From: David MOREY (us@divadeus.freeserve.co.uk)
Date: Fri Feb 06 2004 - 18:48:19 GMT
Hi Paul
Just wanted to say good post,
I would accept what you say here.
regards
David M
----- Original Message -----
From: "Paul Turner" <paulj.turner@ntlworld.com>
To: <moq_discuss@moq.org>
Sent: Friday, February 06, 2004 4:33 PM
Subject: RE: MD Objectivity, Truth and the MOQ
> Bo
>
> Bo said:
> I accept this - of course I do - but just wanted to point out that this
> is Pirsigs interpretation - a most convincing one, but it's difficult
> imagining Plato postulating something as higher than GOOD (could you
> provide a quote ...from Plato?)
>
> Paul:
> I think he does do what Pirsig says, but it is subtle. For example, this
> quote below seems to be agreeing with the MOQ that truth is subordinate
> to the good:
>
> "Now, that which imparts truth to the known and the power of knowing to
> the knower is what I would have you term the idea of good, and this you
> will deem to be the cause of science, and of truth in so far as the
> latter becomes the subject of knowledge" [Republic, 508e]
>
> However, Plato does not start with the reality of an undefined good
> (Dynamic Quality) to which all dialectically produced (static
> intellectual) patterns are subordinate. He arrives at the reality of the
> good by starting with Forms that can only be understood by dialectic:
>
> "Dialectic, and dialectic alone, goes directly to the first principle
> and is the only science which does away with hypotheses in order to make
> her ground secure; the eye of the soul, which is literally buried in an
> outlandish slough, is by her gentle aid lifted upwards" [Republic 533d]
>
> In Plato's philosophy, the existence of forms is assumed first, and
> dialectic is the only means of starting the process of grasping the
> essence of the forms by supposedly operating outside the realm of
> shadows (opinion):
>
> "And do you also agree, I said, in describing the dialectician as one
> who attains a conception of the essence of each thing? And he who does
> not possess and is therefore unable to impart this conception, in
> whatever degree he fails, may in that degree also be said to fail in
> intelligence? Will you admit so much?
>
> And you would say the same of the conception of the good? Until the
> person is able to abstract and define rationally the idea of good, and
> unless he can run the gauntlet of all objections, and is ready to
> disprove them, not by appeals to opinion, but to absolute truth, never
> faltering at any step of the argument -- unless he can do all this, you
> would say that he knows neither the idea of good nor any other good; he
> apprehends only a shadow, if anything at all, which is given by opinion
> and not by science" [Republic 534b-534d]
>
> Plato is saying that only a pure intellect, by rational means (the
> dialectic), may know Quality. The MOQ, as you know, identifies Quality
> with immediate experience, known by everyone, before thoughts, before
> ideas, before rationality and before dialectic. Plato took Dynamic
> Quality and made it a static pattern of intellectual quality, albeit the
> highest one. Aristotle demoted it from the highest Form to the object of
> a branch of philosophy. It was not of "substance" so became subjective
> etc....
>
> Bo said:
> Again, I accept Pirsig's interpretation, but contemporary Greek thinkers
> did not know Aretê as Good. It got translated into "virtue" and the
> translators would certainly have used "good" if that was the case. It
> was P. in the RT passage in LILA who made this "discovery". This is most
> convincing but it's no use by presenting it as if the Greeks knew the
> MOQ, to the contrary they saw the S/O (or the embryonic form it had with
> Plato) as the best.
>
> Paul:
> As Poot and Mark have responded, other translations suggest the Greeks
> saw it as excellence in human endeavour. The MOQ can divide it into
> biological excellence (e.g. strength, speed), social excellence (e.g.
> virtue, leadership), intellectual excellence (e.g. rhetoric, truth).
>
> Bo said:
> Could you please draw Plato's metaphysical "diagram"?
>
> Paul:
> "Form" at the top, then the Form of "Good," then other Forms, then their
> appearances.
>
> Bo said:
> I seem to be the only one (Mati exempted) to see that the MOQ rearranges
> EVERYTHING and leaves a new world in its wake.
>
> Paul:
> It is what Pirsig has called Dynamic Quality that leaves everything in
> its wake, not the MOQ. The MOQ is among the intellectual patterns that
> are left in its wake.
>
> Bo said:
> It requires a little juggling, but the important first step is to see
> that intellect is a static level and as blind to the Quality context as
> the rest of the levels.
>
> Paul:
> Here, BoMOQ departs from Pirsig's MOQ. Dynamic Quality pervades all
> static patterns, including intellectual patterns; it is the continual
> source of them and the source of change in them. The Sophists sought to
> maintain an understanding of the relationship between static quality and
> Dynamic Quality but lost the struggle with Plato who confused Dynamic
> Quality with static intellectual quality. In Lila, Pirsig suggests that
> the Hindus succeeded where the Sophists ultimately failed:
>
> "...what made the Hindu experience so profound was that this decay of
> Dynamic Quality into static quality was not the end of the story.
> Following the period of the Brahmanas came the Upanishadic period and
> the flowering of Indian philosophy. DYNAMIC QUALITY REEMERGED WITHIN THE
> STATIC PATTERNS OF INDIAN THOUGHT." [Lila p.438]
>
> Thus, the east has nothingness, tao, dharma, at the centre of its
> culture - including its intellectual patterns. The west has sometimes
> gotten near to it with Hegel's Absolute, Heidegger's Being and so on.
> Northrop illustrates the differences between eastern and western
> intellectual patterns extensively in his "The Meeting of East and West."
>
>
> I'll leave it at that for now Bo, this post is long enough.
>
> Regards
>
> Paul
>
>
>
>
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