Andrea, Elephant, T.Bard, Platt, Jonathan, all
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Mercoledi 21 Marzo, Andrea wrote:
> So we have two positions:
> Marco (previously): "all roads are good".
> Elephant: "only one road produces tranquility."
Actually I wrote "all roads are true". It was an answer to a precise
question of Elephant: "But do all roads lead to the truth?"
My point is and was that there is not one only truth, according to
Pirsig's words "The Metaphysics of Quality says there can be many
competing truths and it is value that decides among them" (SODaV paper).
I'd say that many roads can be good, depending mainly on our "ability"
to travel. But, that's more important, I was stating that even roads are
true, so if we want to search for truth, there's no necessity of a
great distance.
>
> Given that these are actually opposite positions.....
But it was not an answer AGAINST Elephant. It was simply a sort of
lateral thought... an attempt to remap the discussion back to the MOQ,
as Platt noted. The real problem is not if we are going to the truth or
not... the real problem is if we are able to listen to the truth
knocking on our door.
> For what concerns "All roads are good" - I'm not sure what that
> means, out of analogy. Ppossibly, there's something in Marco's
> definition of a road that makes it intrinsically good - that rules
> superhighways with lots of traffic and going in the
> wrong direction. Or, he meands there's some bit of quality
> in anything, if you can look closely enough to see it. Which one?
As said, it was not exactly my point. IMO, there are wrong directions,
and pragmatically, the future will tell us. Anyway, I think ... yes,
there's a bit of Quality in anything, mainly 'cause a thing with no
value does not exist.... for example the value of wrong directions is
that we can learn a lot from them.
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Mercoledi 21 marzo Elephant ha scritto:
(about the tranquility and the road )
> there is absolutely nothing in what I just said that's in
> the least a "contradiction" of this ZMM quote. I say
> that if the road produces tranquility then it is alright.
> There isn't any other test that I've
> invented. What you're objecting too is my saying that ultimately, in
> metaphysics, only one road produces tranquility. It's fine for
> you to object to this Marco - but when you do, please produce
> arguments that are relevant to the point.
>
My pachydermic friend, why so angry?
You're right. I did not produce the basic argument I was considering an
obvious basic disagreement we have. You think there are WRONG DIRECTIONS
and one RIGHT DIRECTION, absolute and ultimate, leading to the TRUTH.
IMO, the MOQ says: no.
There are competing truths, and not only 'cause we start from different
positions, as Andrea rightly says, but also 'cause every single person
has a multiple starting position, according at least to four levels of
existence. The biologic truth is competing with the social truth and
the intellectual truth.
> A metaphysics is to the soul what a repair manual is to a
> motorbike. There's a right way and a wrong way, and one of the most
> important facets of the right way, as Pirsig beautifully expresses,
> is a kind of loving attention and patience with the thing.
> A feel for the material.
>
>
> That's why we get the dangerous profusion of bad roads, roads
> that aren't satisfactory in the end, and not in the mean time
> either, if people could really care to look at where they are.
> Not caring - that's what Pirsig is really railing against.
Agree, completely. Care is the basic point. But IMO it is not exactly a
road, or direction. I'd say it is the attitude we have to keep when we
"travel". By means of this attitude, we will find good roads. This is
our supposed disagreement. I think there are a lot of good roads, and we
will discover them if we only love the journey.
Actually, no need for a precise end: the self is the end: GNOTHI SE
AUTON, isn't it? Of course there are also wrong roads. Good roads create
value; wrong roads don't.
But, that's more important, my point is that all these roads are TRUE,
and again I say this point it was not against you . Actually we are
building our own road, starting from the point other people have built
before us. The future will say if we have been good travelers.
(about religions)
>
> Another kind of profusion of roads is deceptive - and that's the
> one that's often quoted against my kind of position to say that
> I'm imposing my own peculiar vision on the whole world. That's
> the profusion of the great religions. But the way it seems to me
> is this: if these traditions have anything going for them at all it
> is that they have a share of one common truth. Do you see
> things differently Marco?
Interesting point. My English here is a little defective... If I
understand well you hold that there's a basic underlying truth in
religions.... I don't know, really I don't know. IMO If there was really
something of common, they should respect each other... They never did.
They don't.
The reciprocal respect should be based upon the acceptance of the
eventual common backgrounds and the possibility of alternative truths.
(about the art of explanation)
> > MARCO:
> > EXPLAIN: "To make plain, manifest or intelligible; to
> > account for; to elucidate; TO DEFINE.
> > EXPLANATION: "The meaning of or REASON GIVEN
> > FOR ANYTHING" [Latin Explanare: to make smooth]
> > (The Webster's Dictionary of the American Language,
> > Marco's emphasis)
>
> ELEPHANT:
> ... these reports of my language faze me not a jot. Indeed.
> Quite. Absolutely.
> To explain is to make plain.
> Newton has not made gravity plain, he has made the behavior
> of objects under the influence of this force plain.
> To explain is to make manifest.
> Newton has not made Gravity manifest, he has cited it as the
> obscure force responsible for manifest behaviour.
> To explain is to make intelligable.
> Newton has not made gravity intelligable, he has made the
> behaviour of objects under it's influence intelligable.
> To explain is to account for.
> Newton has not accounted for Gravity.
> To explain is to elucidate.
> Newton casts no light on gravity: he assumes gravity in order
> to cast light on the heavenly bodies.
> To explain is to define. Newton does not define gravity. He defines
> how behaviour attributed to gravity will function.
> An explanation gives the meaning of a thing.
> Newton has not told us what gravity means - that we knew already
> from our inability to fly.
> An explanation gives the reason for a thing.
> Newton has most definitively not given us any reason for gravity.
> Einstein has come nearer, in that he can describe why gravity can
> occur in terms other than gravity itself (which newton cannot).
> But even Einstein gives no explanation for why space should be
> curved in the presence of mass - which
> is his way of *stating* the brute fact of gravity.
>
My dear hair-splitter, I understand your quasi-poem about gravity. I
agree! I AGREE! Back to my first message about it, I wrote:
DAN:
> ... According the The General Theory of Relativity,
> gravitation occurs because time is
> slower in the vicinity of any massive body.
MARCO:
> From these words I realize that:
>
> 1) The "General Theory of Relativity" has been invented about
> 100 years ago. Just like "Newton's Law of Gravity", it's an
> intellectual pattern created to explain a Natural Phenomenon.
> Dan calls this phenomenon "Gravitation".
The Natural Phenomenon called (not only by Dan) "Gravitation" *is* the
falling apple.
So: Newton has created an intellectual pattern of value to explain why
do apples fall and planets fly. He gave a reason for it. He explained
it. And as we need to handle the intellectual pattern of value, he
coined a term "Gravitation". Gravitation is the falling apple... the Law
of Gravity is the intellectual explanation.
You words about Einstein are very important. Yes, he does not explain
WHY the space is curved by masses... Actually he explains what is the
force of gravity. Again, IMO he explains the explanation of a
phenomenon, and the explanation creates the need for another
explanation. A never ending road.....
Imo the whole problem is that you pretend a definitive explanation.
ELEPHANT:
Why do apples fall?
ARISTOTLE:
'cause they are weighty
ELEPHANT:
What is weight?
NEWTON:
It's a force which depends on the mass of Earth.
ELEPHANT:
A force? What is it?
EINSTEIN:
Actually what we call "force" is a curved space where apples are moving
within.
ELEPHANT
Yes? And what is a curved space?
MARCO:
I don't know. IMO any eventual answer will be not definitive.
> > ELEPHANT:
> >> We're still waiting for our long promised scientific
> >> *theory of everything* - it has *not* arrived, repeat
> >> *not* arrived.
> > MARCO:
> > Of course, Elephant. I agree. Probably it will never come.
> > I don't see the problem.
>
> ELEPHANT:
> Then pay attention. If the cause of gravity
> (or mass -space curvature) is not understood,
> it follows that neither Einstein nor Newton nor anyone
> else, including you, has ever given an explanation or a
> reason or an account or an illucidation or what have
> you of gravity. They have simply described it -
> though the 'simply' is perhaps superfluous as it is above all through
> description that we increase our mastery over the world.
Description, mathematisation, explanation.... you can use the term you
want. Anyway, IMO it is impossible to offer a DEFINITIVE reason for
anything. I'm not saying that there is not a truth. I'm saying that we
can't know if there is a truth, and anyway we are not able to find it.
We just describe or explain things up to the degree of depth we need and
we can. But every answer is the output of an intellectual process and an
input for consequent intellectual processes.
> ELEPHANT:
> You have a defective dictionary.
>
Well, it's very old (1963 edition). I'm not American and it's a
coincidence that I've the Webster's. I've found it in the garage of my
parent's house. I really don't know where it comes from...
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Giovedi 22 marzo Elephant ha scritto:
> On the one hand a road is an option, something we may choose.
> Marco *seems* to be saying that all options are as good as
> each other - that might be a misreading but the tone of it is a
> source of our disagreement.
>
Hope I answered it is not my point. I say that all roads are true, that
is, when we build a road we modify the environment. We build a road to
Rome, then Rome is not as it was before.
> On the other hand a road is a something that starts at A and leads
> invariably to B, so that if I stand by the Rubicorn and take one
> road I go to Rome, and if I take the other I don't.
(you must know that the Rubicon - not Rubicorn - flows exactly here
where I live!!!)
And... don't forget the Earth is round! Columbus was going to India and
found America. Did he discovered or created America? The answer is....
MU.
Of course he has discovered America... but at the same moment he has
created a new America. What's nice is that both the Natives and Columbus
did not know anything about America. The formers did not need that term,
for them America was "all there is"; the latter was sure to be in Far
East.
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Giovedi 22 marzo Jonathan ha scritto:
> MARCO
> > If a road to truth is just that - your travel towards the truth,
> > this yields many good roads - at least in that the path you
> > have to travel depends on where you start, even if we are
> > all going to Rome. And we happen to begin our
> > journey from a different place each, don't we? Isn't this
> > beginning defined by what we understood (remember) and
> > what we did not understand as yet? So we
> > have different specific goals, different roads, for each of us.
Dear Jonathan, let me point out that actually these words are from
Andrea. Anyway....
JONATHAN:
> Let me interject that the part of any road one truly knows
> is the section one is on. If you want to go to Rome, you
> need to have a good plan/map to get you there.
Well, I've said exactly the same thing in my message of March 17.
> Marco's point is that there may be several alternative routes.
Andrea's, I guess
> Elephants point is that some routes are right, some are wrong,
> and won't get you to Rome.
> I wish to make the point that one may (perhaps accidentally)
> find a road that leads to somewhere better than Rome.
Agree. Completely. Columbus is the example.
********************************
thank you all
Marco.
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