I love the puzzled stance!Questions are so much more valuable than the
answers they engender!
Surely "flux" is a way of saying "indivisible" (or at least, indivisible
according to resort intrinsic 'properties')? and yes, to an extent, that's
what I mean - I do tend to think of the MOQ as an inquiry into this
question. (but not only). I'd not come across Dewey's statement to the
effect that taste is the only thing..etc., - but this seems similar to the
position that I took in an argument with Struan, to the effect that we
actually only have (in some kind of concrete sense) "subjective" viewpoints,
and so-called "objective reality" is a useful fiction....is it similar?
the next part of your argument: I'm afraid I've lost it (well, it's late);
but I think you're still questioning whether an object might be [a thing in
itself] intrinsically an object, without having intrinsic properties?? is
that right? - my answer is to turn it on it's head and say that objects
don't have properties, objects ARE properties..... of what we call
"quality", perhaps? ( actually, what I call information, but that's another
argument)
Points 2 and 3 seem related; the everything before we objectify it (flux, /
the eternal unchanging, etc); that was what i meant when i said about
everything being divisible: either we say everything is a whole (thing?),
and isn't comprehensible by chopping it up into maneagable bites, or we say
that the apparent whole is actually made up of fundamental bits (atomism).
The two approaches seem incompatible, yet each seems insufficient. A third
way, (excluding asking Tony Blair) seems to be to say that there must
actually be a third way, and that perhaps it has some of the characteristics
of both others (hopefully the good bits, without the limiting bad bits) and
that would be to say that Quality is that thing which is, as it were,
outside the rational schemes of the other two approaches (re Godel). I tend
to this approach, but admit that it amounts to something similar to
postulating Deity in order to make all the other schemes work. So no
surprises there, then.
I wasn't specifically thinking of Zeno (I don't actually know enough about
the paradoxes- it's all a question of time, isn't it?), but yes, the
holographic nature of objects-and-their-relationships ("as above so below")
does seem to point to the notion that, at any scale one could choose, one
could find self-evident "objects" which seem real and concrete in their own
right;it does seem that one could divide reality into objects ad
infinitum.... as to whether this would be a process which is actually
infinitely capable of revealing objects, or whether there might be limits,
is a matter for speculation.
but, in quoting Dewey, aren't you saying the same as Chris was saying?
cheers,
ppl
>
> ELEPHANT PUZZLES OVER THIS:
> Er, this appears (a) to run counter to your earlier comments, and (b) to
> present too many confusioning aspects for me to think about all at once -
I
> don't know where to start. I'm hoping Rog will jump in and put both of us
> right before things get out of hand. OK:
> (1) objects could be independant of our veiwpoint without having
> intrinsic properties, if by intrinsic property you mean something like the
> Kantian Noumena - the thing in itself. How is this possible? Well you
> could treat ZAMM as an enquiry into this question. It seems to me that
the
> Answer Prisig gives is like the answer of James and Dewey. Dewey says
that
> far from there being no accounting for taste as the Rationalist would say,
> taste is the only thing worth accounting for and arguing about. Now in a
> sense, and importantly for MOQ, our realities, objects, are the concrete
> manifestations of our tastes - what we value, our prefered mode of
inquiry,
> purposes and so on. So, when we argue about what we should value, about
> what we should think of as having Quality, well, in these cases we are
also
> arguing about what is real, about what objects there are. Well, why are
we
> arguing about these tastes, and these realities, if there are no intrinsic
> properties? For this reason: we naturally want to have the tastes (and
> objects) that will serve us best, and pursuing them is pursuing a reality
> which is independent of any current veiwpoint or taste. Indeed, I would
say
> that it is pursuing Quality itself (and not Truth, as Pierce would have
it).
> (2) I am really at a loss to understand what you are driving at with
the
> 'divisible' thing. I'd love to discuss Zeno's paradoxes, if that's what
> you're on about. Is it?
> (3) Re everything being an object. Er, no, actually. We have to have
a
> name for what goes on before we objectify things in pursuit of quality.
> Plato borrowed Heraclitus' term: flux. It seems to fit. James borrowed
it
> too. And then there is Quality itself: an object? I think not. Look up
> Prisig talking about universals and particulars in ZAMM.
>
>
> This would be about twice as long if Inserted all the appropriate IMO's,
so
> it will have to do as it is.
>
>
> Yours typically puzzled about the lot of you,
>
> Pzeph
>
>
>
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