From: Scott Roberts (jse885@localnet.com)
Date: Thu Nov 17 2005 - 05:22:19 GMT
Matt K,
Matt said:
If I understand the basics of the logic of contradictory identity, then I
think I could agree with you on the distinction between LCI on the one hand
and encountered contradictions on the other. I actually went across this
area earlier in this thread, though I'm still not sure if I'm getting it
right.
Matt (from "Rhetoric," Aug. 25):
If I understand correctly, the whole idea of the tetra...humanahumana-thingy
(whatever it is), what Scott also calls the logic of contradictory identity,
is that it isn't proper to say that ultimate reality does exist...or doesn't
or...whatever the other two are (which I take to be Sam's point about
telling his parishioners that he's an atheist). I take Rorty's point about
ineffable things not existing to be that, once you eff it, you've made it
exist in some sense where its no longer ineffable (which is why, I take it,
in the mystical tradition, you have to keep repeating the tetra-mantra, to
keep reminding yourself what you are and are not doing...along with the
other two).
Scott:
Let me first put a bit of meat on CI, and how it relates to the tetralemma.
Two terms, X and Y are a contradictory identity with respect to Z (say, SQ
and DQ with respect to Reality) if
- one cannot say Z is X (meaning, one can't reduce Y to X)
- one cannot say Z is Y (one cannot reduce X to Y)
- one cannot say Z is X and Y (dualism doesn't work either)
- one cannot say Z is neither X nor Y (one can't just forget about X and Y)
The key is the fourth point. The LCI is, by and large what one CAN say, or
at least, try to say. For instance, that the more one puts X under the
microscope, the more it starts looking like Y, and vice versa, and that X
and Y create each other in mutual opposition (which BTW rules out the first
three options) and it is through their mutual opposition that Things Happen,
so to speak.
Matt said:
If LCI is something analogous to a warning, then I'm still not sure why we
have to live with the paradox of, what you sometimes refer to your project
as, an "ironic metaphysics." Ironic in the Rortyan sense and metaphysical
in the traditional sense, its basically a more generalized version of the
common presupposition it has with the Metaphysics of Quality (defining the
undefined). What I don't get is why we'd still style ourselves ironic
metaphysicians if we recognize that we will never know if we've reached the
true essences that are out there (until we've reached, asymptotically, the
end of inquiry, which means when language stops changing because we all
speak Peircish). Why not stop calling what we are doing "the search for
essences"? Philosophy as an area of inquiry won't help if its subject
matter, which it has been since it stopped spewing out other disciplines, is
telling us when we've reached the essences. Even saying that we will
someday speak Peircish doesn't help with any of the inquiries.
Scott:
LCI is part warning ("one cannot say...") but it is also positive. The
warning part identifies common heresies, such as assuming there are true
(fixed) essences that exist independently of their expression. The positive
side is (in this case) to recover essences as a pole in the CI of essence
and existent, with respect to language and intellect.
On the "ironic metaphysics" question, this applies more to my metaphysical
claim that "everything is semiotic" than to CI, though CI comes into it when
one tries to figure out "how semiotics works". So leaving CI aside for the
moment, my response to what you say is that we will never speak Peircish
because we have ceased looking for a true reality that language can
asymptotically approach, instead recognizing that realities are what
language creates. There are no absolute criteria for knowledge, because
language creates criteria. There is no search for final essences because
language is the creation, maintenance, and destruction of essences. In sum,
this is metaphysics (since it claims an absolute Reality, namely, semiosis),
but one that evades all of the pragmatists' objections to metaphysics with
the exception that it claims an absolute Reality. Now to do so it must
resort to good old-fashioned argumentation to show why it makes sense to
extend semiosis beyond human experience -- to show why nominalism and the
Darwinist view of "language as a tool" is wrong, for example -- which also
makes it metaphysical (and which sees nominalism as an opposing metaphysical
view, though it also opposes Platonic realism).
What makes it ironic is that it preserves what Rorty means by irony, in that
any particular vocabulary is seen as contingent, any set of beliefs is
understood to be open to revision, and so on. And there is another sense in
which it is ironic -- see below.
Matt continued:
_That_ inquiry, metaphysical inquiry after essences, hasn't been conclusive
about anything, which is why irony has been increasingly conspicuous as
people get bored. The irony isn't any more conclusive then the results of
the search for essences because it isn't so much reached by a conclusive
argument _for_ irony then it is reached by people being puzzled by the
succession of conclusive arguments _against_ particular attempts to limn the
true essence of reality, till those frustrated people finally go, "Well, why
don't I do something else." You can spread the irony around to other
disciplines' pretensions (like some scientists'), but otherwise you have to
look for something new to do. I'm not sure what's left to inquire into when
the ironic metaphysician has already condemned their own area of inquiry.
There are surely other things that philosophy is in the business of, other
things for philosophy to do. I'm just not sure why we have to keep on board
a self-image that was forged for a different activity.
Scott:
Most of this would be answered in the same way. Of course, as I see it I
haven't come across conclusive arguments against the "everything is
semiosis" position (though of course all of us crackpots will say that about
our pet Ultimate). But aside from that, there is another thing to consider,
and that is whether or not one has a religious outlook. If one does not,
then it may make sense to reject all metaphysics, including mine. But if one
does, then the reason one philosophizes is to aid in getting to where one's
religion promises, that is, to aid in self-transformation. The tetralemma,
recall, is Buddhist. It is seen as a "skillful means", basically a general
deconstructive method of metaphysical positions that engender attachment, an
attack on treating anything as "self-existent". So the question is does the
metaphysical belief that "all is semiosis" engender attachment? I think it
does not, because if every thing is a word, then it is not self-existent.
Also, it makes everything one can think about contingent, as a word in some
vocabulary, which is itself contingent, and hence encourages irony. (What
about the word "semiosis"? Isn't it common to all vocabularies? Yes, and
that it is why it is an absolute, as are the words 'vocabulary', 'word',
'meaning', and so on. So there is some fancy footwork required to deal with
this, which will call on the LCI. And, strictly speaking, this is a relative
absolute -- it applies as far as we can contemplate. Five thousand years
from now, things could be different.).
In any case, the additional reason for calling this metaphysics ironic is
that it comes from an unenlightened perspective. It is, or so I hope,
faithful to the revelations of (certain of the) Enlightened, but as long as
I am working from this perspective I Could Be Wrong, and maybe Najarguna on
hearing this would whup me upside the head for getting metaphysical. That,
of course, is something that (the better class of) theologians have always
understood, that from a religious perspective one must be ironic, in that
one knows one is Fallen, and so must be suspicious of certainty. And that is
why the LCI is important, because it provides a means of thinking about "the
most basic questions" without turning one of the players into an idol -- a
false god. And also, as I said in my previous post, because it makes for a
useful new way of thinking about these questions (new to most of us,
anyway). DQ alone is nothing. SQ alone is nothing. DQ and SQ together, side
by side, is nothing. But DQ and SQ as contradictory identity, that is
something worth thinking about. More than that, I think of the LCI as a
means of self-transformation.
- Scott
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 : Thu Nov 17 2005 - 05:28:13 GMT