Greeting Ham,
I'm not acquainted with Ellul, but am pleased that you concur with my "S/O > view" of metaphysical reality. > > Well, I have to say, I'm cautious because that statement could be taken several ways. You're S/O view contains insights we share, but I'd be reluctant to admit that your S/O view is one of the insights we share. > Since you referenced your insightful essay on 'The Physics of Metaphysics', > I would like to offer a cosmology that may give it more meaning: > > That essay was Mary's, actually. Mine was on the conflation of truth and reality. But the quote below is Ellul's. Just to be clear. > Truth is the absolute or eternal. >> We are not able even to approach its outskirts. >> > > Ham: I agree that Truth, like Value and Meaning, is absolute, and we can only > know these absolutes in a relational or differential sense. John: This is a very important part of Ellul's thinking. Because our vision is holistic and all-encompassing - that is, not innately discrete, it is through our hearing that we learn the word which differentiates. He's making a distinction between the two realms, which are always together in consciousness but should not be confused - the word of truth that we hear, and the sight of reality. Trouble comes in when we try and force one into the other. Which is Kierkegaard's point about the "repetition of error" handed down from Plato on. But Pirsig agrees and clears up the conflation by pointing out that the "facts" of reality are discerned creatively through intellectual constructions (words). That without the intellectual discrimination, the real has no existant boundaries. This also ties in with the Robert Lanza's idea of Biocentrism, I believe, that time and space are fundamentally related to animal sensory perception > Human beings are the "realizers' of relative truth. What Ellul is saying is that truth is created in dialogue, in the discourse of communicating subjects. This sounds to me that Truth is an intellectual construct, socially formed. But Ellul goes much further in his explication of the doxa in dialogue and paradox as the cornerstone of meaning-formation. I'll try and explain this more clearly sometime, if you're interested. > We bring universal order into finite existence in accordance with Absolute > Truth, and the relational universe represents our realization of Value. > This would not be possible if we were not metaphysically linked to Value. > Which is why I maintain that the individual self is essentially > value-sensibility, or (in an ontological sense) the value "agent". Without > this sense of value the human individual would be no more than any other > biologically-dependent organism whose habits and propensities are determined > by Nature. > > Do you not agree that Nature is a name we give to "ultimate valuation", and all biological beings are metaphysically related to this value-patterning? And thus human individuals are identical to all other biological beings with the one key difference being the formation of language-intellectual values (the Word, as Ellul terms it) exclusively in the human realm. I really think the Pirsigian analysis of 4 levels to being helps us here in seeing this "truth". > Perhaps something like this is implied in these two paragraphs: > > Truth remains truth in relation to and in spite of everything. >> It is firm, stable, hard, and irrefutable. We must not relativize it >> just because science has changed. We must not say that >> yesterday's truth becomes today's error. We must not become >> so extremely liberal that we say everything is relative, so that one >> person can be just as right as the person who says the opposite. >> If truth is truth even beyond the limits of our grasp and our >> approximation, it *exists*. And that settles it. Heraclitus says >> something that does not vanish, and his statement falls within >> the scope of truth. >> >> What would become of us if we could grasp truth with unvarying >> precision and express it without the slightest imperfection or without >> any uncertainty? What would happen if the means were perfectly >> adequate for expressing truth? Such a situation would be dreadful >> and completely unlivable We would be pinned down once and for all >> in a butterfly museum. We would be there in all our splendor, unable >> to move any more, because everything would be said, closed up, >> and finished: perfect. >> > > As I wrote in my thesis... > > "If you were suddenly granted the key to all knowledge, including the > origin, meaning and destiny of your life - complete with a timetable - would > it be a gift or a curse? Would you be content with the prospect of never > having to make a choice, feel surprise, or ponder an unknown fate? Or would > this wisdom reduce your life-experience to that of a robotized creature, > automatically running its prescribed course under the control of an external > source?" > > Yes! That looks harmonious with the point Ellul was making about absolute truth pinning us to the wall in a butterfly museum. > Indeed, life would have no meaning if we were born with the knowledge of > Absolute Truth. Agreed. The meaning of human life is the process of finding truth. Succeeding would make life meaningless! > Conversely, in the absence of a sensible agent there would be no > realization of Value. We exist on the periphery of the Absolute Source so > that Value is accessible to us incrementally and differentially, and so that > we may be awed by the realization of a reality greater than what existential > experience reveals. > > Makes sense to me. "greater than experience" is gonna get us in trouble with empiricists of all stripes on this list, but that is a key point, I believe. > Marsha and others here are persuaded that "no Primary Source is required." > However, if you are open to the possibility of a 'divine plan', such an > ontology is surely worth your consideration. > > I agree. There is an important consideration tho that is lacking in your formulation and that is that ontological ridgidity is unhelpful to understanding and communication. It is the flexibility of ambiguous words and paradoxical understandings. the "many fingers pointing to the moon" doctrine in Pirsigian terms, which is most vital to a true enlightenment that is growing and collaborative - that is, intellectual excellence is communal, rather than individual. An old sticking point for Ham! Thanks as always for the refreshment of intelligent dialogue, Ham. Idealistically yours, John 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/md/archives.html
