[MD] Protagoras and "Measure"

[Ham Priday]

Hi Marsha --



> Greetings Ham,
>
> Would you please post the citation to the essay, I would like to read 
> more.
> Maybe Ron could offer the citation for his Aristotle translation too.

The article on Protagoras is by Carol Poster of Florida State University and 
discusses the life, doctrines, and influence of this Sophist..  It is 
accessible at http://www.iep.utm.edu/protagor/   The portion I copied can be 
found under 3b: Man-Measure Statement.  (The conclusions stated following 
the quotes are of course my own.)

There is no mention of Aristotle in this essay.  However, in a similar 
article by Joe Sachs of St. Johns College, http://www.iep.utm.edu/aris-met/, 
the author compares Aristotle's concept of "forms" (i.e., patterns) with 
what had been postulated by Plato and Socrates:

"Aristotle says that positing the Forms explains no single thing that one 
wants to know.  But doesn't Socrates say in the Phaedo that to call beauty 
itself the cause of beauty in beautiful things is a "safe but stupid 
answer" - that one must begin with it but must also move beyond it?  Again, 
everyone knows that the Platonic Socrates claimed that the forms were 
separate from the things in the sensible world, off by themselves, while 
Aristotle insisted that the forms were in the things."

It's the author's opinion that this Aristotelian notion of primary Being 
makes the Metaphysics "a hopeless muddle", and Pirsig's postulation of 
Quality as the essence of "beingness", in my opinion, has not helped to 
clarify fundamental reality.  What is sorely lacking in classical philosophy 
is the concept of a sensible agent that exists independently of the 
essential source, yet is intrinsically aware of its value.

Such a valuistic concept is what I have called Essentialism.

Thanks for the your interest, Marsha, and have a great week.

--Ham

_ _ _ _ _ _ _ _ _ _ _ _ _ _ _ _ _ _ _ _ _ _ _ _ _ _

> On Jan 4, 2010, at 3:17 AM, Ham Priday wrote:
>>
>> Greetings Ron, Marsha, Andre, Ian, Matt, and All --
>>
>> There is intrinsic truth in the "man-measure" statement of Protagoras 
>> that neither the law of the excluded middle nor the incompleteness of 
>> knowledge can refute.  I ran across a slightly different  translation of 
>> that dictum in the Internet Encyclopedia of Philosophy:
>>
>> "Of all things the measure is man, of the things that are, that [or 
>> 'how'] they are, and of things that are not, that [or 'how'] they are 
>> not."
>>
>> The essay goes on to say . . .
>>
>> "The test case normally used is temperature.  If Ms. X. says 'it is hot,' 
>> then the statement (unless she is lying) is true for her.  Another 
>> person, Ms. Y, may simultaneously claim 'it is cold.'  This statement 
>> could also be true for her.  If Ms. X normally lives in Alaska and Ms. Y 
>> in Florida, the same temperature (e.g. 25 Celsius) may seem hot to one 
>> and cool to the other.  The measure of hotness or coldness is fairly 
>> obviously the individual person.  One cannot legitimately tell Ms. X she 
>> does not feel ot  -  she is the only person who can accurately report her 
>> own perceptions or sensations.  In this case, it is indeed impossible to 
>> contradict as Protagoras is held to have said.
>>
>> "But what if Ms. Y, in claiming it feels cold, suggests that unless the 
>> heat is turned on the pipes will freeze?  One might suspect that she has 
>> a fever and her judgment is unreliable; the measure may still be the 
>> individual person, but it is an unreliable one, like a broken ruler or 
>> unbalanced scale.  In a modern scientific culture, with a predilection 
>> for scientific solutions, we would think of consulting a thermometer to 
>> determine the objective truth.  The Greek response was to look at the 
>> more profound philosophical implications."
>>
>> This brings up the question of "subjective" vs. "objective" truth, a 
>> distinction which Pirsigians probably won't acknowledge.  However, 
>> inasmuch as the experience of Quality is the foundation of the MoQ, and 
>> it is Man, after all, who experiences, you folks should have no problem 
>> with the proposition that Man is the _qualitative_ measure of all things. 
>> That leaves "objective truth" hanging in limbo.
>>
>> Indeed, just what is objective truth?
>>
>> For the scientist, it is a fact or principle which is universally 
>> accepted because it has been consistently confirmed by repeated testing 
>> and by the predictability of the result when applied to a 
>> cause-and-effect system (i.e., empirical reality).  And what does 
>> "empirical" mean?  My dictionary defines empirical as "originating in or 
>> based on observation or experience." It does no good to argue that 
>> objective measurements are "non-qualitative" simply because they are 
>> expressed as numeric or statistical values.  The "proof" of a yard-long 
>> board is to lay it on a yardstick and confirm that it is 36 inches in 
>> length.  Is there really a distinction to be made between experiencing 
>> and measuring?  I submit that the length of the board, whether regarded 
>> as a quantitative or a qualitative fact, is an attribute of a commonly 
>> experienced object, just as the process of measuring it is an experience.
>>
>> I define the essential self as "value-sensibility", so I prefer the 
>> original "man = measure" concept.  But the Kundert/Untersteiner 
>> "alternative translation" -- "Man is the master of all experience" --  
>> adds even more support to Protagoras' maxim.  What we know as Truth  is 
>> what we experience, and from that comes quantitative as well as 
>> qualitative knowledge.  The only doubt about the veracity of "experienced 
>> truth" arises when the experience is proprioceptive (sensory or 
>> psycho-emotional), such as when we feel "hot" or "cold", pain or 
>> pleasure, beauty or grossness, without empirical evidence to corroborate 
>> our feeling.  But if, as Pirsig says, "experience is the cutting edge of 
>> reality," then Truth is ultimately the Value of our individual 
>> sensibility.
>>
>> Happy Year 2010 to all,
>> Ham