From: Michael Hamilton (thethemichael@gmail.com)
Date: Sat Jul 16 2005 - 12:25:53 BST
Hi MSH, Scott, Ham
On 7/16/05, Mark Steven Heyman <markheyman@infoproconsulting.com> wrote:
> Gentlemen. You are all assuming the reality of a transcendent
> Source, then bending over backward to wedge it into your metaphysics.
> The interesting psychological question is why?
MH answers:
Perhaps they were persuded by Pirsig's argument for a transcendent
source in ZMM?
<snip>
> Ham wrote:
> What Smirnov is saying is that we cannot assign any kind of attribute to
> what is already Absolute, except its Unity or "Oneness". The metaphysical
> paradox, then, becomes a logical challenge. What can we say about God in
> order to incorporate it into a workable metaphysics?
>
> msh 7-15-05:
> All of the the above assumes the reality of God
MH interrupts:
Or QUALITY!
<snip>
> Scott wrote:
> I would say that we also cannot attribute to it Unity or "Oneness". It is
> not One, not Many, not One and Many, not neither One nor Many.
>
> msh 7-15-05:
> Assumes the reality of [God], then precedes to talk about it in a way
> that strikes me as, well, gibberish. Sorry, Scott.
>
>
> Ham said:
> Cusa's solution was to construct a logical theory of "otherness".
>
> "The first principle cannot be other either than an other or than nothing
> and likewise is not opposed to anything"... "The world is not God but is not
> anything other than God." God is "not other", he says, because God is not
> other than any other, even though "not-other" and "other" seem opposed. But
> an "other" is not opposed to God from whom it is derived. Thus, for any
> given non-divine X, X is not other than X, and X is other than not X. What
> is unique about the "divine not-other" is precisely that it is not other
> than either X or not X.
>
> msh 7-15-05:
> This assumes the reality of God, then tries to provide a logical
> basis for talking about God. BTW, as suggested above, this logical
> theory of "otherness" is unintelligible to me. But let's just assume
> I suffer from some sort of genetic mental deficiency which prevents
> me from understanding something that Ham and Scott are able to grasp.
MH sympathises:
The first few times I saw Ham and Scott using the logic of "not-other"
and of "contradictory identity", I too found it impenetrable. MSH, you
say it strikes you as "gibberish" - the point is, from the standpoint
of conventional logic, it is *complete* gibberish. It's the exact
equivalent of Pirsig's "definition" of Quality in ZMM:
"Quality is a characteristic of thought and statement that is
recognized by a nonthinking process. Because definitions are a product
of rigid, formal thinking, quality cannot be defined."
> msh continued:
> If the theory of "otherness" or "contradictory identity" allows you
> to incorporate an assumed primary source into your metaphysics, why
> won't the same theory support Pirsig's assumption of Quality as the
> primary source?
MH says:
These theories, to me, pervert traditional logic so that logic can
deal with an ineffable entity such as Quality, God, Tao or whatever.
They don't "support" the assumption of the existence of such an
entity, they merely describe the entity. They are not arguments, but
analogies - analogies for any Western intellectual reader with a
grounding in formal logic (and an ability to understand rather strange
grammatical structures, I think!) For a different audience, a
different analogy would be needed. These Upanishadic ones might be
suitable:
---------- (from http://members.tripod.com/~INDIA_RESOURCE/upanishad.html)
"These rivers run, the eastern (like the Ganges) towards the east, the
western (like the Indus) towards the west. They go from sea to sea
(i.e., the clouds lift up the water from the sea to the sky and send
it back as rain to the sea). They become indeed sea. And as those
rivers, when they are in the sea, do not know, I am this or that
river, in the same manner, all these creatures, proceeding from the
True, know not that they have proceeded from the True. . . ."
In another story, the "wise" father, expounder of the Upanishadic
concept of god, asks his son to dissolve salt in water, and asked him
to taste it from the surface, from the middle and from the bottom. In
each case, the son finds the taste to be salty. To this his father
replies that the 'universal being' though invisible resides in all of
us, just as the salt, though invisible is completely dissolved in the
water. (Chanddogya, VI)
--------------------------------------------------------------------------
Regards,
Mike
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