From: Paul Turner (paulj.turner@ntlworld.com)
Date: Thu Jan 22 2004 - 14:32:06 GMT
Bo, Steve
Bo said:
My point is that all the "patterns" that Pirsig lists as intellectual
(free speech, freedom of press, trial by jury ....etct.) which would be
jeopardized in the situation he refers to are derivatives of the pursuit
of what is objecively true (diferent from subjective opinion) while I
can't see how "manipulation of symbols" can lead to democracy and its
many aspects (it's simply language/thinking, but nothing about HOW one
thinks) .
Paul:
If you give it some thought and read what Pirsig says about them, I
think you will find that these things you list are part of the moral
code between intellect and society and are not strictly "intellectual
patterns" themselves, as is democracy.
But anyway, I think "manipulation of symbols" is to intellect as DNA is
to biology. The manipulation of symbols is "driven" by truth (but see
below) in the same sense that DNA is "driven" by life.
Bo said:
Right the "value of truth" does not fare badly at all, this is the
isthmus between our views I believe, I was writing about it, but got
caught in the logic debate with JoVo and Paul
Paul:
On December 14th in the MF discussion about intellect I wrote:
"I agree that symbol manipulation is guided and this is what I think
Pirsig tries to say in lots of different ways in ZMM e.g. his section on
Poincare. I think a general purpose of symbol manipulation is to create
(not discover) truth, not in the "matching up with external reality"
sense but in the "high quality pattern" sense. High quality patterns may
have been mistaken for "objective" and therefore "True" in the past, but
as all patterns evolve, so must truth. This understanding allows for an
expansion of rationality without discarding its immense evolutionary
worth."
On January 13th in the MD I wrote:
"The continuity in intellect is that they all are patterns of
independently manipulable symbols. If you are looking for an overriding
value then it is truth. Truth is not specific to SOM, the MOQ defines
[truth as] a species of good by bringing truth and quality back
together.
Both SOM and the MOQ can be "reduced" to patterns of thought which can
be graded on their "truth" and many other high quality intellectual
patterns are not based on SOM."
You seem to have overlooked these statements in our recent discussions.
My point is that it is important to see that "true" and "objective" are
not equivalent terms. The MOQ shares the pragmatist line of "good to
believe" and shares similarities with the coherence theory of truth,
where coherence is a kind of harmony i.e quality. Pirsig goes further
than the both the pragmatist and the "coherence" position by connecting
their epistemological "tests" of truth with the fundamental empirical
reality of his metaphysics - Quality.
"Poincaré's contemporaries refused to acknowledge that facts are
preselected because they thought that to do so would destroy the
validity of scientific method. They presumed that "preselected facts"
meant that truth is "whatever you like" and called his ideas
conventionalism. They vigorously ignored the truth that their own
"principle of objectivity" is not itself an observable fact...and
therefore by their own criteria should be put in a state of suspended
animation.
They felt they had to do this because if they didn't, the entire
philosophic underpinning of science would collapse. Poincaré didn't
offer any resolutions of this quandary. He didn't go far enough into the
metaphysical implications of what he was saying to arrive at the
solution. What he neglected to say was that the selection of facts
before you "observe" them is "whatever you like" only in a dualistic,
subject-object metaphysical system! When Quality enters the picture as a
third metaphysical entity, the preselection of facts is no longer
arbitrary. The preselection of facts is not based on subjective,
capricious "whatever you like" but on Quality, which is reality itself.
Thus the quandary vanishes.
It was as though Phĉdrus had been working on a puzzle of his own and
because of lack of time had left one whole side unfinished.
Poincaré had been working on a puzzle of his own. His judgment that the
scientist selects facts, hypotheses and axioms on the basis of harmony,
also left the rough serrated edge of a puzzle incomplete. To leave the
impression in the scientific world that the source of all scientific
reality is merely a subjective, capricious harmony is to solve problems
of epistemology while leaving an unfinished edge at the border of
metaphysics that makes the epistemology unacceptable.
But we know from Phĉdrus' metaphysics that the harmony Poincaré talked
about is not subjective. It is the source of subjects and objects and
exists in an anterior relationship to them. It is not capricious, it is
the force that opposes capriciousness; THE ORDERING PRINCIPLE OF ALL
SCIENTIFIC AND RATIONAL THOUGHT which destroys capriciousness, and
without which no scientific thought can proceed." [ZMM]
I think Pirsig wanted to expand our understanding of truth and remove it
from the shackles of "objectivity" and "value-freedom." I think he
wanted to do exactly the opposite of what you are doing - restricting
intellect to the legacy of the ancient Greeks.
"[Phaedrus'] metaphysical mountain climbing did absolutely nothing to
further either our understanding of what Quality is or of what the Tao
is. Not a thing. That sounds like an overwhelming rejection of what he
thought and said, but it isn't. I think it's a statement he would have
agreed with himself, since any description of Quality is a kind of
definition and must therefore fall short of its mark. I think he might
even have said that statements of the kind he had made, which fall short
of their mark, are even worse than no statement at all, since they can
be easily mistaken for truth and thus retard an understanding of
Quality.
No, he did nothing for Quality or the Tao. What benefited was reason."
[ZMM]
Regards
Paul
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