Ron said to dmb:
... Relativism seems to hold a particularly strong point of view within the
context of empiricism so much so that it created a real problem for these
philosophers, the Sophists really had their panties in a bunch over the
seemingly air tight case that all is relative and in flux. How can we ever know
anything with any kind of certainty? We can't. So only through careful
inquirey, through collection and division through the dialectic and through
reflection apon the consequences of each hypothisis should we ever hope to gain
a more precise understanding of the concepts and subject matter. ...
dmb says:
Hmmm. As I understand it, Plato slandered the Sophists by calling them
relativists. It was Plato that had his panties in a bunch over the notion that
all is relative. Plato insisted on a fixed and eternal truth whereas the
Sophists said reality just isn't like that. As I understand it, Heraclitus said
you can't stand in the same river twice, which is a metaphor for the idea that
reality is fundamentally about flux and change, and Zeno "proved" that motion
and change were impossible and all appearances to the contrary are illusions.
And so the main camps in philosophy sort of pivot around these two rival
visions; the empirical flux and fixed eternal Ideas.
Ron commented:
Right, again we see him stating that cultural assumptions (opinion) ta endoxa
as the starting point of reasoning is an imitation of reason. And that method
of collection and division, the is and is not of the matter, Dialectic, I
contend, is a radically empirical method of gaining a more precise meaning of a
concept.
dmb says:
As I understand it, the dialectical method is contrasted with the empirical
method. It is the method of choice for those who do not trust the senses and
therefore believe that logic and reason is the only road to truth. Thus they
talk instead of observe, investigate or experiment. This is rationalism and
it's opposed to empiricism. As you pointed out, Ron, "they saw empirical
reality as subjective and ... based upon cultural bias and opinion. Relativism
had them stymied." This, I think, is what Pirsig would be talking about when he
says that Plato slandered them. These are the reasons they give for distrusting
empirical methods.
Ron continued:
but.....we can see..that like Pirsig...these philosophers understood that
truth was a love of wisdom a passion for the precise and accurate the highest
virtue. And this is what Aristotle really took up and expanded apon in
scientific inquiry and method. The Pythagoreans on the other hand went
precisely the way you state toward a vicious intellectualism and they really
influenced Plato's latter work so much so that it's really difficult to see the
great contributions to Pragmatism Plato made in earlier writ.
dmb says:
Yes, as Plato construed it, there are three basic types of people and they
correspond pretty neatly with the MOQ's biological, social and intellectual
levels. Plato talked about these three types as the lovers of pleasure, the
lovers of honor and the lovers of truth or wisdom. The pleasure seekers are
hedonists. They like what the pastry chefs and prostitutes have to offer. The
lovers of honor want fame and fortune and power. Then there are the
philosophers, whose love is of a higher order. But Plato stops there and
associates all things good and divine with the intellect. He was a very
ungroovy dude.
Now Socrates, on the other hand, he gets real close to what Pirsig is saying in
Plato's Phaedrus. His description of the soul, Pirsig says in ZAMM, is pretty
much what he means by DQ.
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
