Sometimes when you're curious about something, Wikipedia is a good place to
start. Probably it's not a good place to end an argument, but it's
definitely a good place to start one:
From the wikipedia article on process philosophy we find:
In opposition to the classical model of change as accidental (as argued by
Aristotle) or illusory, process philosophy regards change as the
cornerstone of reality—the cornerstone of Being
<https://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/Being> thought of as Becoming
<https://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/Becoming_(philosophy)>. Modern philosophers
who appeal to process rather than substance include Friedrich Nietzsche
<https://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/Friedrich_Nietzsche>, Martin Heidegger
<https://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/Martin_Heidegger>, Charles Sanders Peirce
<https://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/Charles_Sanders_Peirce>, Alfred North
Whitehead <https://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/Alfred_North_Whitehead>, Alan Watts
<https://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/Alan_Watts>, Robert M. Pirsig
<https://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/Robert_M._Pirsig>, Charles Hartshorne
<https://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/Charles_Hartshorne>, Arran Gare
<https://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/Arran_Gare>, Nicholas Rescher
<https://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/Nicholas_Rescher>, Colin Wilson
<https://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/Colin_Wilson>, and Gilles Deleuze
<https://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/Gilles_Deleuze>. In physics Ilya Prigogine
<https://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/Ilya_Prigogine>[4] distinguishes between the
"physics of being" and the "physics of becoming". Process philosophy covers
not just scientific intuitions and experiences, but can be used as a
conceptual bridge to facilitate discussions among religion, philosophy, and
science.[5][6]
hmmm.
jc
PS: Tuk, are you familiar with the field of
Mereotopology
???
Seems right your ally -
a branch of metaphysics <https://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/Metaphysics>,
and in ontological
computer science <https://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/Ontology_(computer_science)>,
*mereotopology* is a first-order theory
<https://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/First-order_theory>, embodying mereological
<https://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/Mereology> and topological
<https://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/Topological> concepts, of the relations
among wholes, parts, parts of parts, and the boundaries
<https://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/Boundary_(topology)> between parts.
On Sun, Nov 20, 2016 at 2:47 PM, david <dmbucha...@hotmail.com> wrote:
Hello, MOQers:
I suppose everyone knows that people are suspicious of the emotional
language in "rhetoric" and consider "sophistry" to be a form of
manipulative deception. The conventional meaning isn't likely to change
anytime soon and that's fine because there is empty speech and there are
plenty of manipulative deceivers that deserve the name. In telling the
story of philosophy Pirsig turns those meanings upside down.
“Plato’s hatred of the rhetoricians was part of a much larger struggle in
which the reality of the Good, represented by the Sophists, and the reality
of the True, represented by the dialecticians, were engaged in a huge
struggle for the future mind of man.” -- Robert Pirsig
As the story is usually told, rhetoric is too emotional to be considered
serious about the truth. Our feelings have no bearing on the truth, this
story goes, and clear thinking is about cool logic and putting one's
passions aside. But, Pirsig says, this story doesn't make as much sense as
it used to.
“It’s been necessary since before the time of Socrates to reject the
passions, the emotions, in order to free the rational mind for an
understanding of nature’s order which was as yet unknown. Now it’s time to
further an understanding of nature’s order by reassimilating those passions
which were originally fled from. The passions, the emotions, the affective
domain of man’s consciousness, are a part of nature’s order too. The
central part.” — Robert Pirsig
At certain points in the re-telling and inversion of this old slanderous
story Pirsig is downright angry about it. He finally realizes that the
Platonic demand for passionless dialectic has the effect of excluding
Quality, which is the whole thing for Pirsig.
“Phædrus’ mind races on and on and then on further, seeing now at last a
kind of evil thing, an evil deeply entrenched in himself, which pretends to
try and understand love and beauty and truth and wisdom but whose real
purpose is never to understand them, whose real purpose is always to usurp
them and enthrone itself. Dialectic - the usurper. That is what he sees.
The parvenu, muscling in on all that is Good and seeking to contain it and
control it."
And he's feeling triumphant about this discovery because it turns out that
the Sophists weren't demagogues, hucksters, or confidence men. They were
teaching Quality and they were teaching it the same way he had been
teaching it to his student in Montana.
"Lightning hits! Quality! Virtue! Dharma! That is what the Sophists were
teaching! Not ethical relativism. Not pristine 'virtue.' But areté.
Excellence. Dharma! Before the Church of Reason. Before substance. Before
form. Before mind and matter. Before dialectic itself. Quality had been
absolute. Those first teachers of the Western world were teaching Quality,
and the medium they had chosen was that of rhetoric."
And this re-telling of ancient history is part of the book's central
project, which is a root expansion of rationality. The criticisms of
rationality that he offers almost always involve the problem of objective
truth. Value-free science has got to go, he says. Attitudes of objectivity
make our thinking stiff and narrow and entail a denigration of subjectivity
so that Quality is JUST what you like, is JUST your opinion or assessment
of some thing or other. But this is part of that same old slander against
the Sophists and rhetoricians, Pirsig says, and our form of rationality
would actually be vastly improved by putting Quality at the cutting edge of
all experience and all thought. Quality is right there at the very roots of
our thinking and by including Quality our thinking is broadened and
deepened and enriched by the inclusion of the emotional and aesthetic
quality that pervades our thought regardless of whether we acknowledge it
or not. You gotta have a feel for the work, he says, and that's not just
about fixing motorcycles. It's about everything. All the time.
For Pirsig, "rhetoric" simply means excellence in thought and speech.
Rhetoric is truer than objective truth because it includes the heart as
well the head, so to speak. To talk truthfully will mean that the claim is
supported by evidence and its expression logically sound, just as before,
but that's no longer good enough. Speaking truthfully also means that you
care about the truth, have feelings about that truth and maybe your
expression shows the power or the beauty of that truth. To move or persuade
another is not a sinister manipulation or a deception. It's a good thing
and we should love it somebody does it right.
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Robert M. Pirsig's MoQ deals with the fundamentals of existence and
provides a more coherent system for understanding reality than our current
paradigms allow
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