________________________________
From: Ham Priday <[EMAIL PROTECTED]>
To: [EMAIL PROTECTED]
Sent: Wednesday, November 5, 2008 6:16:31 AM
Subject: Re: [MD] Democracy
Ron:
All my literature maintains what we today know as classical essentialism is
attributed to Plato, what Plato was arguing in his idealism is that "entities"
or "forms"
are an abstraction divorced from the physical world.Despite the fact Plato
taught that ideas are ultimately real, and different from non-ideal
things--indeed, he argued
for a distinction between the ideal and non-ideal realm. Between the abstract
universal and the concrete particular.
The difference is that Plato founded his idealism on the assumption of
"essentialism".
> I have worked up a short essay that touches on the origin
> of essentialism with Parmenides and works from there to
> define the origins of "entities".
>
> I would argue as you have done, that the very definition of
> "reason" has essentialism built into it.
I'll be eager to read this essay, Ron. Regarding Parmenides, you might be
interested is rviewing Matt Kundert's website in which he quotes David C.
Lindberg as asking:
"What does one do if experience suggests the reality of change, while careful
argumentation (with due attention to the rules of logic) unambiguously teaches
its impossibility? For Parmenides and Zeno, the answer was clear: the rational
process must prevail."[1] ...
And so Parmenides declares that all change is merely an elaborate illusion and
the underlying reality is a completely stable, unchanging monism."
Matt then goes on to show how Plato resolved the paradox by drawing a
metaphysical distinction between "appearance and reality" (i.e., the dichotomy
that both Pirsig and the Objectivists refuse to accept).
Ron:
Paremnides in his arguements about the non existence of voids or "nothing"
turned the verb "to be" into a substantive form.
He argued that the concept of “nothing” does not exist therefore movement or
change is an illusion
because it required movement within a “void” rationalizing that "be-ing" or
"is" is timeless and unchanging
and whole. The reality of the world is one being.
Paremnides claimed that truth may not be known via perception that it may only
be known by reason.
what Paremnides does not consider is that Reason is ta endoxa,and therefore a
product of language and culture.
By Plato insisting on making the distinction between "appearance and reality"
he re-enforced the notion of "forms" as eternal
and unchanging wholes or"entities" which we find again are ta endoxa,and
therefore a product of language and culture.
or the "universal".
[Platt, to Ron]:
> You are onto something important in that Pirsig is the only
> philosopher I know of who has taken quantum research into
> account, namely the discovery that the dualistic mode of
> knowing (SOM) with its divisions of subject/object, cause/effect,
> mind/matter, etc., is ultimately shortsighted. One need only refer
> to the Heisenberg Uncertainty Principle to discover SOM's
> blind spot. A higher mode of knowing, the mode acknowledged
> so forcefully in the MOQ, is that of pure, direct experience,
> prior to any dualistic concepts whatsoever. As William James
> observed, "To know immediately then, or intuitively, is for mental
> content and object to be identical." Or, as Heisenberg himself said,
> " . . . the common division of the world into subject and object,
> inner world and outer world, body and soul, is no longer adequate
> and leads us into difficulties." And again, as Erwin Schroedinger
> put it: "Subject and object are only one. The barrier between them
> cannot be said to have been broken down as a result of recent
> experience in the physical sciences, for this barrier does not exist."
Oh, but it does, Platt. In fact, the self-other dichotomy is the defining
principle of Existence.
This is what I've been trying to get across to the Pirsigians. Existence is
fundamentally a relational system in which all beingness is differentiated and
value is realized as a polarized spectrum from good to bad, better to worse,
moral to evil, beautiful to hideous, etc. When Heisenberg said that this
"leads us into difficulties," he was talking to physicists who depend on
consistent, reliable data for their conclusions.
Quantum physics pushes experiential data beyond the threshold of human
sensibility, where entitites no longer hold to measurable parameters. That was
the "difficulty". The finite human observer cannot cross the barrier of
existential reality because he himself is an "existent". And William James was
saying that we can only know "intuitively" that awareness and its object are
one. That, I submit to both of you, is metaphysical insight, not experiential
knowledge. A "field theory of states", as Ron describes it, is still
differentiated and relational. According to Essentialism (as I define it),
subject-object realization cannot exist without a "clean break" between
differentiated contrariety and Absolute Essence.
Ron:
Plancks constant and the observable symetry of particals disolves notions of
observer relativity in quantum mechanics. Quantum physics is indeed still based
in human sensibility, but that sensibility is cross-referenced with
mathematical calculation.They each verify the other. I think you and Parimnedes
share much
in common, although your ideas of a value-centic expereince is much more viable
than anything we have of record of Parimnedes work, IMHO.
I hope you will forgive my butting into your discussion, but I can't stand idly
by while Essentialism is incorrectly applied to non-metaphysical scientific and
philosophical theories.
Thanks for indulging me in these comments.
Ron:
It was not my intent to conflagulate essentialism and Platonic idealism, but I
do think I have a case in the origin of essentialistic concepts.
Thanks Ham!
Greetings Ron [Platt quoted] --
> The Quantum revolution is one that got it legs from the
> shift in perspective of causality from an essentialist view
> to one of a field theory defined in "states".
>
> Max Born had stated that before the twentieth century
> Classic Newtonian Physics was dominated by essentialist
> assumption. He stated:
>
> * "Causality postulates that there are laws by which the
> occurrence of an entity B of a certain class depends on
> the occurrence of an entity A of another class, where the
> word entity means any physical object, phenomenon,
> situation, or event. A is called the cause, B the effect.
> * "Antecedence postulates that the cause must be prior to,
> or at least simultaneous with, the effect.
> * "Contiguity postulates that cause and effect must be in
> spatial contact or connected by a chain of intermediate
> things in contact."
>
> Therefore, I found it may be arguable to conclude that the
> classic notion of "cause and effect" is indeed influenced
> by essentialism which indeed is the basis of SOM assumptions.
I think you are confusing Plato's Idealism with Essentialism, which only
recently has been used to designate Platonic Idealism. Plato surmised that
things have "essences" which are the nature of their being, but he did not call
this theory Essentialism. According to his explanation, all entities have two
aspects, "matter" and "form", and it's the particular form imparted to an
object that gives it an identity, "quiddity" or "whatness." That's an
essentialistic ontology rather than a metaphysical cosmology. In fact, it was
this ontology (theory of being) that Aristotle applied to an objectivist view
of reality that was the precursor of scientific metholology. Since Objectivism
rejects monism, it is actually antithetical to Idealism and the fundamental
awareness/otherness (SOM) dichotomy.
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