[MD] Protagoras and "Measure"

[MarshaV]

Oh yes, Quality as unpatterned experience and patterned experience.


On Jan 4, 2010, at 5:18 AM, MarshaV wrote:

> 
> 
> I'm sure it very difficult, but I wonder what reality would be if not filtered through the Plato/Aristotle lens...    
> 
> 
> 
> On Jan 3, 2010, at 5:31 PM, X Acto wrote:
> 
>> Aristotle
>> Metaphysics
>> Book Gamma
>> 6
>> "There are some who, either seriously or for the sake of
>> arguement, raise a difficulty by asking who decides who
>> is healthy and, in general on any issue, whose judgement
>> is right. Such perplexities are like asking whether we are
>> now asleep or awake. For all such questions arise because
>> men demand a reason for everything; they seek to prove that 
>> they can reach ultimate principals,but their very actions prove
>> they are not convinced. We have already explained the source
>> of their trouble: they seek a reason for things which have 
>> no reason, since the beginning of demonstration can not
>> be demonstrated."
>> 
>> 1012b
>> "Against all such arguements, however, it must be
>> asked, as has been said also in the previouse discussions
>> .not that something is or is not, but that something has meaning;
>> so that we must converse on the basis of definition by 
>> grasping what falsity or truth means."
>> 
>> He goes on to state that to state anything as
>> "the way it is" in naturally untrue since all things change.
>> 
>> ----- Original Message ----
>> From: MarshaV <valkyr at att.net>
>> To: moq_discuss at moqtalk.org
>> Sent: Sun, January 3, 2010 9:32:35 AM
>> Subject: Re: [MD] Protagoras and "Measure"
>> 
>> 
>> 
>>  "The clearest form of the argument is given by Aristotle.  In the fourth book of the *Metaphysics," 
>> Aristotle advances two decisive principles regarding primary substance (*ousia*): (i) necessarily, 
>> for every attribute, a substance either possesses that attribute or it does not, which is Aristotle's 
>> version of the principle of excluded middle; and (ii) for any substance, if anything may be 
>> predicted of it then, necessarily, its attributes cannot be accidents only, or only apparent 
>> properties, the violation of which Aristotle takes to entail contradiction.  Protagoras, apparently, 
>> violates both -- which shows at the least that relativism was thought in the ancient world to 
>> involve a restriction on, or abandonment of, the principle of excluded middle.
>>  Now,*if* it is not true that reality is changeless, then, of course, (ii) must be given up; and 
>> if (ii) is abandoned, then, on Aristotle's own reading of (ii), (i) must be given up also.  But the 
>> ancients understood the doctrine, "man is the measure," to entail at least that reality is not 
>> changeless -- also, therefore, that if man can rightly claim to have knowledge, than, on Protagoras' 
>> argument, knowledge cannot be addressed to what is changeless in reality.  This much at least 
>> yields a stalemate between Aristotle and Protagoras: thus far, neither one's thesis is obviously 
>> incoherent.  But even this much favors Protagoras, because Aristotle holds that the violation 
>> of (i) and (ii) yields contradiction.  More would need to be said.
>>  Aristotle does have more to say.  There is another argument, a bridge argument, that is decisive 
>> for Aristotle:  "if not all things are relative, but some are self-existent, not everything that appears 
>> will be true"; and *that*, which is tantamount to (ii), must, *somewhere* in Protagoras' argument, 
>> yield the denial of those properties of particular substances *that are changeless.*  Nothing could 
>> be more reasonable.  The only trouble is that Protagoras rejects the thesis that there *is* something 
>> changeless, and Aristotle nowhere shows convincingly that *that* produces contradiction, except, 
>> trivially, *by* presupposing the truth of what must first be shown to be true.  So Aristotle fails.  
>> Certainly, in our own time, nearly every prominent thinker either believes that reality is not 
>> changeless or believes that it is not demonstrably true that believing *that* cannot but be 
>> incoherent."
>>    (Margolis, Joseph, 'The Truth About Relativism' (Paperback), pp.77-78)
>> 
>> 
>> 
>> 
>> 
>> 
>> 
>> _______________________________________________________________________
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> 
> _______________________________________________________________________
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> Shoot for the moon.  Even if you miss, you'll land among the stars...     
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Shoot for the moon.  Even if you miss, you'll land among the stars...