Greetings to Andrea, Elephant, Marco, Platt and all!
I believe Andrea makes an excellent point!
One serious problem with dismissing Marco's response that "all roads are
true" is that we really don't know how many versions of the truth exist
until we experience them. To believe that there is only one truth and
therefore, a limited numbers of roads leading to it, may have been an
appropriate response in Newton's day, but modern science has proven from the
observation of subatomic particles that not only do myriad outcomes occur,
but that two separate events can occur at exactly the same place at exactly
the same time, and (most importantly) that the outcome is always physically
affected by influences exerted by the scientific observer as a result of his
or her specifically individual experiences. We all must take great care not
to fall into the "gumption trap" of Value Rigidity of which RMP writes:
"At first try to understand this new fact not so much in terms of your big
problem as for its own sake. That problem may not be a big as you think it
is. And that fact may not be as small as you think it is. It may not be the
fact you want but at least you should be very sure of that before you send
the fact away. Often before you send it away you will discover it has
friends who are right next to it and are watching to see what your response
is. Among the friends may be the exact fact you are looking for.
"After a while you may find that the nibbles you get are more interesting
than your original purpose of fixing the machine. When that happens you've
reached a kind of point of arrival. Then you are no longer strictly a
motorcycle mechanic, you're also a motorcycle scientist,..."
ZMM, copyright 1974, 28th printing
May 1982, page 281
Thracian Bard
----- Original Message -----
From: Andrea Sosio <andrea.sosio@italtel.it>
To: <moq_discuss@moq.org>
Sent: Wednesday, March 21, 2001 1:53 AM
Subject: Re: MD Inside and Outside
> Elephant, Marco, all,
>
> So we have two positions:
> Marco (previously): "all roads are good".
> Elephant: "only one road produces tranquility."
>
> Given that these are actually opposite positions, since you both seem to
accept "to
> produce tranquility" as equivalent to "to be good"... and presumably in
metaphysics
> this would also be equivalent to "to progress towards truth"...
>
> If a road to truth is just that - your travel towards the truth, this
yields many
> good roads - at least in that the path you have to travel depends on where
you
> start, even if we are all going to Rome. And we happen to begin our
journey from a
> different place each, don't we? Isn't this beginning defined by what we
understood
> (remember) and what we did not understand as yet? So we have different
specific
> goals, different roads, for each of us.
>
> Then of course there is a divergence between my opinion and elephant's
about
> believing in absolute truth, as surfaced in other threads. Elephant
believes he can
> actually enter Rome, while I doubt it. But this looks like a quite a
different
> issue, isn't it?
>
> For what concerns "All roads are good" - I'm not sure what that means, out
of
> analogy. Ppossibly, there's something in Marco's definition of a road that
makes it
> intrinsically good - that rules superhighways with lots of traffic and
going in the
> wrong direction. Or, he meands there's some bit of quality in anything, if
you can
> look closely enough to see it. Which one?
>
> I hope this is not just adding noise to the ongoing discussion, but I can
see
> something that is in resonance with my general interests (absolutes and
progress to
> name just a couple), so I couldn't help.
>
> Thanks,
>
> Andrea Sosio
>
> P.S.: I never noticed the relation between platonic
understanding=remembering and
> the relationship between RMP and Phaedrus in ZAMM. Cool... :)
>
>
>
>
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