From: Scott R (jse885@spinn.net)
Date: Sat Jun 07 2003 - 18:13:07 BST
Matt,
> Paul said:
> In Zen Buddhism a favoured symbol / character to describe the nature of
zen is called ?enso?. It is a circle brushed slightly differently every time
it is drawn, but most importantly it is never joined up to form a closed
circle. This, the sages say, is because if the circle is closed, it closes
itself off from the ultimate nature of reality, change. I think that is a
good analogy to the MOQ.
>
> Matt:
> That is a good, pragmatic insight. Except that, pace Scott, pragmatists
would excise "ultimate nature of reality" because we don't think it adds
anything important to the description.
Scott says:
While I am sometimes guilty of using phrases like "ultimate nature of
reality", I consider such phrases to be pointers to the undecidable. To me,
the word "ultimate" refers to the boundary of what we can consider in any
non-paradoxical way. With regard to the above, what is undecidable is not
that everything changes, but that we are aware of change. Do we not have to
be non-changing for that to occur? But we are a part of everything. Et
cetera.
The point is to remind ourselves of our ignorance, not to establish what
ultimate reality "is". Where I think Rorty goes wrong is in not seeing how
important -- dare I say fundamental -- that undecidability is. In
particular, it wrecks the Darwinist dream.
- Scott
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