Hey Ron, Matt said: This looser sense is what Pirsig was aiming at with "rhetoric," whereas "dialectic" was strict, logical "if P, then Q" stuff. What Pirsig saw is that logic requires assumptions to do anything, to make an argument. (I expand on this a bit here: http://pirsigaffliction.blogspot.com/2006/04/begging-question-moral-intuitions-and.html) Pirsig's attempt to evade Platonism is to question the assumptions guiding its arguments. In this sense, Pirsig was equating Platonism with, not logical argumentation or thinking, but with a set of assumptions that lead--through logical entailment--to a series of undesirable cultural malformations. "Back to rhetoric!" was Pirsig's call to cease thinking we had to think through Plato's categories (one of which pit logic against values) and see that there are other ways, that logic is a tool that we use for whatever purposes we set. Plato wished us to think that logic had its own desires, but Pirsig wanted to expose those purposes as Plato's, not logi c's. ... With the first part in the background, this is where I slap you on the wrist for Platonism. And, I think, this is largely what divided me from Bo--stop thinking Platonism/SOM is a _tool_. The tool metaphor itself should help us see what is wrong with this line of thinking: a tool is what it is because it is defined as being separate from the user of the tool.
Ron said: It is that capacity in which I meant the term. Tools are wielded by individuals not the other way around. Matt: I'm not so sure you did--or rather (conceding you your intentions), I don't think you get to say both this and what you say later without heaving paradoxical tension on your terms. Matt said: So, in my view, saying "Platonism is a tool" is a Platonic sin, is a step backwards from the position Pirsig was hoping to leave us in at the end of ZMM. _Plato_ left us a lot of amazing tools in his writings, writings that can be mined almost indefinitely, and profitably even by anti-Platonists--but _Platonism_ is a different beast, not a tool but a philosophy, a set of assumptions with which we use tools to carry out. Ron said: But those assumptions are tools also which was RMP's point. The main assumption he challenged was it's absoluteness in regard to certainty. The conflagration of assumptions with reality itself. This is the bogeyman of any metaphysical system. Just calling it SOM makes the distinction that it is an intellectual pattern and not intellect itself. Matt: I'll grant you that assumptions are used for things, that we have the assumptions (beliefs) we do because they function in some manner for something. But my spade is turned on this: I think it is absolutely paramount, in sorting out the good, bad and the ugly in philosophy, in particular philosophies like Platonism, that we make a distinction between intellectual patterns and "intellect itself." The idea is that we can carry out an investigation into the kinds of concepts that we could not function without and see how they in fact function (this is so-called transcendental philosophy). But, in my view, given the set of texts I've read (Pirsig, Rorty, Eric Havelock, Bernard Williams), I believe with some assurance that whatever it is that intellect is, it wasn't something unqualifiedly created by Plato. I've always thought Pirsig's assertion that that was what happened in Greece to be a little weird all by itself, without a bit more detail on what he's talking about, about what he's picking out with the term "intellect." The basic contention is that, whatever Pirsig's term "SOM" picks out, what it does not pick out is something basic to the functioning of humanity. Splitting things up into subject and objects is one thing--_that's_ a useful tool, but the "metaphysics" is what gives the game away: that's a philosophy, one that's dispensable, or rather, replaceable. Ron said: I think you make an important distinction between using the concepts of Platonism and Platonism itself as a belief system. But to have it stand for SOM itself leaves out Aristotelianism and even Sophism to a large degree which challenged the traditional Greek cultural myths as well as Plato and Aristotles concept of "the good " and the thought that ethics are based on reason, and that there were logical reasons for behaving virtuously. This contrasted with the moral relativism of the sophists, who argued that many different behaviors could be seen as ethical by different societies. In many ways they can be credited for skeptic tradition. Matt: Well, again, I would deny that making a "distinction between using concepts of Platonism and Platonism itself" is what _I_ was doing. That's what you want to do. I want to make a distinction between Plato's writings and a tradition stemming from those writings, a kind of tradition of interpretation, if you will. On the narrowness of my term "Platonism," that is largely ameliorated because the sense of "Platonism" I am using is the sense Heidegger gave it, which is the sense Whitehead was talking about when he said (as Pirsig mentions), "Philosophy is a series of footnotes to Plato." It doesn't leave out Aristotle, because as Pirsig says, Aristotle was inevitable after Plato set his foot on the path. It does, however, leave out the Sophists to a certain degree, which I take to be a good thing. On the other hand, I will grant that Platonism is in a certain sense different than SOM, but that's because I think Platonism is the wider paradigm, the real enemy that Pirsig found that created the later, more narrow (modern) paradigm of SOM. You only get SOM after you've passed through the lens hammered out by post-Cartesian philosophers. Also, I question the notion that the Sophists were moral relativists, at least in a recognizably modern sense. They were the progenitors for many different trains of thought, but I think Pirsig, for one, might balk at the notion that they didn't think ethics were based on reasons. I think that was basic to Greek heritage, to a certain extent. Plato _was_ doing something important by opposing the Sophists--I just think traditional historiographers of philosophy have generally gotten it wrong and it has only been recently that it is starting to become clearer what was going on back then. Ron said: What Pirsig does is restructure the entire edifice of SOM by simply swapping out ontology, specifically the treatment of nouns in sentences comprising philosophical statement from subject/object to dynamic/static. the ontology is to treat all nouns not as entities but patterns of value. distinguished by dynamic/static aspects. Pirsig supports this ontology with the Metaphysic of Quality which leans in the Aristotelian tradition of the formation of "the Good" while keeping the sophists contextual moral relativistic reservations in mind. Coupled with the support by physical cosmology as it relates to Quantum physics. The metaphysical reason Pirsig basis his ontology on is the physical cosmological theory that all reality is dynamic relative and ultimately uncertain. He solves this with Descartes certainty in being offering A James-ion empiricism in the style of the continental philosophers as a basis for a reason and logic. Matt: That is a very compact, dense series of assertions and inferences. It looks interesting. If you were going to write an essay, I'd take ten pages to articulate everything on up there. Ron said: When I say embrace SOM I mean to incorporate it into our metaphysical theory, it provides the anti-thesis to our thesis. I feel it is important to define and understand it in order to define just what it is we are talking about with the MoQ. Matt: Well, I don't know about "incorporate it into our metaphysical theory," but I think it is important to incorporate it into our history. In other words, I think it is very important for philosophers (something they've not always felt partial to) to tell a story about the history of philosophy as a means to contextualize their own philosophy. (I might even say it might be the only non-Platonic way forward.) And, in this sense, I absolutely have incorporated SOM into my philosophical work. Ron said So in short, if we understand these concepts we should be able to have Quality discussions without charges of Platonism deflecting the meaning of the dialog. It should be a non-issue unless you are truly dealing with a subscriber to the absoluteness of SOM. Matt: Nah. 2500 years of philosophy have seen people trying to deflect Platonism only to fail. Think if Descartes had told you to back off with charges of Platonism (when you point out that he was using a very Greek distinction in episteme and opinio) by pointing out that he explicitly is trying to break with Plato and the Greeks. Would you believe him? Well, even if you do, you shouldn't. Trying doesn't make it so. The Hegelian dialectic of history is a series of back and forth movements, and I absolutely think it requires vigilance to the next appearance of resurgent Platonism. Some say this is my own peculiar, Rortyan disease. I'm just not sure how one is to judge whether or not "you are truly dealing with a subscriber to the absoluteness of SOM" unless you run them through the gauntlet. It all hinges on "truly," and why should we trust a person's own self-perception? Psychologists and common sense don't, so why should philosophers? Matt _________________________________________________________________ Need to know now? 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