[MD] Science and the MOQ

[Arlo Bensinger]

[Platt]
Accepted? By whom? Surely truth isn't a matter of poll results.

[Arlo]
In your statement, "So a new assumption changes 
the form of knowledge which then becomes true 
knowledge", of course "accepted by whom" is "by you".

When you change your assumptions, if you feel the 
new form of knowledge has Quality, you accept 
both it and the assumptions underlying it.

[Arlo had quoted Pirsig]
"Our intellectual description of nature is always culturally derived". (LILA)

[Platt]
Is that statement culturally derived?

[Arlo]
Of course. So let's add that to the list.

"Every form of knowledge rests on assumptions", including this statement.
"All this is just an analogy", including this sentence.
"There are no absolute truths", including this sentence.
"Our intellectual description of nature is always 
culturally derived", including this statement.

[Arlo quoted Pirsig]
"Of course it's an analogy. Everything is an 
analogy. But the dialecticians don't know that. 
That's why the Chairman missed that statement of 
Socrates. Phædrus has caught it and remembered 
it, because if Socrates hadn't stated it he 
wouldn't have been telling the "Truth."" (ZMM)

[Platt]
Doesn't explain how "everything is an analogy."

[Arlo]
"Everything is an analogy" is the exact same 
sentence as "Every form of knowledge rests on assumptions."

You can substitute in "intellectual patterns" into both as appropriate.

"Intellectual patterns are all analogies" and 
"Every intellectual pattern rests on assumptions".

Same thing.

Analogies and assumptions are the social 
mediation that stands, by definition, between the 
intellectual level and the bio-inorganic levels. 
They are the culturally-derived ways of seeing 
and thinking that always mediate the forms of our 
knowledge (including this sentence).

"If Descartes had said, "The seventeenth century 
French culture exists, therefore I think, 
therefore I am," he would have been correct." (LILA)

If Platt had said, "The twentieth century 
American culture exists, therefore I make certain 
assumptions about the nature of knowledge, 
therefore every form of knowledge is based on an 
assumption", he would have been correct.

Amen.