From: skutvik@online.no
Date: Thu Feb 05 2004 - 11:41:09 GMT
Paul and All
3 Feb. you said
Bo said prev:
> Socrates, Plato or Aristotle did not know any subject/object
> distinction. Socrates definition was TRUTH ...not separate from
> belief, but different from OPINION (that the Sophists kept
> manipulating) but note that Pirsig feels the need for strengthening it
> by his: "That what is independent of ...etc." which is what we define
> as OBJECTIVE.
> Paul:
> By "belief" I meant what you mean by "opinion." I should have said
> *mere* belief. I don't think Pirsig is adding anything that Plato
> failed to mention. What you are describing is Pirsig's summary of the
> birth of subjective and objective in the epistemological sense.
By whatever "logy", the events described in ZMM is the birth,
conception, emergence, coming of age ... of SOM!
> Bo said:
> Plato's permanence were IDEAS, only with Aristotle did something
> resembling S/O (form/substance) emerge.
> Paul:
> And here you are talking about how Aristotle invented subjective and
> objective in the metaphysical sense.
SOM did not spring full-fledged into being, maybe it only got its
final form with Descartes (BTW: Ari's version was
appearance/substance. My fault)
PIRSIG:
> "In order to win the battle for Truth in which areté is subordinate,
> against his enemies who would teach areté in which truth is
> subordinate, Plato must first resolve the internal conflict among the
> Truth-believers." [ZMM p.388]
I accept this - of course I do - but just wanted to point out that this
is Pirsigs interpretation - a most convincing one, but it's difficult
imagining Plato postulating something as higher than GOOD
(could you provide a quote ...from Plato?)
Again, I accept Pirsig's interpretation, but contemporary Greek
thinkers did not know Aretê as Good. It got translated into "virtue"
and the translators would certainly have used "good" if that was
the case. It was P. in the RT passage in LILA who made this
"discovery". This is most convincing but it's no use by presenting
it as if the Greeks knew the MOQ, to the contrary they saw the
S/O (or the embryonic form it had with Plato) as the best.
PIRSIG:
> "Plato's second synthesis is the incorporation of the Sophists' areté
> into this dichotomy of Ideas and Appearance. He gives it the position
> of highest honor, subordinate only to Truth itself and the method by
> which Truth is arrived at, the dialectic. But in his attempt to uniteis is
> the Good and the True by making the Good the highest Idea of all,
> Plato is nevertheless usurping areté's place with dialectically
> determined truth." [ZMM p.388]
I don't object to a single thing here, only that Plato did not say
that Aretê is Good and now I will usurp it. This is Pirsig looking
back armed with his Aretê=Good (Quality) insight.
> Bo said:
> Truth was his highest good.
> Paul:
> No, good was his highest Idea.
Could you please draw Plato's metaphysical "diagram"?
> Paul:
> It is you that makes it difficult to understand. In the past you have
> said that intellect is SOM then it was subject-object logic then
> subjective/objective knowledge and now it is impartiality. Seven years
> and counting Bo, is it the misunderstanding of all of us?
OK, but it is hard to make this simple as I seem to be the only
one (Mati exempted) to see that the MOQ rearranges
EVERYTHING and leaves a new world in its wake. It requires a
little juggling, but the important first step is to see that intellect is
a static level and as blind to the Quality context as the rest of the
levels.
Now, the Q-context had two stages: The first was the ZMM when
P. discovered the SOM*) i.e: that intellect divides the world into
subjects and objects. The second stage is the MOQ proper where
intellect is the static value of the S/O distinction, here the "M" is
removed and "impartiality" (objectivity) is the key.
*) SOM is a MOQ property thus the first criticisms of LILA was
that there is no SOM (Strawson) which is symptomatic: Intellect
from its own view does not want any notion of it being a
metaphysics: It is reality itself, a reality where the mind/matter
(subjective/objective) is the fundamental slash.
> Look at what you have written here:
Bo:
> > "Yes impartial, that's it. In ZMM Pirsig writes (in describing the
> > emergence of SOM): "...But now as the result of the growing IMPARTIALITY
> > of the Greeks to the world around them ...etc."
> So S/O is just impartiality, an approach to knowledge, but then
> "this is the way the the S/O distinction must be understood in the MOQ;
> the value of an objective reality versus opinion."
Yes, have we finally arrived at a common understanding?
> Now it's about objective reality again, a metaphysical claim!
As said above, after the SOM has lost its "M" only the said S/O
impartiality is left, no metaphysical claim.
Paul previously:
> > > In
> > > Plato's dialogues, you often find his characters using the "analytic"
> > > truths of mathematics to demonstrate this "objectivity" but even those
> > > have been shown to be one from a possible many, as described by Pirsig
> > > in the section on Poincare in ZMM.
Bo previously:
> > About "one from a possible many" (many what?) you have to spoon-feed me.
Paul:
> Axioms, "self evident truths."
We agree that Plato was the the proto-SOMist and that his "truth"
compares to "the objective", but then you seem to say that there
are many truths ...many axioms and brought this passage from
ZMM:
> "Poincaré concluded that the axioms of geometry are conventions, our
> choice among all possible conventions is guided by experimental facts, but
> it remains free and is limited only by the necessity of avoiding all
> contradiction. Thus it is that the postulates can remain rigorously true
> even though the experimental laws that have determined their adoption are
> only approximative. The axioms of geometry, in other words, are merely
> disguised definitions." [ZMM p.270]
But there is no disagreement at all. My point is that the new S/O
reality that emerged with the Greeks by and by resulted in
science and technology and modernity as we know it. The fact
that geometrical axioms and scientific truths have been shown to
be provisional or conventions (in MOQish: from the social level)
does not diminish the enormous static good that the S/O
represents.
> P.S. As an aside, I'm currently writing a report on Information Quality
> for a company in the UK, nowhere does a sharp subject/object distinction
> or the search for immortal principles come into the writing of the report
> yet it is clearly not just a social activity. A manipulation of abstract
> symbols to convey (hopefully) coherent ideas describes what I'm doing
> perfectly. What level would BoMOQ put my report writing in?
In intellect naturally. You are striving to be impartial, to say
something that is objectively true - about general phenomena that
can be verified - repeatedly in an experimental situation if
necessary. Intellect is so cemented in the Western world that
nobody in her/his right mind can base "reports" - or anything else
- on anything else than the above said objectivity ...which is our
modern "search for immortal principles".
IMO.
Bo
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