Hi Bo, Sam, Glen, et al,
Some thoughts:::::
> but who - before Pirsig - has
> undertaken such a task? I know of
> no one - in the sense of pointing to an "old"
> metaphysics that the new was
> supposed to replace.
How about Diderot? page 24 Structure of Evil - Becker
with my own inserted emphases:
QUOTE
"We have already noted Diderot's proposal that the
sciences be centered on man, and we have also seen how
similar it was to Hume's. Now we must note something
further, namely, that Diderot's revolt against the
Newtonian world picture was double-edged. 1) Not only
did it place man at the center of the physical world;
BUT 2) at the same time it saw that mechanistic
science could not allow for the primacy of free, MORAL
man. And it was with this SECOND edge that Diderot
dealt the crippling blow to the Newtonian mystique.
For one thing, he downgraded mathematics, the queen of
the sciences, by accusing it of falsifying nature
since it deprived bodies of their QUALITATIVE
existence. Diderot attacked the very stronghold of the
new scientific fetishism, and made a new and
shattering proposal: that science had to have a
THREEFOLD object, and not a SINGLE, mechanistic one:
existence, QUALITIES, utility -this was the
comprehensive realm of a mature science. Little wonder
that Sainte-Beuve called Diderot the "most synthetic
genius of his century (18th)." His vision of a mature
science - one that unites quality, morality, and
quantity - is one that only now (with Pirsig?) we are
beginning to comprehend. Goethe later continued the
attack against Newton for leaving quality out of
science, and generations of "true" scientists have
softly chuckled at the poet's perversity.
END QUOTE
> but likewise they don't point to any
> faulty mind/matter
> (S/O)universe.
> but the
> MOQ is something unheard of and I wouldn't have
> invested so much in it if
> weren't, I knew from the first moment.
How about Rousseau? page 29 Structure of Evil - Becker
QUOTE
It was clear that Newtonian science was based on a
firm law; consequently, in order to be a Newton of the
moral world one would have to find the law WITHIN
HUMAN NATURE, on which a new scientific morality could
be based. Furthermore, it would have to be a peculiar
kind of "law." It would have to be a law which showed
that man as he was now, was not man as he should be:
it had to provide a standard of criticism and the hope
of betterment. In a word, it had to hold up to view a
constant image of man by which he could be measured
against the present. Rousseau provided just this by
setting up an IDEAL-TYPICAL "primitive" man (or woman,
Lila????), living in a "state of nature." Thus, at one
stroke, he achieved what Diderot wanted and had
glimpsed, but could not bring himself decisively to
do: he brought reason down from its advanced
abstractions, and applied it to an ANALYTICALLY
SCIENTIFIC PROBLEM: the problem of SHOWING (not
saying) what human nature REALLY is (Lila), so as to
provide a sound program for a regenerated society. The
discrepancy between reason and action was overcome in
the only way it can be overcome: 1) by becoming
analytically scientific, and 2) finding an ideal model
(Lila) UPON WHICH TO PREDICATE NEW MORAL ACTION. This
would give the much-needed pragmatic moral imperative
upon which to begin action. And, WHAT IS BEST, one
would have to fall back upon nothing absolute or
unquestioned, but could follow the very canons of
science itself.
END OF QUOTE
page 30 IBID
QUOTE
As Rousseau declared, in his use of the term "l'homme
de la nature", he did not aim to make man a savage (or
a whore?) relegated to the woods, BUT rather a man (or
woman?) truly fit for free and equal society - what we
would today call an "autonomous man": responsible,
strong, a source of spontaneous values (Dynamic
Quality?) and not automatic social ones... He saw the
place of FICTIONS in the science of man a full hundred
years before Vaihinger
(http://www.findarticles.com/cf_0/m2220/n3_v40/21182132/p1/article.jhtml?term=).
> To say that there is a "terrain" that the SOM
> divides into S/O and the MOQ
> divides into DQ/SQ isn't really right, the
> Quality=Reality is an unheard of
> postulate, nothing can prove it ...except it
> creating a world that makes sense.
This smacks of Hegel's line: "the real is the rational
and the rational is the real."
> by
> declaring the intellectual level a problem (within
> the MOQ) in the sense that it
> broke the rule of "composition" (organisms composed
> of matter, societies
> composed of organisms ...etc.)
Just to be contrarian, can't you say the "intellect is
composed of society" if and only if you model human
sociology based on myth? If Vaihinger is right and
intellect is fiction, then isn't intellect composed of
society? Doesn't Pirsig imply that by his fictive
character Lila? I think there is a way of thinking of
intellect "correctly" that the sentence "intellect is
composed of society" becomes true. In some sense, that
is what Pirsig is trying to correct. Intellect NEEDS
to become composed of society and then we will have a
better future. We need to learn to train our Intellect
socially, treat our intellect as a force composed of
social rituals and myths. Isn't that what he is
saying?
Angus
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