Andrea,
I am grateful - a good challenge.
ANDREA:
> I said:
> <Saying that language is discrete (and that reality is "continuous") is a
> physical metaphor.>
>
> You objected:
> <It cannot, in this case, be a "physical metaphor", since in order for there
> to be the "discrete" stuff in physics that you claim to be the basis of the
> metaphor, discrete language itself must be used to create it.>
>
> I would like to know what does that mean to you, then, that reality is
> "continuous". Webster defines discrete as non-continuous, but I will be
> satisfied even if you explain why reality is not discrete, without reference
> to continuous, if that is easier.
ELEPHANT:
It really makes no difference whether you define discrete ans non-continuous
or continous as non-discrete. Nothing hangs on that at all.
As to defining this pair in terms other than themselves - this cannot be
done.
If you say that this makes them meaningless, reflect that the same duff
argument holds for "good" and "bad". Run that argument. Do you think
"Good" is meaningless?
I, like Pirsig, like Plato, think that this irreducibility of "good" is part
of it's transcendent reality: all transcendent realities will have this
irreducible character (it does not, of course, hold in reverse: it is not
the case that simply because something is irreducible it will be
transcendent).
I take the same position on "discrete".
Now while you forbid me from mentioning language, that proper injuction
relates only to my offering a "definition" of "discrete". Since I have
already pointed out that it is impossible to do any such thing, I am at
liberty now to talk about language to my hearts content, with the aim not of
*defining* "discrete" but of *elucidating* it.
The crucial point is that discreteness and countable number go together. As
a sign of this, the history of attempts to deal with continua in Maths is
the history of irrational numbers. A mathematisation of the world is
essentially a cutting up of the continuum (the uncountable) into the
countable: discrete units.
"Unit" is a revealing word, etymologically speaking. It relates to "One",
does it not?
Parmenides and Plato on The One - there's a strand of interpretation which
takes them to be talking about the *unit*, and, as far as Plato goes, I'd
agree.
The *form* of the One. This would be another name for the transcendent
reality refered to earlier in the irreducible meaning of "discrete". I'd
say that you can't define "The One" because it is something essential to any
numerically distinct object or concept, and so to anything at all you could
possibly cite in a would-be definition. This is a concept we are just born
with: that we just *have* to be born with. There is no other way.
Discrete. The One. What are we getting at? What's the common theme?
Number. Remember that Plato had some kind of theory about mathematics?
Well this is the heart of it. The integer. Nobody much pauses to consider
what a fascinating and surprising and transcendent thing this "1" stands
for. Boundaries. A thing bounded that is not another thing. 1 and 1 make
2. 1 and 1 don't merge and soupify and comeout as not even one. Hard
edges. Clarity. This is not the stuff of immediate experience. DQ doesn't
come in integers, in units, in a series of 1s and 0s.
None of this ammounts to a defintion - it isn't meant to manage that because
as I've said there are necessary reasons why definition os impossible here.
Instead what I've said ammounts to an elucidation. Walking around the
concept and noticing some of the things we find there.
That can help some people. It's the only kind of help there can be here -
other than, of course, showing the contradiction's inherent in the idea that
these terms could be defined in terms of something else (and that I have
done too).
ANDREA:
> Another point: I don't feel so confident in is that all discreteness in the
> world is a consequence of language. I assume that we are now using the word
> "language" in a very profound way, referring to basic structures of language
> as Chomsky's, rather than any specific language. This makes me wonder if the
> "a priori"-ness you want to attach to the discrete concept isn't the same of
> the property of belonging to the "basic language" underlying all languages
> (proto-language?). I would like you to address this point too (just honestly
> curious).
ELEPHANT:
Yes. I think - If I understand the question. Discreteness, or the One, or
whatever you call it, is a very fundamental property indeed. *The*
fundamental property? Not sure. There are quite a number of transcendent
realities (forms), and Plato's thought (followed by Pirsig and James) is
that for a number of good reasons "Good" is the fundamental form. You
*have* read Plato's Republic, haven't you Andrea? I mean, come *on*!
ANDREA:
> If you want me to point at a short-circuit in your first discussion, I can try
> this one:
>
> Elephant (previously)
> <I take this to be a sign that the discrete/continous distiction is apriori
> and not metaphorical in origin at all. This is in fact born out by the
> dictionary citation which does not limit the distinction to spatio-temporal
> sequence, but applies it *universally*.>
>
> If "discrete" is apriori, you have this problem (IMHO): - you partition
> language in <literal>, <metaphorical>, <none of them>, where the third part of
> language is that which "takes objects off the ground"... "discrete" (if
> apriori) doesn't fit into any of those. It is not literal (referred to any
> object, since it is apriori wrt object) nor metaphorical (same reason). The
> third option - "discrete" belongs to the part of the language that creates
> discreteness seems to be a snake eating itself.
ELEPHANT:
Fair question simple answer. "Discrete" does indeed, in my picture, belong
to the third category of language which "gets the objects off the ground".
The problem you forsee with this categorisation is a chimera, however. This
is precisely what Plato's account of participation in the forms was invented
to make clear. "Discrete" isn't creating discreteness. Discreteness is a
form, an eternal reality in virtue of which the word "discrete" refers.
What the word "discrete" creates when it is used to create objects is not
*dicreteness* (which is eternal) but *participation in discreteness*: viz,
of all the objects in the world we decide to create as discrete countable
ones. We have this power of creation and decision over particulars, not
over the irreducible universals out of which they are made. "Object" would
in normal circustances be a fair short hand for "particular", but since
Plato thinks that universals ("the form of one" in this case) can also be
objects of contemplation, one does have to be careful to refine one's
language and remember this distinction between particulars and universals
when you use the word "object". This is a clarification I didn't have the
opportunity to make until someone invited be to discuss the forms more
explicitly, and I'm glad to be given the chance.
ANDREA:
> For the pleasure of arguing, I wish to add another point:
>
> Elephant (previously):
> <I don't enjoy your talk of "horizons". It appears to be Wittgenstein's
> "limit" - a concept that as you know I don't entertain *at all*. Language as
> it is imposes no "limits" on what can be said, nothing that the poet or the
> philosopher cannot extend - that's what poets and philosophers *do* (what they
> are *for*).>
>
> Strangely, poets and philosophers are a perfect representative of what I would
> use as an example for my own position. (Also the fact that you somehow group
> the two categories together is strange to me).
[ELEPHANT interjects: it would be less strange if you had the example of
Plato formost in your mind: for all his resposibility for the "old quarrel"
he is definitively on both sides!]
> Poets do not really (literally)
> "say": they suggest. Poets are largely metaphorical and imprecise and quite
> often self-contradictory (as refers to literal meaning). Even if a poem has a
> perfectly clear and intelligible "manifest" meaning, we read it as a poem only
> when we have the attitude of reading between the lines, hearing what it
> suggests, feeling the feeling that words vaguely and indirectly describe.
ELEPHANT:
You mistake what I mean by "poet" - and this is really my fault as you are
quite innocently following perfect English. When I think about poetry and
philosophy together, then, because these are in origin both greek words, and
because the original discussion of their supposed opposition was a greek
discussion, I quite often slip into thinking of "poetry" as the greek
"poesis". This is not good. However, in (rather old fashioned) english, it
is possible still to speak of someone as a "poet" without their writing
verse, and this *is* because the word comes originally from the greek
meaning 'maker', being applied as "author" would be to a novelist (or even
perhaps a website designer). This is the sense in which Plato is both
philosopher and poet. A poet is a creator, and a philosopher is an analyst:
Plato is both, in form and content.
But in any case (and returning to modern english), I really don't think the
faults you find in Poetry (imprecision etc) are exclusive to Poetry or
absent in all Prose. Nor do I think that such faults are *necessary*
fetures of poetry. Theay are *usual* - that is true. But the mark of a
great poet, I think, is the incredible precision that is acheived with so
few words. This skill is really of value in both creation and analysis,
both poetry and philosophy.
Do poets only 'suggest' and never 'say'? No, of course not. Of course they
sometimes say things. And do philosophers only say things and never suggest
them? Of course not Andrea (I think you are forgetting your Wittgenstein).
There are some things that can only be suggested ("shown" in Wittgenstein's
vocabulary).
ANDREA:
> my point was and still is: The domain of language (taken literally) is
> discrete. The domain of language taken metaphorically is "somehow" continuous
> because you have your intuition work, and as we know, you have the (pre-,
> non-linguistic) intuition of continuous reality (this should be developed
> further).
ELEPHANT:
OK. But what advance is made by electing to call intuition "the domain of
language"? I would have thought that one of the points of the word
"intuition" was to exclude developed linguistic representations. I mean,
that would be a "thought", not an "intuition".
ANDREA:
> A "sad flower". "Flower" points to a class of referents. "Sad" points to
> another class that is incompatible, literally. This incompatibility causes us
> to either drop the poem or enter a state of mind where we do not take words
> literally. We are within language, but willing to feel where language is
> "pointing" (a place outside of its formal domain).
ELEPHANT:
Poetic itself. And that's 'my' point. "Flower" doesn't simply point to a
class of referents that is incompatible with "sad": it points to *whatever
you please*. There are the dictionary definitions, which we need to rely on
in order for *analysis* to be possible, but there is also *creation*, and in
poetry we can elect to give flowers emotions at the drop of a word. That is
the whole point of the "as if".
MARCO:
> Your position for what regards talking about the unspeakable seems to be that
> you actually speak about the boundaries of the speakable ("What does the
> manipulation of symbols show us? It shows us what it leaves out"), which is
> also a honest thing to do and probably the essence of metaphysics. But IMHO
> that is *not* the main thing RMP and Lao-Tse did. I think they both managed to
> convey a "feeling" of something that is beyond each and every line in their
> books.
ELEPHANT:
You point to a lack of poetic genius on my part. Mea Culpa.
MARCO:
> As a last note, I am perfectly at ease with anyone telling me that I have a
> wrong idea of Zen, simply because I think of course we all, always have a
> wrong idea of Zen. Your kind of confidence that Zen paradoxes have a linear,
> rational solution (i.e., the solution is that "clapping" does not mean "two
> hands" clapping), IMHO, is exactly that which Zen paradoxes are trying to
> deconstruct.
ELEPHANT:
I agree. (You are surprised?). What has animated my contributions on this
point is the thought that there is a right and a wrong *order* of
deconstruction. Just as, when constructing a house, it is not advisable to
begin with the roof tiles, so, when deconstructing a house, it is not
advisable to stand in the middle and explode a bomb. Let us find our toys
and put them away in proper order where we first found them, not drop them
where we lose interest and leave them to trip ourselves and everyone else
up. I am particularly thinking of the talk of discrete particulars, the
finishing touch as it were, the roof on our house, as the bit we ought to
deconstruct carefull first, if we don't want the whole thing piling in on
us. Only free of that attachment can we then free ourselves of "linear
rationalism" as you put it. Think what chaos it would cause if we freed
ourselves of linear rationalism while remaing attached to all the
particulars. (You won't have to tax your imagination *that* hard!!!!).
That equates to standing in the middle of your house and exploding a bomb.
ANDREA:
> Hoping some of the above has any value
ELEPHANT:
Hoping that I have risen to your good challenge.
P.E.
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