Donald T Palmgren (lonewolf@utkux.utcc.utk.edu)
Sun, 22 Mar 1998 06:18:26 +0100
(I think ?????? is my favorite topic thus far; what about you guys?)
On Sun, 15 Mar 1998, Kevin Sanchez wrote:
> 1. Society isn't objective. Thats why society rejects social and
> biological levels and searches for Truth in inorganic, intellectual, and
> dynamic levels. Proving is not a social activity simply because proofs can
> sometimes be tempered by society. Had Newton been rejected by society, F
> still would have equaled ma.
No, it's not that "proofs can sometimes be tempered by society."
Societies determine *what counts as* a proof.
Because of our school trainning we all start out thinking in a
mode Hegel calls *Rasonnieren* in which proof takes place between the
thinker and the world in the form of a private transaction, and then there
is a second, distinct transaction between the individual thinkers in a
diologue. For *Rasonnieren* the proof takes the form of the shifting and
sorting of htpotheses and suggestions that crystolizes into a proposition
-- a unit of truth. There the movement stops: one knows the truth and
communicating it is a superfluous action.
This contrasts with *begreifend Denken* -- the social transaction
modal. This is the way truth was understood before Plato. The truth exists
in the diologue -- truth is derivative of the arguments adherance to
moral/social standerds and based on its *arte*. Truth is in the diologue
and NOT in any correspondance between the dialogue and the world outside
it (for there is no such thing -- it "exists" only as an abstract mental
projection). (This was a part of Plato's break w/ the sophists.)
The truth in the early Socratic dialogues was the dialogue itself
-- the clash and conciliation of *embodied* conceptions of human life in
the world. With Plato, the truth in the later dialogus stands outside the
dialogue -- in the Forms, and in fact the later dialogues are are scarcely
disguised essays. X is true if it corrisponds to some abstract (timeless,
universal) idea (like F=ma).
Hegalian philosophy (which I'm more or less into) is a return to
the social transaction model -- a revival of dialogical (or in Hegel's
word, "dialectical") thinking. What participants in the dialogue take
seriously (what is real to them) is not the world otside the dialogue
(there is no such world) but one-another. Truth is the ability of
participants to genuenly persuade one-another; the test of a proof is its
ability to win universal assent.
So there are two versions of proof here: the internal transaction
(this is between me and the Forms) and the social transaction. I say the
former is a degenerated picture of the latter. You support the former, but
to show I'm right I can just employ a "got'cha" proof: Try and prove the
validity of the former w/o employing the latter.
A fact is the result of a proof. Society as a whole determins
what counts as proof -- and thus also what counts as factual. (Fair
enough?)
If Newton were rejected F would still equal ma? Come on. F=ma is
a law, an abstraction, an explanation -- a projection from time-space up
onto the Platonic Heavens of absolute TRUTH. But what really exists isn't
this timeless Platonic world of TRUTH, but the activity of projecting. (I
could say "the morality of projecting.") F=ma didn't exist before Newton
-- it *couldn't* exist before the scientific method and the Calculus which
alowed Newton to derive that particuler explanation/law/intelectual
SPoV/whatever you want to call it.
> 2. Objective and subjective are really flawed terminology which perhaps
> should be used anymore. Nothing is really objective or subjective because
> everything is, qualitatively speaking, relative.
Well we can be relativly objective or subjective. :)
I've argued on here before that what "objectivity" is, is a
particuler role that one can assume and drop as occasions demand. I can
take up the part of an objective observer when I'm in the lab (of course
no one is ever 100% objective but okay, that's given; so what?) and I drop
it when I go home and turn on the game.
What's more, objectivity is a role that exists in *our* society,
but has not existed always in every society. (It didn't really become a
big deal until the Enlightenment, about 250 years ago [I mean, in the Dark
Ages you wern't suposed to be objective, you were suposed to be faithful]
-- and it certainly didn't exist in Plato or Aristotle's time!! You can
read THE PHYSICS and see that.)
> 3. Aristotle was the first to create SOM.
Yow! Hold up.
One problem I've been having is the vaguelity of the S-O
distinction. It can mean knower-known, substaintial-insubstantial,
subjectivity-objectivity (and at various times Pirsig uses almost all of
these -- but prodominantly, IMO, he indicates Mind-Body). But absolutly
none of these started w/ Aristotle! I mean, before him Plato had the solid
world of particulers vs. the insubstantial world of Ideas/Forms.
Objectivity didn't exist then. And knower-known (I-Other, I-that...) can
be said to go back as far as civilization, as language, or it could be
argued that all sentient life right down to my idiot cat naturaly
understand 'this is me; that is not me.'
How do you justify the above statement?
So everyone after him either
> copied or came up with SOM on theri own. It seems more plausible that
> Aristotle, who influenced Augastine and Aquinas, probably effected the
> Enlightment more than is known.
Correct me if I'm wrong but I don't think Agustine was much
influanced by Aristotle, and Aquinas (as Roger Bacon pointed out) claimed
to be an expert on Aristotle but couldn't even read Greek. Aquinas looked
at Aristotle through this distorting lense called Christianity.
Don't get me wrong, Aristotle's had a huge impact on the Western
world, yes -- but in a very 2nd, 3rd, and 4th hand manner (and it dosn't
take a lot of knowledge of history to affirm that). It's a monsterous
task to see Aristotle as his Greek contemperaries saw him. It was a very
different world (w/ a very different definition of proof, truth, and
selfhood) back then.
TTFN (ta-ta for now)
Donny
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