Matt: Well, if we're going to be precise, we needn't stop there. As I understand the case Havelock presents, the Semitic script was the first step on a different path than picto and ideographic scripts, but the real power wasn't unleashed until the Greek addition of vowels. What was at issue was an transference between spoken and written word. The Semitic script created a conceptual rift between a tree and the word for tree, not by eliminating "the corresponding experience," but by transferring between one kind of correspondence to another. Whereas the pictograph is supposed to depict what it represents, the Semitic script corresponded to a _sound_, thus expanding the distance between the script and the tree, but closing the distance between the script language and the spoken language. The introduction of the vowel, going from "YHWH" to "Yahweh," proved decisive, we might say in retrospect, in unleashing the power of abstract thought by closing the loop tightly by binding _everyone together_ to "hearing" the same words when reading them. As I remarked before, the Pirsigian irony of the literate revolution is that it made cultures more dynamic by making language more static.
Ron: it als opened up more complex abstractions, setting the scene for complex deduction by the combination of consonants and vowels to easily create new words with greater complexity of abstraction. Standardization is key, but the abilty to make complex chains of meaning with a limited standardized alphabet Seems to me to be the first huge advancement toward deduction. Matt: But certainly the main point, no matter who or what we give the biggest golden apple to, we agree on. What I like most about your appreciation of the matter is that you consider the Greek's fortune to be, cosmically speaking, "dumb luck," "random fortune," which I consider akin to pragmatist emphases on the sheer contingency of life. Unlike the Platonic instinct, the one that collapses Hume's is/ought, which is to say the contingent/necessary, the one that tells us that the way things are is the way things ought to be and necessarily are, the Darwinian viewpoint that pragmatists wanted to emphasize was that, yeah, this is how things might have _been_, but we might _now_ change them for the _future_. We might make an analogy between biological evolution and cultural--did our middle fingers evolve so that we could hit the K and D keys, or so that we might express displeasure on the highway? Likewise, pragmatists would like to suggest, so the material of our thought--the metaphors upon which abstraction dances upon--may have sprung from certain earlier felt needs and natural associations (like association between sight and knowing), but now may be cast aside in favor of different, better metaphors designed for different purposes. For instance, the purpose of our middle fingers when we are typing might seem quite, and most, naturally to be to hit the K and D keys, but _that is only when we are typing_. The larger purpose, we might say, for this smaller purpose is _typing_, so I would expect that if a better way came along (just as qwerty did) we would sacrifice the smaller purposes on the altar of the larger good (more economical typing). Or, in the case hand gestures, upon finding out that an accidentally motioned backwards peace sign in England has a very distinctive association (found in America on turnpikes with middle fingers), we might, rather than changing our cultural practices, just beware of the context we are in when choosing the kinds of hand motions appropriate. And likewise with philosophical problems and paradox, we might just ignore them in commonsensical situations, as nobody gets hung up on whether other minds exist when we hear, "Honey, I'm ho-ome!" Matt p.s. Bo stated, in controversion to my story about literacy, that Homer wrote the Illiad and Odessey. This, I'm fairly certain, has been entirely abandoned by scholars. It is generally agreed that the Illiad and Odessey are Greek oral poems (i.e., poems that were created orally, without aid of composition techniques supplied by script), and that they were simply set down (the "Homer Question," at least one of them, is whether or not one man named Homer recited the poems to a dude who wrote them down, or whether they were pieced together by a redactor from many bards--which, if orality is taken seriously, seems a silly question considering the idea of "authorship" is a post-literate idea). Homer, on my reading, is the voice of Pirsig's solo social stage _precisely because_ he was the last, great oral composer. Bo also stated that he didn't find anything that significant about the difference between the written symbol and the spoken. Neither did I until I read Walter Ong's Orality and Literacy, an introduction to the matter. That book has had the most significant, immediate effect on my thinking than any other single book, bar none. When most people, particularly Bo who loves the locution, say "you're mired in X thinking and can't see Y because of it," it is difficult to actually cash in the accusation (because doing so would mean they weren't mired anymore) and so it just seems like hot air. Ong's Orality and Literacy really shows you what having scales over your eyes is like. Primary oral cultures have entirely different thought patterns, but for far more down-to-earth, easy to understand, brute material reasons than many of the earlier writings on the subject (e.g., anthropologists who turned to the classics and classicists who turned to anthropology developed some beautiful theory, but were more poetic and hard to cash). Ron: Thank you for the lead on "Walter Ong's Orality and Literacy" one more on the must read list! Bo likes to keep his ideas about the ancient Greeks as pure to his conception of SOL as he can. I think he misses out on a richer understanding of the problem, Like Ant asked of me, how much reading have you done outside of Pirsig on the ancient Greeks and their philosophy? A pertenant question if there ever was one. I'm still an amatuer, but, I really do think doing the research into an idea is the best way to go about substantiating ones claims. Plus ya learn alot and change your opinion on the way. I need to read up on "Walter Ong's Orality and Literacy" to properly develope this thread, I'm damn glad we had this conversation Matt, probably one of the most important I've had in some time regarding my own interests. Thank you Ron ________________________________ From: Matt Kundert <[email protected]> To: [email protected] Sent: Saturday, May 23, 2009 3:28:44 PM Subject: Re: [MD] Philosophy, Metaphysics, and Common Sense Hey Ron, Ron said: The point you bring up about the development of the written language is largely on the mark, but to be more precise, about what brought about the particular Greek philospical situation is the fact that they used a Semitic language and not pictographic. This alone allowed for the creation of abstract ideas that have no corresponding expereince. _________________________________________________________________ Insert movie times and more without leaving Hotmail®. http://windowslive.com/Tutorial/Hotmail/QuickAdd?ocid=TXT_TAGLM_WL_HM_Tutorial_QuickAdd1_052009 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/ 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/
