From: Paul Turner (paul@turnerbc.co.uk)
Date: Wed Jul 20 2005 - 10:46:03 BST
David,
>Paul said to Bo:
>>>>As I've said before, with no reply, I think generalised propositional
>>>>truths
>>>>are the "organising principle" of intellect and skilled abstract symbol
>>>>manipulation (allowing ever more general constructions) is its
>mechanism.
>
>David:
>I think that 'Quality' is the organising principle of intellect, in fact I
>think that it is the organising principle of all the levels. I'll certainly
>agree with the mechanism though. :)
Paul: Yes, static quality is the organising principle of all levels but the
static values that hold one level together are completely different from the
values that hold other levels together. I am proposing that truth is the
static quality that holds the intellectual level together, and in
particular, what I have called generalised propositional truths - the
platitudes and "institutions" of intellect - are central to each "web of
belief," the sum total of which comprises the intellectual level.
I'm trying to offer a distinction between the social level and the
intellectual level and it occurred to me that there has to be a particular
organising element as there is at each level. The hierarchical structures
of knowledge Pirsig talks about chimed in the webs of beliefs of Quine and
Rorty as a candidate.
So there were beliefs, of course, at the social level, but as part of
stories and rituals (the purpose of which is social cohesion), not as part
of an intricate structure of generalised beliefs existing in complex
justificatory relationships in their own right. Once beliefs started to
arrange into these structures, as was exemplified in the west in the
Platonic dialogues and Aristotelian categorisation, I think we can see
intellect going its own way into new static structures of its own.
Once the Sophists were pushed aside the intellectual dream has always seemed
to have been the attempt to build one perfect web but I think Pirsig (and
many others) have shown that firstly, each web is built on a particular
social base, and secondly, that there are many competing webs and this is
good in an evolutionary context. Even as individuals I don't think we have
one consistent web of beliefs.
>David:
>Statically speaking, I think the 'truths' which change the most often are
>those
>which we value the least. Moreover, the truths which change the least are
>those
>which we value the most. In Zen Buddhism and other oriental philosophies,
>it's
>shown that this attachment to these values causes suffering and can be
>overcome
> by meditation or another similar means that bring one back much closer to
>Dynamic
>Quality, the here and now, and away from the complicated, old, static
>patterns.
Paul: Agreed.
>Moreover, to me a 'belief' is a relic of religion. As Pirsig says
>eloquently
>"Quality is not something you believe in, Quality is something you
>experience."
Paul: Well, translate belief into "static intellectual pattern." I'm not
too concerned over whether "beliefs" or "ideas" or "thoughts" or "memes" is
the best word. I used belief as a way to connect to a Quinean/Rortyan
pattern which I happen to like.
>> Or we may just unstitch, and
>> thus erase, a whole range of beliefs and desires - we may stop having
>> attitudes toward sentences which use a certain word (the word "God," or
>> "phlogiston," for example)....
>
>This time he claims they're completely erased, just like that! If he had
>said
> we can "erase" them by getting them perfect then I would agree, he seems
>to
>think ideas just dissapear for no darn reason.
Paul: I think the reason is that some patterns just lose their value in
terms of their position in the web. I think his use of the word "God"
alongside "phlogiston" creates a certain reaction to the notion of erasure
here. "The earth is flat" seems like a good candidate for erasure to me,
for example. Would you want to get that pattern perfect?
>I don't think that 'shoving static patterns around' causes the creation of
>Dynamic Quality as is implied here. As we know, Dynamic Quality is the
>source
>of all things.
Paul: yes but I see Dynamic Quality as part of what Rorty calls the
environment - the intrusion of new values which produce new intellectual
patterns to be weaved in.
Regards
Paul
MOQ.ORG - http://www.moq.org
Mail Archives:
Aug '98 - Oct '02 - http://alt.venus.co.uk/hypermail/moq_discuss/
Nov '02 Onward - http://www.venus.co.uk/hypermail/moq_discuss/summary.html
MD Queries - horse@darkstar.uk.net
To unsubscribe from moq_discuss follow the instructions at:
http://www.moq.org/md/subscribe.html
This archive was generated by hypermail 2.1.5 : Sun Jul 24 2005 - 04:34:15 BST