Arlo, it is indeed like a koan. I remember my first encounter on MoQ.Discuss was around the problem that a statement like "there are no axioms" sounds awfully like an axiom and a koan at the same time. (These sentences are hofstader's "quines" by the way.)
BTW thw following is an unashamed quote from my response to Case on this earlier, which Ham took up as suggesting you and I were being "nihilistic" QUOTE At one extreme the view is "everything is metaphor" - nothing is literally real or literal. In some sense I actually subscribe to that view. One reason I latched onto the Johnson quote you brought up (or was it Arlo) is because Lakoff & Johnson's "Metaphors We Live By" and "Fire, Women and Dangerous Things" made a big impression on me. Every piece of language is (or more precisely was) a metaphor, or derived from one. A symbol of something else, a gesture, an onomatopeic sound, whatever. "Was" is important. Gradually metaphors die. (DMB had to point out the open-handshake gesture to us, because in daily life the reason for the meaning is forgotten and irrelevant). They actually die by the authority of social adoption (as Mark poined out, the "accepted" meaning of word is a social phenomenon.). At some point we (socially) accept a word's meaning directly from (sight and sound of) the word, without thinking there is any metaphor to decode first, in fact we positively forget it ever was a metaphor. And the provenance of the word may thoroughly disguise the fact it ever had any metaphorical connotation, thanks to translation, spread and adoption of usage from culture to culture, language to language, and don't forget the original languages and cutures that gave us the roots of the words die too. (The Sanskrit "Rta" passages of Pirsig are my favourites BTW) (Wow, I said all of that without the "m" word - meme that is.) Most words therefore do not seem to be metaphors to us. They are dead metaphors. And most are so long dead, we may have no idea where the metaphor lies buried, to ever be able to demonstrate its metaphorical origins. (Lakoff and Johnson also deal with the invented - deliberately meaningless tokens - neologisms that get attached to new things too ..... there is always an element of either derivation or connotation somewhere ...) So here you have it. The difference between "metaphorical" and "literal" is really just time ... or distance on the evolutionary axis. So if we're talking about our most fundamental (metaphysical) division of reality, Quality in this case ... we're still at (haven't even reached) base camp on the evolutionary axis. Everything evolves from here. Quality is effectively both literal and metaphorical at the same time, (possibly a duality ?). Alternatively you could say the distinction becomes meaningless. As Marsha points out quality is not so much undefined, and undefinable, as a matter of principle, being the chosen origin for our metaphysics. Worrying about defining the meaning of Quality is lierally (hah!) pointless. It's simply the chosen (deemed) root of our world-view, and a very effective one at that. We can (must) use literal sounding talk about it without any care as to whether there is anything under it on which it is metaphorically based. [UNQUOTE] Ian On 1/28/07, ARLO J BENSINGER JR <[EMAIL PROTECTED]> wrote: > [Platt] > Can't help but ask if there isn't "One True Way of Thinking" since many times > you have extolled the value of "critical thinking" and urged that it be taught > to all children. > > [Arlo] > This, like the MOQ, is just a map. But, like Pirsig points out, at > cultural-historical points in time, we can argue that some maps are "better". > "Critical thinking" is a map that deals with information location, analysis > and > synthesis, and foregrounds the "mapness" of other "paths", and as such I'd > argue that this is an important finger pointing at the moon at this point in > time. I also that the MOQ be taught in schools, but this does not mean I think > it is The One True Philosophy. > > But, I gather, you are trying to get back to your beloved "it's all relative > is > an absolute statement". This was (as I suggested) a fatal flaw in deism, that > said "all this is just an analogy, except this statement". I think the MOQ > would say, "all this is just an analogy, including this statement". That you > find paradox in this only demonstrates what's at the center of any > (sufficiently complex) symbolic system, paradox and recursion (I'm think GEB > here). > > We can, of course, limit a given symbolic system, but this makes said system > less and less powerful (the more and more we try to "nail it down"). This is, > in fact, what we do with "literalization". For limited, pragmatic matters, > limiting a symbolic system to do particular tasks give us great flexibility in > activity. But the downside is we move further and further away from the power > to anything more than "mundane" transactions. By building more and more > complex > systems, to do more and more powerful things, we unavoidably must deal with > paradox, strange loops, recursion, chaos, self-organization, and all the other > oddities that reveal an incompleteness to the system. > > All this is just an analogy, including this statement. Isn't this a lot like a > Zen Koan? > > > 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/
