[MD] Protagoras and "Measure"

[MarshaV]

Matt,

I suppose my use of the world "haunted" was too dramatic.

Margolis' book is very interesting to someone who thinks conventional reality is relativistic.

Below I have noted where you wrongly attributed a quote to me.  

Onward with my reading...     

Marsha




On Jan 3, 2010, at 6:07 PM, Matt Kundert wrote:

> 
> 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:                                                                                                      Not Marsha's statement.  
> 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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