Hi elephant, Marco,
I feel that we all agree on most (not all) points, although we here and there we
play slightly different games with language, and thus come up with seemingly
contradictory statements. I also greatly appreciated Marco's contribution about the
"falsehood" of the language/reality dualism, and I shall leave it to Marco to
explain further if needed, but I'm adding my two cents. Even if we let the
positivist alone, and think of language in its broadest sense, it is still
everyone's experience that some subjects are beyond words, in the obvious sense
that, for example, we could never describe exactly what value there is, say, in
Mozart's art. Nevertheless, if forced to, we would begin to produce statements about
it, albeit feeling that none of them completes the description. No matter accurate,
the description seems vague. But isn't our feeling of value vague in itself?
Couldn't that be that the idea that there *is* something out there (or in there, in
our "heart" so to speak) and that we cannot make a good report of it, is really a
false idea? This seems to me the false dualism attacked by Marco. Maybe our feeling
of value (which always has to do with static quality) is limited by that same
horizon defined by our use of language. Like the indians that couldn't tell green
from yellow, for them there *was* no yellow - not that it was there and they
couldn't express it. I think here I am referring to language in a still broadest
sense, and this is a bit confusingly put, for sure, but I think there's a relevant
point here.
> ANDREA WROTE:
> > I see a discussion on metaphysical subjects as a "dance", so to speak, much more
> than
> > a logical, semantically-sound exchange. I also think this is why, for example,
> Pirsig choose to write *art* instead of a tractatus, and why eastern
> > philosophies dropped logical reasoning from the start - not that logics were
> *harmful* for their goals, it was simply not necessary.
>
> ELEPHANT:
> >I like "dance". But I don't like the idea that there is this other,
> "semantically sound" thing we could be doing instead: even the most
> >rigourous kind of science is a "dance" in just the way that you have been talking
> about, albeit one in 4/4 time: it is an artful dance because it is
> >creating the pattern in the world through one's own actions, and not because it
> is anything less than logical.
I both agree and disagree. I agree that science is a dance (to mention the
positivists one last time, I don't think their "system" works in any useful way -
not even that it can really be applied to science as it actually is). But I think I
disagree that is logical (not that I mean it is *less than...*, just *not exactly*,
or *not only*). Science progress is of course driven by a perception of beauty
probably just as much as it is by empirical observation. Many great scientists much
more than "suggested" it in their autobiographical or philosophical writings. The
"dance" metaphor is very good here. Of course any dance has its rules - and just as
much, "good dancing" is -not- defined by "observing the rules as close as possible".
The perfect dancer builds on the rules, and observes them perfectly, but foremost,
works out at expressing Quality within and above that formal context. She puts her
heart in there, and her dancing is completely different from that of any other
perfect dancer (although the rules are the same for all).
> And the idea that all eastern Philosophies dropped logical reasoning *from the
> start*sounds to me like a bit of a myth. ... (think of Wittgenstein's metaphor
> of the ladder discarded on reaching the height). True logic is useful, then, in
> showing us some limits to some supposedly logical *pictures* of the world, and the
> abandonment of such approaches is not the abandonment of *logic*. But I think you
> may be saying this when you say that logic is not harmful to reaching our goals,
> just not necessary. I would merely add that it only becomes superfluous when it
> has really done it's job properly in discarding false pictures - and we need to
> remain vigilant about such a task.
Agreed.
> ELEPHANT:
> Yes, it is like you say. Very much so. Unhappiness often is this mismatch
> between intuited and rational goods. Often the unhappiness is the intuition
> that there is *no* good option open to us. But then again, we might wonder
> whether we should say that the intuition of no-good is the cause of the
> unhappiness, or the unhappiness the intuition of no-good. In realitity neither
> causation applies, because they are all one. But it is as valid to
> say that my unhappiness clouds my intuition as it is to say that my intuition
> colours my unhappiness. Maybe reason has a role here, and the
> ennacted sovereign rule of reason might be that situation where we remember that
> intuition fades and returns, that perhaps all we need to do is wait.
> To have patience, and not despair.
Here, I have the feeling that we are following a lot of quite independent threads
within this thread, but possibly they may rejoin sooner or later, so I won't drop
them. The point that unhappiness may be the intuition that there is no good option
open to us, in my view, has some problem with it. I do believe that there are always
*all* options open to us. Meaning: it does not make sense to say that an option is
not open for me now: then it isn't an option (it may look as if I'm playing with
literal meanings, but it is not the case: I'll try to explain further). I believe
that in a strong sense it is reasonable to say that the only reality is
here-and-now-me (I also think this view is ultimately consistent with MOQ, although
it would require careful choice of words and attachment of meanings to them to
discuss it). Any "option" beyond my reach is a rational projection, something in the
map but not in territory, and if one "lives the truth", as you say elsewhere, s/he
would not consider the absence of an option as something real. I also do believe
that in any situation, dropped all rational "artifacts", DQ points at one specific
behavior as the Good for here-and-now-me, and this may be what the taoist call
"non-action" (which of course is not to keep still, but do the thing the world wants
me to do, which is just as saying: the one I want to do, which is just as saying,
instead of "do...", just "be..." the truth).
> ELEPHANT:
> [...] although in an important sense a 'delusion', in practical terms our
> attachment to such pictures of the self and the unhappinesses they bring in their
> wake is very strong. We do not break such bonds by declaring them broken, and we
> do not escape such illusions by declaring them illusory. The problem here is not
> merely a concealment effected by language, although, yes, that is a big part of
> the problem - the bit where Philosophy can help. But the other, bigger, part of
> the problem is not merely seeing and expressing the truth, but living it. To
> experience revelation of divine love is not to experience beatitude. The former
> is like a momentary insight, a beautiful calm moment of truth, but just a moment.
> The challenge then is to make that moment of truth into a life of truth. Anyone
> with a momentary insight can write a book of philosophy, but the goal of a true
> mystic isn't to express the truth (which
> cannot, anyway, be expressed in full) but to live the truth.
Exactly. Especially, "living the truth" and "seeing it" (as a mystical experience)
are not related by the equation "living the truth" = "seeing the truth in each and
every moment of your life". To me, the latter is simply not possible, even if you
are a full-time Yogi. I think that sparse moments of "seeing the truth", which is an
exhilarating, intense experience, provide the fuel that you need to live a moral,
satisfactory, valuable life, without being in the immediate, consciously-felt
presence of God all of your time.
> But the worry, if there is one, remains with the comic-book question: 'why did the
> sage want to catch the bus?' Because we have to rid the answer to
> such a question of all reference to a puppet self in any world map, we have to
> say: 'There wasn't anything in particular that "the sage" wanted at all -
> it just seemed right in the world to stand there and turn away just before the bus
> came, smiling'. Now at first glance that doesn't seem a convincing
> answer. Why not? ... But someone might also say that after all waiting for a bus
> is a telelogical activity, and that if the Sage was standing at the bus stop like
> that, then he must have had a world map in which his self, and his ideas about bus
> timetables, both figured. ... The point then becomes one about our *attachment*
> to such pictures, and not about the existence or non-existence of those pictures.
> Freedom here is something harder to attest to: what constitutes attachment to a
> picture, if standing at the bus-stop doesn't? It seems that the little smile you
> mention, while he turns away from what otherwise seems a minor disaster, looks
> like our best, and only, proof of the sage's sageness.
Yes. If we have to deal with maps, and of course we have, I think sageness amounts
to something that Fritjof Capra (The Turning Point) calls "a playful relationship
with the self" (I am translating back from italian to english, so the words may not
be completely correct). I use my maps but I'm always at least "preconsciously" aware
that they are just that - maps. I am ready to smile if something goes wrong, I am
ready to accept what breaks my certainties, because I knew they were conventional
from the start. I hold "living the truth" as my one and only certainty. I think this
is the peace of mind that the sages point to, and that it can be reached by
everyone.
> ELEPHANT:
> ... I disagree with the claim that comparing value to the infinite allows for a
> notion of progress towards it. We do not progress towards the
> infinte. The infinite is categorically different from the merely indefinitely
> large. An infinite distance is not a distance, and an infinite
> number is not a number. 'Infinitely large' is an oxymoron. Something with a size
> has a beginning and an end. I recognise that it is an essential part
> of some useful mathematics to regard certain kinds of series as approaching
> infinity. But nothing that this logical argument can say will make me
> abandon my intuition that a value, or indeed anthing at all, that is infinitely
> far off, cannot be reached or progressed towards. We are very
> much back in the territory of Zeno's paradoxes here (again). ...
Just a pedantic note, most probably missing your point. The metaphor was about
indefinitely approaching some (non infinite) point. The fact that we often refer to
DQ as "infinite" is probably confusing, in the metaphor DQ is a finite value, and
language indefinitely approaches it. Like, in Zeno's paradoxes we actually have this
notion of progressively approaching a finite value, and the paradox stems from a
wrong assumption about the fact that summing up infinitely many smaller and smaller
time slices adds up to an infinite time. Not much to do with our point, probably.
Perhaps we can drop the mathematical metaphor altogether, I think it did its job :)
> >> ELEPHANT: Where Wittgenstein and Pirsig agree, and Plato too, is in saying
> >> that ordinary language is not a *report* of objects (particular or universal)
> >> in the flux. Wittgenstein says red is not a report. Plato talks about the
> >> impossibility of ascribing whiteness to the flux. Pirsig rightly notes that
> >> objects are a category of being that are added after the primary reality of
> >> dynamic value.
> >>
> ANDREA:
> > Sorry, I miss the term "flux" in context, and possibly "report". Can you
> > elaborate/explain?
>
> ELEPHANT:
> 'Flux' is the Heractitean and Platonic (metaphorical: using the metaphor of
> the river) way of describing the continuity that we have been talking about.
> A "report" is a statement that describes a reality which pre-exists the
> statement. A newspaper article is thus a report, we hope.
Ok, then I agree. (Not a positivistic position from Wittgenstein, after all).
ANDREA:
>To me, as I said, a metaphysical statement looks as something that is not true
> nor false, but has some value...
ELEPHANT:
>[...] It's just that I happen to believe that in this contect the good has an
absolutely universal face: the form of the
>good. So what I would argue is that a metaphysical statement is one that either
has value or does not.
ANDREA:
> ...More specifically, as it relates to the intellectual level, and this is where
the "individual" comes into scene, it
> has some value to me now and to you now. [...]
ELEPHANT:
> Well yes, absolutely, it has to come back to individuals: it has to have
> value for me. But it happens that I think the reason why a really good
> metaphysics (such as might lie in the common ground between Tao and Pirsig)
> would be good for me, and for others, is that it appeals to an entirely
> universal notion of the Good which transcends and pre-exists those illusory
> puppets of the self we were talking about, and so can't be relative to them
> in any way. It's a theory. Actually it's Plato's theory of forms.
But, any metaphysical truth is static quality. I think you may have two metaphysical
theories that completely contradict each other, and both valuable. Just like, two
completely different music composers, for example one doing rock and another doing
classical music, each perhaps despising each other (because they don't comprehend
their respective languages), and still there could be beauty in the work of both.
(Note that mine is not an "anything goes" position, anyway). What is probably
universal is what is better than what in a specific context. But there is no
absolute better when comparing static quality expressions coming from different
contexts. If that does not offend anyone, you can think of comparing religions. I
travelled Thailand in summer and I strongly felt the value in thai Buddhism. I can
also strongly feel value in Christian teachings, and taoism, and so on. Perhaps (but
I hope not to be expanding too much this thread's collection of topics), the DQ
vision has a counterpart in the notion of a "global religion" as surfaces in some
New Ageist (but with a central concept of quality: I would not say that it would
have value for everyone to believe in Atlantis, the Belt of Orion and all that).
All the best again
Andrea
-- Andrea Sosio mailto: Andrea.Sosio@italtel.itMOQ.ORG - http://www.moq.org Mail Archive - http://alt.venus.co.uk/hypermail/moq_discuss/ MD Queries - horse@wasted.demon.nl
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