From: Paul Turner (paul@turnerbc.co.uk)
Date: Mon Jul 18 2005 - 16:49:18 BST
Hello again Sam,
Good to hear from you and may I say that I was disappointed that you could
not make it to Liverpool.
(As always seems to be the case at the moment, time away from home, and work
in general, is preventing me from spending as much time as I should when
writing these posts. As such, the quality is suffering but I wanted to
reply to your question anyway. Besides, I guess most people are in the same
boat and it doesn't stop them from writing some really good stuff!)
>Paul said to Bo:
>
>> As I've said before, with no reply, I think generalised propositional
>> truths
>> are the "organising principle" of intellect and skilled abstract symbol
>> manipulation (allowing ever more general constructions) is its mechanism.
>
>Would you be willing to unpick that sentence (or point me to where you've
>unpicked it elsewhere) so that I can get clear on exactly what you're
>claiming?
>
>I'm particularly interested in the 'mechanics' of how what you're
>describing
>works. That is, how do 'generalised propositional truths' organise
>anything?
>and, if symbol manipulation is a mechanism, who or what is 'doing' the
>manipulation?
Paul: I am suggesting that "generalised propositional truths" organise the
intellectual level by maintaining central justificatory relationships within
(or between) webs of beliefs, by means of e.g. logical inference. In ZMM,
Pirsig talks about concepts being organised into hierarchies of thought with
philosophy being in the most general, highest echelon.
"This structure of concepts is formally called a hierarchy and since ancient
times has been a basic structure for all Western knowledge....These
structures are normally interrelated in patterns and paths so complex and so
enormous no one person can understand more than a small part of them in his
lifetime. The overall name of these interrelated structures, the genus of
which the hierarchy of containment and structure of causation are just
species, is system." [Pirsig, ZMM, p.99-100]
"He saw philosophy as the highest echelon of the entire hierarchy of
knowledge. Among philosophers this is so widely believed it's almost a
platitude, but for him it's a revelation. He discovered that the science
he'd once thought of as the whole world of knowledge is only a branch of
philosophy, which is far broader and far more general." [Pirsig, ZMM p.125]
I prefer the (Quinean?) term "web of beliefs" because it seems less
inflexible but says pretty much the same thing. In these webs, the
generalised propositional truths are "central" and the slowest to change
whilst the beliefs at the "edge" of the web may change quickly and often.
I propose that the "mechanism" of abstract symbol manipulation is, to use
Rorty's phrase, "self-reweaving." This passage, from Rorty, sums up what
I'm suggesting.
"Think of human minds as webs of beliefs and desires, of sentential
attitudes - webs which continually reweave themselves so as to accommodate
new sentential attitudes. Do not ask where the new beliefs and desires come
from. Forget, for the moment, about the external world, as well as about
that dubious interface between self and world called "perceptual
experience." Just assume that new ones keep popping up, and that some of
them put strains on old beliefs and desires. We call some of these strains
"contradictions" and others "tensions." We alleviate both by various
techniques. For example, we may simply drop an old belief or desire. Or we
may create a whole host of new beliefs and desires in order to encapsulate
the disturbing intruder, reducing the strain which the old beliefs and
desires put on it and which it puts on them. Or we may just unstitch, and
thus erase, a whole range of beliefs and desires - we may stop having
attitudes toward sentences which use a certain word (the word "God," or
"phlogiston," for example)....the web of belief should be regarded not just
as a self-reweaving mechanism but as one which produces movements in the
organism's muscles - movements which kick the organism itself into action.
These actions, by shoving items in the environment around, produce new
beliefs to be woven in, which in turn produce new actions, and so on for as
long as the organism survives. I say "mechanism" because I want to
emphasize that there is no self distinct from this self-reweaving web. All
there is to the human self is just that web." [Rorty, Objectivity,
Relativism and Truth, p.93]
If you substitute "intellectual patterns of value" for "web of beliefs" I
think there is a good basis for a translation from one to the other.
I'm sure you won't like it, but I hope this is (at least the beginning of)
an answer for you.
Regards
Paul
MOQ.ORG - http://www.moq.org
Mail Archives:
Aug '98 - Oct '02 - http://alt.venus.co.uk/hypermail/moq_discuss/
Nov '02 Onward - http://www.venus.co.uk/hypermail/moq_discuss/summary.html
MD Queries - horse@darkstar.uk.net
To unsubscribe from moq_discuss follow the instructions at:
http://www.moq.org/md/subscribe.html
This archive was generated by hypermail 2.1.5 : Mon Jul 18 2005 - 18:38:44 BST