To Bo, Chris , Maurer and others:
I said in an earlier post that I'd be glad to
explore documentary evidence for the S/O distinction
in Eastern civilizations, well before the times of the
Greeks. I must say at the start that I'm referring to
the said distinction and not to a SO Metaphysics;
this needs to be said because, from reading various
posts here, I have the impression that some people use
both terms as interchangeable; IMO they do not denote
the same thing at all.
I must also present at the start which is the
meaning that I ascribe to the S/0 distinction. If it
happens to be the same as that of those that read
this, all the better; if it is not, to know that we
might be talking of different things might save
fruitless discussions. As the term implies, it must
refer to the ability or capability of an individual to
distinguish between two realms or fields, the
subjective and the objective. That's pretty obvious;
what is not that obvious is how an individual can
distinguish or decide between one and the other. IMO
(and of some others) to be able to do that she cannot
proceed alone, she needs the agreement of others; in
that sense, the S/O distinction would belong,to some
extent, to the social level.
Take for instance the Nicoll's paragraph that
Joseph Maurer quotes in the thread "The inner world":
"Man stands between two---an external visible world
that enters
the senses and is shared by everyone: and an internal
world that
none of his senses meets, which is shared by no
one---that is,
the approach to it is uniquely individual, for
although all the people
in the world can observe you, only you can observe
yourself. This
Internal world is the second 'reality', and is
invisible."
I like that quote; it says most of what needs to be
said, about the S/O distinction. In Nicoll's view, for
something to belong to the external world, it must
comply to two requirements: a)to be perceived by the
senses and b)to be shared by everyone. Neither of the
two, taken separately, is enough.
I reflect upon an object in my surroundings. I
believe it's 'out there', existing independently of
me, in a world external to me. This is a strong belief
of mine, even to the extent that I'm sure that if I
close my eyes and 'stop seeing it', the object will
remain there. I'm sure but not 'absolutely sure' or,
in probabilistic jargon, 'absolutely certain'. I might
be dreaming, or hallucinating. I could acquire far
more certainty if I call others (the more the better)
and ask them whether they also see the object. That, I
assume, is what Nicoll means by the requisite of being
shared by everyone. (I can't possibly ask everyone
though, that's why I said that the more the better).
But still I am not 'absolutely' certain. It's
not enough that others also see the object because
there is something called collective hallucination.
(invoked for instance in the cases of flying saucer
sightings or by atheists as the explanation of
miracles). To acquire more certainty I'd have to find
out whether everyone is seeing "the same object".
Suppose the object is a pile of olives; is everyone
seeing the same pile of olives? The best way to
approach certainty is by introducing numbers. If we
'all' came to agree not only that it is a pile of
olives, but that there are 143 olives and that they
weigh, say, 3.5 kilos, I'd be almost absolutely sure
that we are all seeing the same object.(absolute
certainty could be approached but not reached).
Otherwise put:I acquire independent verification that
the object exists independently of me, is external to
me, it belongs to the field of the Objective.
Ultimately, as Sir Arthur Eddington, the
astronomer, used to put it, the distinction or
cleavage between the two fields is that between the
metrical and the non-metrical. (He also always
carefully avoided talking about 'a real world' but
rather about 'the external world' ).
When did man discover the distinction between
metrical and non metrical? That's an idle question
which cannot be answered. Better put as: what are the
earliest documentary evidences about this distinction?
In the civilizations of Mesopotamia we know
about the Hammurabi Code, say about 1500 BC. It was
preceded by others, the oldest known so far being the
Code of Ur-Nammu, dated at about 2100 BC . There we
read:
Ur-Nammu, king of Ur, king of Summer and Akkad
fashioned the bronze sila-measure, standardized the
one-mina weight, and standardized the stone weight of
a shekel of silver in relation to one mina...
The orphan was not delivered up to the rich man; the
widow was not delivered up to the mighty man; the man
of one shekel was not delivered up to the man of one
mina."
Quite likely the summerians didn't have a word
for "standardized"; what he did was to order a
quantitative relation between shekels and minas:-
one mina = 60 shekels of silver. Those people didn't
know only to count, they knew to how to divide and
hence to multiply. And of course they knew how to
convert weight units, as we do today from pounds to
oounces.
Take this law: "If someone severed the nose of
another man with a copper knife, he must pay
two-thirds of a mina of silver." Don't ask me why a
copper knife, but the objective judgment is
unambiguous: One nose = 2/3 of a mina. Ever seen an
equivalence more objective than this?
Not only that, but they knew correspondences
between volume units and area units:
"If a man had let an arable field to a(nother) man for
cultivation, but he did not cultivate it, turning it
into wasteland, he shall measure out three kur of
barley per iku of field." They probably didn't have a
word for 'function' , but this is a functional
relation between two variables: amount of
compensation, in kurs, as a function of area of the
field in ikus.
I'd say objectivity at its best. This just in
Mesopotamia. From the evidence at hand 'metrics' was
in place in Egypt at least 1500 years before that. But
this in another Post; this one is far too long
already.
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