[MD] MOQ and Gödel's incompleteness theorems

[X Acto]

dmb says:
Right, Platonists are the lovers of the One while Aristotelians are the lovers 
of the many. Monism versus pluralism is idealism versus materialism is 
rationalism versus empiricism. These are different ways to say the same thing. 
Labels like idealism and materialism present the rivalry in terms of what there 
is while terms like rationalism and empiricism present the same rivalry in terms 
of what we can know. They are the ontological and epistemological dimensions of 
these two rival visions. James thought the question of the One and the many was 
the most interesting and difficult question of all time. 


It's kinda funny. At one point, in a chapter of Pragmatism titled "The One and 
the Many", James asks why the number one is so special and sacred to the 
Absolutist mind, why not 3 or 14 or 1,000,008?

Ron:
Aristotle tried to explain it as the concept of what we mean by the term "whole" 
and as I understand he theorized that it required a synthasis of the two in 
order to render experience intelligible. Experience, a process of 
coming-to-know. The Pythagoreans had part to play in the rationalist tradition 
of "one" which was influenced
by the Parmenidian one to be sure and followed on through the early greek 
christian tradions of the first century
to name a cultural trait that might colour ones predisposition for such 
explanations and the school of substance which tends to want to express in terms 
of number also, to try to reduce explanations to a unified
theory. 
Thats what makes discussions about the good so interesting, I can read Voltaire 
and really enjoy his stories
because they mainly deal with stories about the good. Alot of what Darwin wrote 
about in "Origin of species"
concerned what was best for survival how sexual selection really sped up the 
game of evolution.

DmB:
As I understand it, Aristotle was the empiricist who rejected Plato's notion of 
the Forms (idealism) and adopted instead a "metaphysics of substance", as Pirsig 
calls it. As you may recall, Phaedrus wrote a wildly grandiose letter to the 
Aristotelian Chairman at the University of Chicago telling him that nobody was 
anybody in Chicago until he'd rubbed somebody out and it was time Aristotle got 
his. He tells the Chairman that he intends to overthrow the University's 
fundamental tenants in a dialectical reversal with his anti-Aristotelain thesis 
on Quality. And then there is his attack on the narrow empiricism of scientific 
positivism, wherein he says they aren't empirical enough and he points out that 
their anti-metaphysical stance is pure metaphysics. (SOM) Protagoras was not 
that kind of empiricist and neither are our two radical empiricists. I've been 
thinking that it's not easy to explain the difference. But I'll try.

First of all, the materialism is gone from their view. Or rather, the radical 
empiricist treats materialism as an hypothesis rather than a metaphysical 
assumption. It's treated as an idea only. Same with idealism. Instead of 
starting from either premise, the primary empirical reality is neither mental 
nor physical. It is undivided experience, an event and not a thing. Instead of 
talking about empirical reality in terms of atomistic bits of sense data and 
physical substance or things-in-themselves that are said to be the cause of 
sense data, experience is conceived as a continuous stream or an 
undifferentiated continuum. This is still empiricism. Experience is the concrete 
and factual and sensible in the sense that it is known and felt and experience 
is still the basis of all our subsequent knowledge but the causes or conditions 
that are said to make experience possible (subjects and objective reality) are 
stripped of their metaphysical rank and demoted to secondary concepts. 


Ron:
I think you have a dog in the hunt with the tradition of substance in the 
Aristotlian schools, but as far as 

Aristotle, I believe he wrote more as a radical empiricist, his papers commonly 
reffered to as "meta physics"
he titled "theory of meaning". Why would a materialist write such a thing? he 
would'nt. Only a Pragmatist
would call it a theory on meaning, what makes explanations "good" so I think 
there would be a tough argument
to make, but, the materialist school which devolped from it may be attacked, as 
all metaphysical assumption
may be.

Thinking about the ambiguity of the word "quality" is another way to think about 
the difference between traditional empiricism and our radical empiricists. It 
can mean two different things to say that something has certain qualities. If 
the term is being used to refer to the redness or hardness of something, then 
we're talking about properties that are detectable and knowable with scientific 
instruments. These instruments are mechanical extensions of our sense organs, in 
effect, and talking about properties in this way is going to make a lot of sense 
to a traditional empiricists, with the scientific positivists being the prime 
example. But that is NOT how do you "see" literary excellence. Elegance and 
beauty are not detectable the way physical properties are. On this traditional 
view, experience as it is lived and felt, suffered and enjoyed is just 
subjective, just what you like while the radical empiricist, by contrast, says 
that the quality of experience is a concrete fact,
  the most real reality we ever get. The affective domain of man's consciousness 
is not dismissed or treated as an impediment to the empirical facts. These 
feelings are not only taken as empirical facts, they're taken as being among the 
most important of facts. Why should redness or coldness be more real than awe or 
curiosity or bewilderment? 


Ron:
That is a good question,it takes a maturity to recognize it I suppose.









                        
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