[MD] Some historical perspective

[mark_maxwell at talktalk.net]

Hi Squonk,

I like your slogan "Truth is a rhetorical device." Did you coin it?

I couldn't find it in a Google search.



Squonk: Hi Steve,

I think I may have coined this one. Sorry about that. If I remember, or am reminded of where I got it from, I’ll put my hand up and hand it back.

　

Do you mean that "Truth" or "truth" is a rhetorical device?



Squonk: I think I meant ‘truth’ is a rhetorical device.

If mathematics is a language with its own rhetoric then I meant ‘Truth’ is a rhetorical device. But I think you make a valid distinction.



Also, do you have a reference for Nietzsche’s take on the Sophists and his take becoming the academic 
 norm?



Squonk: It was normal enough for it to be recommended to me while studying in a philosophy dept. and Walter Kaufmann’s ‘Nietzsche - Philosopher, Psychologist, Antichrist’ (now in its 4th ed.) describes how Nietzsche’s insights regarding Ancient Greek Philology were so blinding they cost him is academic career, while changing that field forever.

These insights lead Nietzsche to the later realisation that Plato and the Sophists were trying to ‘out-best’ each other.



I previously asked about truth being divorced from Quality. It seems to me that Pirsig's thesis in ZAMM was that this happened when Plato subordinated the Good to the True.

If so, then according to Pirsig, the birth of 
 the 4th level, which he says happened with the Greeks, corresponds with the subordination of the Good to the True.

This move also seems to mark the beginning of subject-object metaphysics.



Squonk: This is the way it logically stacks up to me…

Truth is an aesthetically pleasing relationship between symbols - symbolic manipulation.

Symbolic manipulation is what the Intellect is and does.

Therefore, Intellect must exist in order for the Truth to exist, in order for it (the Truth) to subordinate the Good.

If this is so, then it allows us to contemplate the source of Truth, and that source is evident in Geometry. Geometry existed hundreds of years before Plato’s rhetorical battle with the sophists, (Thales, 635
 -543 BC) and in a period of Human consciousness which produced literature that does not convey SOM.

This destroys Bo’s argument that Intellect = SOM.

Shatters it completely.



For Bo, if SOM and the fourth level were born at the same time, then they may be the same thing. I don't think that is the case. I think intellect (the fourth type of pattern of value) was actually born a bit earlier with rhetoric relating to small-t truth while Truth (as an essence) was created later, as you say, as a rhetorical device. It is this essence called Truth rather than small-t truth that marks the birth of SOM. In other words, intellect predates Plato though SOM began with Plato if not Socrates.



What do you thin
 k?

Best, Steve

　

　

Squonk: I think you are bang on the money when you recognise that truth pre-existed SOM. I think it is so clear that one would have to go to quite extraordinary, if not pathologically arrogant lengths NOT to see it.

I would argue that primary Truth belongs in the realm of pure abstraction. (In this realm, Truth is actually an aesthetic appreciation of quality).

Rather than state that rhetorical truth can be abstracted to 'Essence - Truth', i would say that the notion of an 'Essential Truth' is a Human myth - its a story.

To support this story by apealing to logic is to appeal to symbolic manipulation!!



Please let me know what you think Steve,

All the best,

 
squonk