From: ian glendinning (psybertron@gmail.com)
Date: Mon Aug 08 2005 - 02:42:07 BST
David,
I think I agree, but I haven't the bandwidth - need to do some work this week.
(I also think Dean's paper picks up on "the Sophists were on the right
track" line too.)
I'm reading David Chalmers' Consciousness book at the moment, and he
bangs on about "the hard problem" - the "subjective aspect" of
consciousness. By virtue of purely logical thought experiments, he is
essentially showing that this "subjective aspect" is not amenable to
causal / logical / scientific analysis, even if it must be dependent
(supervenient) on "physics" in its broadest sence.
Doh, really !? As you say "dialectic, logic and science tend to
preclude its discussion". It, is quality. I think you're close to the
core. Take care.
Ian
On 8/7/05, david buchanan <dmbuchanan@hotmail.com> wrote:
> Ian, Paul, Bo - plus Sam, Matt and all MOQers:
>
> I've been thinking about rhetoric and the Sophists lately and have noticed
> mention of it here too. I extracted some quotes from chapter 29 of ZAMM.
> There are explanations and supporting details between the quotes, but I
> think these four paragraphs sketch out a pretty clear picture of the big
> idea. And what's the big idea? I think nearly everyone basically agrees that
> the intellect was declairing its independence from the social level and that
> rhetoric was one of the evolutionary steps in the West's transition from
> mythological to scientific worldviews. But that's not really what the big
> idea is all about. Its important to understand that something big was
> happening and there's no denying that rhetoric is discussed in that context,
> but I think the big idea is really about the loss of Quality, about how
> mysticism was lost in the West.
>
> "Phaedrus reads further and further into pre-Socratic Greek thought to find
> out (Plato's real purpose), and eventually comes to the view that Plato's
> hatred of the rhetoricians was part of a much larger struggle in which the
> reality of the Good, represented by the Sophists, and the reality of the
> True, represented by the dialecticians, were engaged in a huge struggle for
> the future mind of man. Truth won, the Good lost, and that is why today we
> have so little difficulty accepting the reality of truth and so much
> difficulty accepting the reality of Quality, even though there is no more
> agreement in one area than in the other." ZAMM 335
>
> Sam and Matt are hailed at the top because I have repeatedly suggested that
> there is a cultural blind spot with respect to mysticism and that their
> views exhibit that bias. I get the impression that I'm merely insulting them
> as in, "you're so blind". So here I hope to put this blind spot on the
> display in a way that is not connected to anything you said. Its just a
> picture of where this blindspot began.
>
> "Lightening hits!"
> "QUALITY! VIRTUE! DHARMA! THAT is what the Sophists were teaching! NOT
> ethical relativism. NOT pristine 'virtue'. But ARETE. Excellence. DHARMA!
> Before the church of reason. Before substance. Before form. Before mind and
> matter. Before dialectic itself. Quality had been absolute. Those first
> teachers of the Western world were teaching QUALITY, and the medium they had
> chosen was that of rhetoric. He had been doing it right all along." ZAMM 340
>
> You know why they chose rhetoric as a medium? Because they hadn't lost touch
> with Quality, they were teaching Quality, which means they were talking
> about the mystical One, which can't be known in any fixed or rigid way and
> which "can only be described allegorically, through the use of analogy, of
> figures of imagination and speech". They chose rhetoric as a medium for the
> same reason that Pirsig presents his philosophy in the form of a novel. Art
> is what it takes to convey the One while dialectic, logic and science tend
> to preclude its discussion.
>
> "Phaedrus remembered a line from Thoreau: "You never gain something but that
> you lose something". And now he began to see for the first time the
> unbelievable magnitude of what man, when he gained power to understand and
> rule the world in terms of dialectic truths, had lost. He had built empires
> of scientific capability to manipulate the phenomena of nature into enormous
> manifestations of his own dreams of power and wealth - but for this he had
> exhanged an empire of understanding of equal magnitude: an understanding of
> what it is to be a part of the world, and not an enemy of it." ZAMM 342
>
> The autobiographical portion of the book that runs along side this
> discussion of rhetoric and occurs just before the climax. He finally
> realizes that his intellectual pursuit of Quality is a fool's errand and he
> gets stuck in a very big way. He can't go back and he can't go forward. Its
> all over. Only when "madness" comes does he finally understand what Quality
> is. That's not a philosophy or an idea, its an experience. See, its not so
> much the rhetoric. Rhetoric is just more appropriate for teaching Quality. I
> think the Sophists that Pirsig relates to were philosophical mystics who
> chose the most appropriate mode of expression. They were artists because
> their subject demanded it.
>
> "And the bones of the Sophists long ago turned to dust and what they said
> turned to dust with them and the dust was buried under the rubble of
> declining Athens through its fall and Macedonia through its decline and
> fall. Through the decline and death of ancient Rome and Byzantium and the
> Ottoman Empire and the modern states - buried so deep and with such
> ceremoniousness and such unction and such evil that only a madman centuries
> later could discover the clues needed to uncover them and see with horror
> what had been done." ZAMM 345
>
> Buried so deep. See, the blindspot was not caused by the Anglican Church or
> by Richard Rorty. I'm just saying they both suffer from it.
>
> Thanks,
> dmb
>
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