[MD] Protagoras and "Measure"

[Matt Kundert]

Marsha, Ron, Andre,

Marsha said:
I have been haunted by something I read a while ago:  All 
knowledge is to some degree false because it is to some 
degree incomplete. ... Margolis says much about adding 
Indeterminate to the bipolar truth-values.... I wonder that 
DQ is present in every event and it is indeterminate.

Matt:
I guess I wouldn't suggest being haunted by the bit 
about knowledge because it assumes that we only have 
knowledge if we have completeness, and that's an 
assumption that I take pragmatism (and the general 
aura of relativism) to be moving away from.  Margolis' 
"Indeterminate" is much like Pirsig's "mu," and with 
Dynamic Quality, your comment would make a lot of 
sense alongside what I once called Pirsig's 
"Indeterminancy of Dynamic Quality thesis"--"The problem 
is that you can't really say whether a specific change is 
evolutionary at the time it occurs.  It is only with a century 
or so of hindsight that it appears evolutionary." 
(Lila, Ch. 17, 256)

I've always thought that there's a problem in putting 
together the "indeterminancy" of DQ with the "direct 
experience" of DQ thesis.  I've never been satisfied with 
the level of activity surrounding that question or the 
proposals for solving it.  It seems to me that the 
indeterminancy of DQ might have an impact on our direct 

experience of it at the individual level.

Ron said:
True/false, non contradiction, are tools to create order 
from the flux. Conventions. Useful in the building of 
certain types of knowledge, scientific. The metaphysics is 
a theory on the building of scientific meaning.

Matt:
Marsha and Ron have been bouncing around these ideas 
in a series of posts, and I would just add that I think 
Ron's probably right about Aristotle, but that when 
Marsha wonders about "Law," it is more because of the 
history of philosophy that has built up from the Greeks.  
The trouble with Aristotle was this notion of "science"--it 
revolved around a notion called "demonstration," and 
the history of Platonic metaphysics, from its roots in the 
"dialectic," goes into Aristotle's notion of "demonstration" 
and continues on to its modern forms that Pirsig wants 
to tear down.

The question for us shouldn't necessarily be what 
Aristotle meant by "demonstration," but rather 
recognition that the trail of people trying to make sense 
of it specifically _and_ its spiritual descendents have 
developed it in a certain, sterile way.  Ignoring what 
Aristotle might mean by "demonstration" is a good way to 
resurrect Aristotle's utility for our thinking.

Marsha said:
So, the Law of Non-Contradiction and the Law of 
Excluded Middle are just tools and were never intended 
to be used to determine Reality?

Matt:
I would suggest making a distinction between "for-now 
determining" and "Ultimate Determination."  The dream 
of Plato was for Ultimate Determination.  The Sophists 
probably understood that all determinations were 
"for-now determinings."  Aristotle was more interested in 
how we actually determine stuff.  The history of 
philosophy might be profitably be read as the rise and fall 
of Plato's dream.

So when Ron says logic is "just a tool for building certainty 
in meaning in the context of scientific inquirey," and 
Marsha shows concern over the "use of the word 
'certainty,'" I would suggest to Marsha that the trouble 
isn't the "certainty" bit but what Aristotle might mean by 
"scientific."  Building certainty, and then acting based on 
whatever little of it we have around, seems to me just an 
unproblematic function of life.  The problem was Plato's 
dream, which could just as easily be phrased as John 
Dewey did--the Quest of Certainty (where what is meant 
is "Ultimate Certainty").

And to set up Andre--Protagoras: "Man is the master of 
all experiences..."

Andre said:
Very interesting Matt but in light of the MoQ its meaning 
may be a bit doubtful... . I would think the MoQ would 
turn this around and suggest 'experience is the master 
of Man'...or to put it in MoQ parlance: Quality (direct 
experience) is the master of Man...and to play a little 
further: Quality has Man...DQ/SQ is (the master of) Man.

Matt:
"Quality has Man"--kinda' like Heidegger's "language 
speaks man."

Don't forget, Andre, that Pirsig endorses the Protagorean 
maxim.  So we might play around with it, but I don't know 
what about it should "be a bit doubtful."  Because 
"experience is the master of Man" sounds too much like 
the Platonic dream of coming face to face with Reality as 
It Really Is, and having that be the truth of us, rather 
than us being the measure/master of things/experiences.

Matt
 		 	   		  
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