Ron --
[Ham, previously]:
But your "pattern" is itself Value, is it not? So you have value sensing value, which is [tautological]. Experience must differentiate otherness in order to perceive objects. How does one differentiate value from value?
[Ron]:
If you use the old Greek rhetorical meaning of the word tautology perhaps, but...
"In 1921, in his Tractatus Logico-Philosophicus, Ludwig Wittgenstein proposed that statements that can be deduced by logical deduction are tautological (empty of meaning) as well as being analytic truths. Henri Poincaré had made similar remarks in Science and Hypothesis in 1905. Although Bertrand Russell at first argued against these remarks by Wittgenstein and Poincaré, claiming that mathematical truths were not only non-tautologous but were synthetic, he later spoke in favor of them in 1918:
"Everything that is a proposition of logic has got to be in some sense or the other like a tautology. It has got to be something that has some peculiar quality, which I do not know how to define, that belongs to logical propositions but not to others."
Here logical proposition refers to a proposition that is provable using the laws of logic.
I should not have used the word "logical", and have corrected my comment above to avoid it. We cannot "prove" anything by logic alone. The proposition A = A does not prove that 'A' exists or does not exist. Logic is only useful for justifying theories within the context of language, where the terms are well defined, which is what Russell and Wittgenstein were mostly about. I'm mostly about concepts, as I believe you are also. So, as far as we can help it, let's try not to get mired in word games.
[Ham, previously]:
Your concept has a nice ring to it, but this epistemology doesn't hold up logically [epistemologcally?].
[Ron]:
The reason why it does not is because Pirsig criticizes this classical logic. He points out that it is based on assumed axioms. Truth only has meaning within the context of the paradigm of logics laws, it is in no way a concrete universal. What is a concrete universal is the experience of being, the fact that we exist. The big leap MoQ needs to make is to use a radical logic of topos theory which utilizes set logic. You see Ham, MoQ is a different animal altogether. To criticize it from a classical point of view misses the point of it. MoQ is about alternative ways of thinking, an explanation of how a Metaphysic is formed, not so much a Metaphysic in it's own right. It initiates critical thinking of the everyday world we as human beings inhabit. It points out that many of the problems we face really do not exist as we perceive them, we get upset and develop a feeling of hopelessness based on intellectual constructs. Ones developed by Subject/object self/other logic. We feel separated and alone because of it. Seeing the world Holistically as patterns of interacting value makes the objectification of ourselves and others a bit more difficult and less justifiable. Therefore the people that do think Holistically find it much tougher to be cold, cruel and unfeeling towards themselves Other people and the world in general Realizing the power of meaning resides within us. This is not only Pirsig but science in general has come to a similar conclusion about what conceptual Understanding is and how it functions. The very first realization of this was by the fathers of Quantum physics, who stated that in effect, we are limited conceptually by what we can say about experienced phenomena.
All that is a superbly worded defense of metaphor to describe the human situation. I try to avoid metaphors, except as a means of making an abstract concept more comprehensible. A metaphor doesn't explain the 'how' or 'why' of a theory; it only provides a bit of prose to make the idea more palatable to the reader. IMO we can't expound an ontology using metaphors, which I think to a great extent Pirsig tried to do.
I disagree that a "metaphysic" is only a perspective that "initiates critical thinking of the everyday world." The changed perspective should arise on reflection of the proposition, after it has been subjected to critical thinking. For example, when you say "We are Quality", I need to know if you mean this literally. Also, I believe the "fathers" of quantum physics were limited by the empirical data available, not "conceptually". Pirsig analyzed this enigma quite well in his SODV paper:
"Bohr saw that the quantum theory's mathematical formulation had to have a connection to the cultural world of everyday life in which the experiments were performed. If that connection were not made there would be no way to run an experiment that would prove whether a quantum prediction was true or not. ...Yet as I read through the material even I could see that this was not primarily a quarrel about physics, it was about metaphysics. And I saw that others had noted that too. ...It is only in the last hundred years or so that our measurements are showing that the objects we are studying are apparently impossible. Since the phenomena from the measurements are not about to change, Bohr concluded that the logic of science must change to accommodate them. ...This view, known as phenomenalism, says that what we really observe is not the object. What we really observe is only data."
My own answer to this is that because the physical world is constructed by experience, the dynamics and order of the universe are limited to a magnitude perceived by human experience. Human beings are equipped to deal with a macro world, not a quantum world. So, when we push investigation beyond this point, the empirical data become fuzzy and contradictory, and the conclusions drawn by physicists are mostly speculative.
Metaphysics, however, must deal with "all possible worlds", so the precise arrangement of energy particles and their dynamics can't be its primary concern. More important to the philosopher are the questions "What is the stuff of existence?", "From what is this stuff derived?", and, perhaps most important, "WHY?"
This is where I'm coming from, Ron, and what I've tried to address in my website and book.
Thanks for your continued patience. Essentially yours, Ham Moq_Discuss mailing list Listinfo, Unsubscribing etc. http://lists.moqtalk.org/listinfo.cgi/moq_discuss-moqtalk.org Archives: http://lists.moqtalk.org/pipermail/moq_discuss-moqtalk.org/ http://moq.org.uk/pipermail/moq_discuss_archive/
