[MD] Metaphysics

[Andre Broersen]

Steve to Andre:
I didn't agree or disgree but I don't know what it means.

Andre:
What I mean Steve is that many philosophies have created their own
versions of 'reality' in the sense that, with their assumptions and
propositions, a reality is created which is often very difficult to
understand or to verify. Pirsig, in ZMM says much the same...and
because most are very persuasive, once you accept one premiss you must
accept the next one etc. etc. Their statements of the 'good' or ways
to attaining the good is mostly based on a theoretical component (
e.g. Absolute Mind, Materialism, Phenomenology, Existentialism,
Behaviourism, Neuro-Linguistic Programming, Socialism, This-ism,
That-ism, Communism,dialectical materialism,Pragmatism, Empiricism,
and, let's give Ham some due: Essentialism, proprioceptive valuing
agent). In this sense they can be seen as delivering the 'ought' i.e.
if and when you follow me you will attain the 'good'.... but with
Reality as Quality it has very little in common.

Hope this is clear?

Steve:
Language is obviously part of reality.

Andre:
Glad you agree.

Steve:
New language patterns can dynamically evolve and old ones can be
undermined by new ones.

Andre:
How does this occur? Do they evolve from nothing?

Steve:
Language is not generally to be taken as a representation of reality,
though it sometimes is used in that way.

Andre:
C'mon Steve. Language is an active participant in the making or
breaking of the static representations of reality (Quality). They are
indeed based on biological grunts and growls ( you should hear the
Chinese! By the way, there is a Chinese saying [no offence intended
Marsha] : Two women talking sounds like 10.000 ducks), and have
evolved as social patterns of value and are presently used as the
plaything of intellect. ( see your Pirsig quote about intellect's
purpose)

The issue I am playing around with at the moment is that this
discovery of 'an ultimate meaning of the universe' is a typical SOM
activity more often than not ending up in dead end streets where
30.000 menues hang containing 30.000 words and no food. (Paradise,
that way, paradise that way... Paradise that way...etc.)

This is the breakthrough the Quality perspective provides. There is no
'ultimate meaning' and the world is composed of nothing but morality,
including language. SOM has never been able to grasp this and has had
to twist and bend and invent new language to make sense of the world.
And the more complicated and sophisicated the language had become the
more it had moved away from Quality.

Steve:
So as you should see, the origin of intellect is not subject-object
metaphysics as Bo argues since intellect predates metaphysics and
philosophy in general and all atempts to "discover an ultimate meaning
of the universe."

Andre:
I agree with Bodvar on this one and, with Pirsig suggest that the
scientific understanding of reality was born with Aristotle. Of course
there were thinkers and scientists before Aristotle. This is not the
issue.

It wasn't until Plato and subsequently Aristotle that all these
diverse intellectualisations became modified and integrated into a
coherent and unified intellectual system.
The problem remained to make this knowledge available to those who did
not have the capacity and the logical training to grasp the
definitions of the technical terms and to follow the logical course of
the argument. And here Plato and subsequently Aristotle 'provided the
answer, with their aesthetic theory of the analogical relation between
the sensuous, emotional, aesthetic data which every mortal immediately
experiences and the technical, logical, rational principles analogous
to them, or embodied in them'. (Northrop, p 287).

And here is where all the previous intellectualisations became unified
into a coherent, logical, rational system. It was this system of
thought that emerged from the social level, otherwise known as MoQ's
intellectual level. Bodvar bases his SOL upon the argument that with
this emergence a clear division was established between what is
objectively true and subjectively mere opinion. The S/O division. The
way to find out the difference was by applying the rational,
dialectical, scientific method. A method which destroyed (social PoV's
Quality,Arete) and which is still employed today.

Cheers
Andre