[MD] Philosophy, Metaphysics, and Common Sense

[MarshaV]

Greetings Matt,

I enjoyed your paper.  But as always you seem to 
overlook that the MOQ is suppose to synchronize 
the philosophies of the West and the East.  The 
only mention of the East is your suggestion that 
the Orphic tradition might be an Eastern 
import.  You are missing something important by ignoring the East.  imho.


Marsha



At 08:43 PM 5/13/2009, you wrote:

>This is a new bit I wrote, fully housed at my blog, here:
>http://pirsigaffliction.blogspot.com/2009/05/philosophy-metaphysics-and-common-sense.html
>
>It's another attempt to circle Socrates, Plato, 
>Pirsig and Rorty, done mainly through narrative.
>So if one is looking for metaphysical 
>principles, or the like, one would be 
>disappointed.  I'll tease it with the first 500 
>words to help decide whether it's worth reading the rest:
>
>
>
>Socrates essentially defined philosophy as a common, basic
>human activity when he said that the
>unexamined life is not worth living.  Plato said 
>that philosophy was for the very
>few people who were able
>to do it.  Pirsig said philosophy isn’t worth doing if it
>doesn’t help with life.  Rorty said
>philosophy is pretty
>remote from life.
>
>
>
>Is there a way of coordinating all of these 
>thoughts?  Do they all fit together?  I think they can, in their
>way, fit together
>coherently, but there have been better and worse ways of construing them.
>
>
>
>Socrates came upon the Greek scene at a very important point
>in its cultural evolution.  For some
>years,
>leisured aristocrats had begun popping up around the Aegean Sea and
>composing themselves in a manner
>that had previously been unheard of—our first
>intellectuals.  They for the most part
>had begun speculating
>about the way reality as a whole functioned, though they
>did occasionally drift into the way humanity,
>specifically, functioned (humans
>being a natural enough subject within the purview of “reality”).  These
>drifts didn’t pick up speed until
>democracy had taken hold in Greece.  The
>hold of democracy on Athens
>produced a shift in the educational institutions of
>Greece.  The existence of a citizen class
>in Athens
>created a need for a means of educating them, one that surpassed the
>means that existed for the needs of
>fickle aristocracies.  For the first time in history, an opportunity
>was created in which people could live on
>their wits.
>
>
>
>These were the Sophists, the first professional
>intellectuals, and, like most people I know, they soon
>began talking about
>themselves and what they do.  The trouble
>for them was that nobody had really done
>what they did before.  Their only real models were the poets, the
>previous educators of Greece, but the
>poets’ profession had itself begun to
>change, too, at about the same time.  It
>was a common enough
>feature for Greek rhapsodes,
>oral poets, to brood about what they were doing (captured well by Hesiod
>in his
>musings on the Muses) and the earlier physiologoi,
>Thales, Heraclitus and the rest, had themselves
>produced occasional remarks,
>but we can imagine it wasn’t until the pressure of professional
>differentiation
>set in for the Sophists (produced by the high concentration of them in Athens)
>that real
>self-consciousness kicked in.
>The Sophists had to attract customers, which meant not only displaying
>their wares in public, but arguing for why they 
>knew what they were doing, over
>and against their
>competitors.
>
>
>
>What they did, in fact, was increase the ability of
>public speakers to convince their audience that they
>were right.  In Athens, in contrast to today, every man
>was their own politician and
>lawyer.  This meant
>that arguing your
>view (say, of innocence) became dramatically more important than in previous,
>
>aristocratic generations, where oratory was more 
>for the battlefield (the first
>great place you had to
>convince people of doing something, like 
>bleeding).  So the Sophists, our first rhetoricians, began
>to
>reflect . . . .
>
>Matt
>
>_________________________________________________________________
>Insert movie times and more without leaving Hotmail®.
>http://windowslive.com/Tutorial/Hotmail/QuickAdd?ocid=TXT_TAGLM_WL_HM_Tutorial_QuickAdd1_052009
>Moq_Discuss mailing list
>Listinfo, Unsubscribing etc.
>http://lists.moqtalk.org/listinfo.cgi/moq_discuss-moqtalk.org
>Archives:
>http://lists.moqtalk.org/pipermail/moq_discuss-moqtalk.org/
>http://moq.org.uk/pipermail/moq_discuss_archive/


.
_____________

The self is a continuum of ever-changing, 
interrelated and interconnected, inorganic, 
biological, social and intellectual, static 
patterns of value responding to Dynamic Quality .

.
.