Hey Matt,
Matt said: , 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, (snip) 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: My central contention is the ability to create an objective argument which rests squarely on the agreement of the treatment of terms, nouns to be specific. It is the anchor of logic. One standard which ultimately changed the way we conceive of things. If nouns did not refer to tangible entities logical arguments could not be made with any certainty. This is where the big argument lies and has lied from my point of view, between Aristotle and Plato (or the contrasts with their schools of thought) the truth may be arrived at contextually through dialectic verses truth as a universal ideal. 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: I'm not a wagering man but I'd be willing to bet that this is where he does posit the origin of our cultural philosophies. It's at this point where he places the origin of the intellectual level of our culture. Philosophy certainly existed before Plato, as did intellect. The important part for Pirsig in regard to MoQ is the origin of SOM. which does lie in philosophy. The philosophy of truth finding as an ideal in a democratic state. Quality Matt. they were going after Quality. Matt: 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? Ron: You certainly bring up a valid point in reference to what exactly we are talking about, "Platonism" is a very wide and varied term and we may tend to miss each other with our own understanding of the term as it relates to our conversation and the argument I'm forming. 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. 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. Ron: I think it is an important issue to take up. To exist seems to be the only certainty we can hang our hat on. The nature of this existence seems to be another topic, one raised again by Descartes mind/matter which I feel is every bit as much an anthropic extension as Plato's theory of forms. The theory of forms is a modulation of the axiom of whole numbers. Mind/ matter seems to be a modulation of Platonic ontology. what we are left with are two fallacious assumptions on top of one another creating the illusion of representationalism and the paradoxes and logical justifications that emerge from those assumptions. Matt: 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. Ron: Yes but that method was driven by the belief in arriving at an absolute solve. That dialectic truth was a universal concept to arrive at in the theatre of social justice in a democratic state. Plato saw that this plainly was not the case with Socrates and set out to change that by reducing truth to existence. He found if one could establish truth in the verifiability of the existence of entities (objects) It would lay the ground work for the same universally verifiable truth in statements. Matt: 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: you are Quite right, looking back on it and projecting a common term can muddy the waters but I use it as a convenience of terms to demonstrate to you what I mean. I think Pirsig takes up the important re-affirmation of truth in "being" that Plato and Descartes cite as the foundation of certainty. As you rightly state the Pragmatists lean in Aristotle's direction that truth is contextual and relies on justification and belief. Where they meet is the disagreement where society plays a part. social Laws. Society requires standards and interpretation of those standards. Aristotle took a sophists approach in regard to ethics as it relates to "truth". While Plato insisted that "truth" was perfect and absolute in the proof of axiom. We can model perfection, mathematically therefore perfection and absolutes must exist. In relation to social law. We see the conflict work in a dialectical form everyday in our court system. The prosecution builds an objective case that the defense must invalidate with sophistry and dialectical cross examination. Which is then subjected to interpretation set by precedence of prior rulings. 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: That's about the ring of it Matt, I feel the whole thing rests on the Platonic Ontology of nouns representing physical entities. Which is the founding cornerstone of formal Greek logic. I believe the concept was borrowed and applied from mathematics axioms, consequently this influenced mathematics by introducing deductive reasoning to Greek method. Something that became a matter of course to the thinkers of the middle ages to Descartes and to the analytic method creating not so much an arrogance as an unperceived naivety of representational materialism. Your Platonism If I have you right. Because the Christian church adopted much of this philosophy and having survived the dark ages the concepts became re-introduced to the western world only this time it was founded in the church which touts unquestioning faith and uses Greek grammar and reason. Matt: 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: I think this is what MoQ does it returns to that, what Pirsig I think refers to as, that "pre-Platonic" playground of intellectual thought. this is how SOM and MoQ can be competing forms of intellectual patterns. without violating Bo's drummed on, container paradox, and why SOM can not be THE intellectual level. Once we define what SOM is we may understand Pirsigs MoQ. much better. The MoQ becomes complete and cohesive in meaning. 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. Ron: I term that as a philosophical view, the entire outlook and the conduct of their everyday life. My philosophical views shape my values to a large extent. From belief to ethics. If you hold a particular Philosophic point of view and they do not influence your actions then I'd say your views are hollow and meaningless. I really don't think you can say you have that point of view if you do not have the beliefs to support it in the Pragmatic sense of the terms. Your beliefs may be justified intellectually whereas another's would tend more in the social aspect of justification. But they are philosophies non-the-less. The distinction I believe is between intellectual justification and social justification of philosophical belief. Which was what my rather poorly Python-inspired dialog was meant to convey comically. (to lighten things up, in reality I'm much more cagey with planting seeds) Matt: 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. Ron: I think they are intertwined, cultural situations create philosophical views and philosophical views create cultural situations. They are distinguishable parts of a whole. Representational of the social/intellectual distinction of Pirsigs levels. sorry for the wait, that was a lot to consider. 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