Hey Ron, Ron said: What Plato and those before him did was use the axioms of geometry in language to create a formal grammar. The rules of conducting a logical argument. Nouns must stand for entities was the first axiom.
Matt: I think it is one thing to say that Plato geared together the spirit of Pythagoras with the spirit of Socrates, but I think you start to tread on shakey ground by asserting that Plato created a formal grammar. The beginnings of the _idea_ of a "formal" argument/grammer/logic, etc. definitely began to emerge in Greece at this time and was one of Greece's great intellectual achievement's and gifts to history, and Plato played a big role in that, but I'd be careful in how much credit you're grabbing for Plato. When you start becoming as specific as you sound here, that's when classicists and historians start having a fit. This contention, though, is very interesting and it is definitely something I would develop with a critical apparatus. Ron said: I think this is where Pirsig points out the origin of how we think and conduct business today in the western world. The Sophists used the double meaning of abstract/concrete in terms to their advantage, Plato blocked that by insisting on an ontology or an agreed meaning of terms. He argued successfully that terms should represent reality not emotions when establishing truths. Plato popularized the rules but they were forged by many hands over a period of time from the sophists to the dialectic to Platonic ontology. Intellect emerges from society and symbiotically form their complexity together. Therefore intellect is passed through society linguistically while the rules that govern it are a matter of intellectual construct. Matt: I think Pirsig is pointing back here, and it does have something (or even, _everything_) to do with language. However, I think the main thing I shy away from in your formulations is it seems like you are grabbing too much of the amazing cultural explosion that was happening at this time for something I still perceive as a plank in a larger ship: you (so far) credit this explosion to 1) this abstract/concrete grammar innovation (that I don't have a handle on in terms of what you are pointing to historically) and 2) a particular philosophy (Platonism). Off the cuff, I would be willing to go along for now and say (1) is a piece of the puzzle, but (2) I would almost deny out of hand--_Plato_ created many great tools, tools that were passed down, but the contemporary beast--not the ancient one, which is synonymous with Plato, or any of the other historical one's, i.e. how Plato was being interpreted at various stages of history--the _contemporary_ beast that I pick out with the term (and to a large, though not total, extent Pirsig, too) "Platonism": this is something that has sifted down to us as a hindrance. My first line of defense for this claim is that most (if not all, by this time) of what was good in the Greek dispensation of thought/writing has broken itself off from the tree of philosophy and set up shop as its own tree in the fertile ground below. Pythagoras was a philosopher: now he's most well known as a mathematician. Newton was a natural philosopher: now he's only read as a physicist. The claim is that as other disciplines have fallen from the tree of philosophy, _philosophy_ has had to shift its focus slightly since the new discipline now does more successfully (almost always) what philosophy originated--that's pretty much the very notion of discipline development. A new discipline is created when a new method of doing something is created from the wealth of speculative attempts and false starts, stabs into the dark searching for something that works. Wherever this new discipline came from, it is pretty much a given that the old discipline stops the speculation in that direction, and in fact _should_. This claim, for instance, explains the fight between religion and science: hey, religion, why do badly (explain the origins of physical existence) what science is doing well? This is what has happened to philosophy, it has kept trying to find stuff to do after it keeps shucking out new successful things (and often the ingrates just gesture vaguely in the first ten minutes of the first lecture to their roots in philosophy, before moving on and never looking back). My claim, then, is that whatever is picked out by "Platonism" is not anything that is picked out by "science" or "math" or "politics" or "grammar." If we _do_ pick out something indispensable like grammar with the term "Platonism," as you want to, in addition to some regrettable (and hopefully forgettable) things like the divided line and theory of the Forms, then it just hinders our ability to continue shucking the good from the bad in our Greek heritage. I think Pirsig is a _little_ muddy when he trails back to Plato in ZMM (and I think this isn't regrettable insofar it is a rhetorical strategy that most philosophers have to employ to soften up their audience), but overall I think he is quite clear in what his enemy is: Plato's dialectic. Now, it may be that you want to claim that _Platonic metaphysics_, like the theory of Forms, _underpins_ in an essential way our everyday notions of grammar and speech and language. Philosophers have taken something like that line in the past (and present for that matter), but it is definitely one I would argue against (primarily as being self-inflating in the importance of the philosopher). Ron said: One would seem to embody the other. What Pirsigs SOM picks out is just this ontological method of the treatment of nouns representing static entities. Matt: I read this as the suspicious "a philosophy underpins our grammar/language" claim. I don't think this is a good idea, and I'm not so sure it is clear that Pirsig agrees with you either. I will grant you, though, that on the score of Pirsig exegesis, Pirsig's position is conflicted (i.e., muddy). Ron said: I think you make an important distinction between using the concepts of Platonism and Platonism itself as a belief system. Matt replied: 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. Ron replied: well geez Matt is'nt that what I said? Matt: Alright, alright: I admit I'm being pretty picky. But I'm doing it now so we don't misunderstand where we are in relation to each other later (that and to avoid Socratic "well, you agreed to this earlier" arguments, which you aren't in the habit of employing, though others are). The process of two people reaching a point of reflective equilibrium on mutual understanding, I think, must proceed by the two people reinterpreting the other person's point back to the other to receive an OK on--which is what we've been doing. So let me explain my denial of your bounce-back: I want to make a distinction between Plato and Platonism. When you say "concepts of Platonism," I see that as a muddy conglomerate of the metaphysical positions taken in Plato's texts along with some of the linguistic innovations he made (many times unconsciously). And because I've already been coming to see you as _wanting_ to make that composite move, I want to deny that formulation. To help along the whittling procedure, giving us a clearer picture of where each of us stands, the distinction I want to make is between the historical Plato (his texts and what they did according to classical scholarship, e.g. the new ways in which he used the Greek word arete as opposed to the older ways contained in Homeric texts) and the history of interpretation of Plato (which in my expanded sense, includes for example Descartes, even when he's not talking about Plato). Our focus is the present situation, which means we are working with a Platonism that has passed through Descartes and Kant and Bertrand Russell and Rudolf Carnap. I think this is how Pirsig proceeds in _his_ investigation in ZMM: he begins with (what we now know as) positivist philosophy of science, trails back to the modern problem the relation between subject and object (created by Descartes), and then falls all the way back to Greece and the creation of (what I would call) epistemological method: Plato's dialectic. What is picked out by "SOM" is properly a modern manifestation of what Pirsig later finds the origins of in Greece. I call "Platonism" this original bad move (or series of moves). We, of course, need knowledge of the historical Plato to tell us what has happened to us through the instrument of Platonism-cum-SOM-cum-logical positivism. But I don't think we should confuse the two, just as Pirsig urges us to not confuse the historical Sophists with the picture Plato gives us. To put it another way, there is no "Platonism itself as a belief system" without also picking out a cross-section of history in which to figure out what that refers to. There are no "concepts of Platonism" without also picking out a cross-section of history because philosophy is not itself scholarship--scholars figure out what Plato thought he was doing in his own time, philosophers are the ones who figure out what Plato _did to us_. Does that make sense, or am I reading _you_ wrong? Matt said: 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. Ron said: As it applies to the conversation I think Plato's theory of forms contrasts greatly with Aristotles golden mean. Which is one of your central contentions of Platonism that truth is a universal. While Aristotle maintained truth was contextual and subjective. Lumping them is a platonic move on your part. you may slap your own wrist if you wish. Matt: I guess I would, except I'm not sure I really follow you on what you think I'm doing. I'm not sure about your formulation of my "central contention," so let me say this: I will grant that Plato and Aristotle are often importantly juxtaposed, but the questions Aristotle thought were important to answer were because of what came before him, specifically Plato. Aristotle wasn't possible without Plato, and on the score in which I'm using "Platonism," he's Platonic. One example: the issue of Being. Plato basically identified Being, basic immutable existence, with Idea, with the Forms. Aristotle _does_ give a very different answer, encapsulated in his form/substance distinction in which substance is immutable (but unknowable) and forms are the knowable "forms" that existence take in experience. This _is_ to a large degree a complete reversal of Plato, _but Aristotle has already agreed to the idea of Being_, a "basic immutable existence." What I call anti-Platonism is the suggestion that we rethink the idea that there _is_ -an- "issue of Being" at all. The problem with Platonism is not that "truth is a universal" (which has several different connotations, not all bad), the problem with Platonism was the suggestion that there is an epistemological method that would tell us when a belief is not only justified, but also true. This is the dialectic. This is _not_ any particular discipline and _its_ methods because, as philosophers through history would tell us, these disciplines--because they don't face up to the problem of justifications for their own methods--just give us justification for belief, not truth. The philosophers, with the special pleading of Platonism's dialectic, of history have seen this as their provenance: telling people how _knowledge is even possible_, telling why the other disciplines' methods work, telling us how we know we have truth in addition to justification. Pragmatists (as I attempted to elaborate earlier, in this thread as it happens, though it seems ages ago) are suggesting 1) we will never bridge the gap between justification and truth--we will never be able to logically leap from context-dependence to context-independence--and 2) there isn't even a connection between justification and truth--one has to do with knowledge and the other with semantics. Also, Aristotle _is_ a great resource for contextualism (the early pragmatists, particularly Dewey, looking back fondly on Aristotle), but _not_, I would say, for "subjectivity"--the very notion of subjectivity is very modern, and I think it dangerous to look to the Greeks with a loaded term like that. Ron said: You get SOM with Platonic ontology. You get the mind matter problem from analytic tradition which uses the ontology. There is no enemy save the arrogance of the assumption that the ontology represents reality absolutely. Matt: Well, yeah with the arrogance, but once the arrogance is gone (after stipulating the arrogance as what academics call "representationalism") you've booted Platonism. At least, that's my contention, my attempt to unmuddy the water. One can keep the distinction between mind and matter, and subject and object, unproblematically once one has booted Platonism, at least as I've defined the term. I guess the question is, why should we keep "Platonic ontology"? Or rather, _what_ is Platonic ontology after we've booted all the bad bits of arrogance (which has to include notions of epistemological method)? Grammar? I guess I'm beginning to lose hold of what you're suggesting. Is it something like "Platonic ontology/grammar created SOM, which in turn created positivistic materialism--which wouldn't be bad if the philosophers touting materialism weren't arrogant representationalists"? Ron said: they [Sophists] thought they were based on reasons but they said that those reasons were relative to the specific culture. Matt: Yeah, okay. I guess my back gets up with the term "relativism" because of its sinister modern connotations, developed as they were out of Platonism, those arrogant pricks who think there is a universal moral order that can successfully be represented. But if you define "relativism" as "reasons/justification is relative to a specific community," then there's nothing sinister about it because everyone knows justification is relative (whereas truth, being a semantic term, is not). Principally, I balk at Sophists being relativists because I think the charge (and thus notion) of "relativism" is a more modern development, something begun by Plato but not really sunk into philosophical culture (let alone the wider culture). Sophists couldn't have been evil relativists, and that is also why people like Pirsig look back to them for support, because they articulated views in naivete of Plato and thus were at, in a way, a Golden Primitive Age--a pre-Platonic conceptual playground. Of course, it is hard to know what this playground actually looked like because most of what we know about the Sophists comes from Plato. And it is questionable if we'd _really_ want to go back to it. But it is a nice fantasy that gives us some anti-Platonic ideas. Ron said: Wow, just cause you are paranoid doesn't mean that Platonism isn't out to get you huh? Matt: Yeah, pretty much. I think Cobain had it about right--it is the vigilance of the skeptics that keep the dogmatists from halting cultural progress. It is an entire cultural process that doesn't make sense at the individual level, but only on the larger cultural stage, everybody playing their part, everything in its right place. Ron said: you are using platonic ontology with analytic method of reason when you cite Hegelian dialectic as a reason for vigilance against the rise of Platonism. Careful with witch hunts, they frequently lead to your own doorstep. Matt: Yeah, that's what DMB thinks, too, which is technically true given the spin Hegel gave on "history," but the trouble is that my "witch hunt" only leads to my own doorstep if _I_ use _your_ terms. But I don't use your terms, I use my own, which have been prepared (to the limited extent that they are prepared) the way they are to represent the latest stage of anti-Platonism. My terms don't use a Platonic ontology (at least not one I either a) am inclined to recognize as such or b) am convinced that are the next stage of Platonism), and I'm not sure what a loaded phrase like "analytic method of reason" refers to, other the commonsensical reasoning process we all go through when we get up, find our keys, and drive to work (the one Pirsig says science is a more methodical version of), and if that's the case, then I don't see anything particularly Platonic about that, either, at least not in the bad, arrogant way that is my _only_ target with the term "Platonism." Now, I have know doubt that someday those terms will be aufgehoben, but I'm just not sure I've seen it yet (though I've seen some interesting proposals, like Barry Allen's book Knowledge and Civilization). Matt said: 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? Ron said: I think the tell tale sign is their openness to alternative ways of thinking. If they are close minded and absolute in their beliefs that their way of thinking is THE way, then you have a SOMite on your hands. I can usually pick this out after a polite conversation. Matt: Mmm, I don't know about this way of picking out Platonists. You're talking about something that can occur in any particular person, independent of their philosophical views, a kind of willingness and curiosity to explore other things. But I hesitate to attribute philosophical views to people that would rather watch football than read or watch Nature programs. I think Platonism does have something to do with this larger, cultural situation--of people who don't even want to _hear_ the other side (for fear of changing, becoming convinced)--but I think it is much touchier business than almost everyone here, and Pirsig for that matter, think it is in linking up philosophical views with cultural situations. I think the two are more independent of each other, though you can, given careful treatment, go back and forth between them. I think Pirsig did it very well in ZMM, and pretty good again in Lila, though in the latter he devoted more of his time to a metaphysics that attempts to gain the philosophers are there own ground, which is needed, but is also less useful when you turn to the larger cultural situation. What I pick out with "Platonism" is a specifically philosophical series of theses--this is, again, my way of unmuddying my target. My targets are, primarily, other philosophers. When I turn to the larger cultural situation, I might grasp a few of the weapons honed in my battles in philosophy, but--as your little bar dialogue illustrated--they might not always be the best weapons. Who's going to wait around to hear a lecture on Plato? When I'm trying to effect change in the larger culture (normally, one person at a time), I reach for different weapons, one's they will understand. People understand "curiosity"; they don't usually understand "SOM" or "Platonism." The weapons I choose will certainly reflect to a certain extent my understanding of specifically philosophical issues, but there's no good reason to spend time on that when you're at the bar, not unless you want to sound pretentious. 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