingent world of subjects and objects as the resources which make
such syntheses possible.
>One of these, the foremost, would be Quality - which I have also called The Form of
the Good.
ANDREA:
> .... Unless you think
> that the purpose of metaphysics is that of "creating a better language",
> where "better" is only a matter of value, and has no relation whatsoever
> with "closer to the truth", because... there is no absolute truth "outside"
> language. Agreed. Really, agreed.
ELEPHANT:
>On the last point, Me Too!: 'truth' is a quality that applies to linguistic
>entities and no others. But I just don't understand what you mean by the
>"only" in "only a matter of value". Value, as (the main) one of the
>resources whose existence is primary and necessary to the subject-object
>universe of linguistic static quality, can be investigated analytically. It
>can be said that there are many coherent truths - and their are so long as
>you are talking about a synthetic entity such as The Law of Gravity or
>Poland. But when you are talking about something that can only be
>understood by analysis, in terms of what it is not and cannot be, this
>possibility of differing accounts of value from which your 'only' takes
>force, does not exist. Pirsig's metaphysics like any metaphysics is an
>attempt to deploy language better, to give a higher-quality analysis of the
>situation we find ourselves in, by rejecting the incoherent as incoherent
>(e.g, the idea of anthropology without values). There is no "only" about
>this, nor, as I continue to be sceptical about the notion of a language
>game, any sense in which such better deploymentg constitutes the playing of
>a 'new game' or an 'improvement of language'. What counts is the way we use
>the tool that language, even as it is, offers us now.
My point was that in a sense, doing metaphysics, a degeneracy as Pirsig calls it,
has to do with accepting to use tools that do not lead to "absolute truth" (as
opposed to the mystic's intuition teleport), but that have other good points to them
(eg, the fact that you can *communicate* metaphysic ideas verbally, if with all the
limitations seen above, which is, in my view, "better" than doing it
counter-verbally as by Zen paradoxes). Most of those who are into metaphysics
implicitly pretend to be trying to *get* somewhere, to something that, again, is
already there *and* can be reached, while actually they are building a better world
for themselves and those that are influenced (empathically, and in their own unique
way) by their ideas.
I see the rejection of incoherent as incoherent as a progress. But I see progress
(evolution) of metaphysics to be the ultimate essence of metaphysics.
...overall, I think we more or less clearly understood our disagreements. I feel
perfectly at ease with elepant's decision to sit back for a while. I, too, am not in
a hurry, and as I said, enough has been said to trigger some thinking and reading on
my own, possibly to get back in an expanded arena in the future.
(I will reply to Marco in the other thread).
All the best and thanks for now,
Andrea
--
Andrea Sosio
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