[MD] The Word is Not the Thing

[MarshaV]

Arlo,

This is a really great post!!!  I'm going to save it, because it has so many
important quotes.  


Marsha   



[Arlo]
Sure it does. It did not exist a million years ago. I will not exist 
in a million years. Along the way, we contend as best we can with the 
paradox inherent in any self-reflexive symbolic system, and as our 
understand improves, so to can we craft better pointers. In fact, my 
own personal "meaning" in how I see this has changed a great deal over my
life.

In the meantime we are left with language that creates "essentially a 
contradiction in terms, a logical absurdity... almost like a 
mathematical definition of randomness" (ZMM)

To quote/paraphrase Pirsig again, "What this means logically is that 
as you try to move toward unchanging truth through the application of 
[logic], you actually do not move toward it at all. You move away from it!"

Pirsig, that Great Postmodernist, is fully aware of the inherent 
incompleteness of language.

"Since the One is the source of all things and includes all things in 
it, it cannot be defined in terms of those things, since no matter 
what thing you use to define it, the thing will always describe 
something less than the One itself." (ZMM)

Yes, the Great Postmodernist Pirsig knew that because of the inherent 
incompleteness of language, "The One can only be described 
allegorically, through the use of analogy, of figures of imagination 
and speech." (ZMM)

While you continue to think that "It's a fact there are no facts" 
represents some sort of intellectual "gotcha", for Pirsig and Zen 
Masters and other postmodern thinkers such a thing simply points to 
what they already know, language is incomplete, paradoxically 
recursive, and logically inconsistent when used self-reflexively.

It ain't rocket science. Nice try, though.