[MD] Rhetoric

mail at tuukkavirtaperko.net mail at tuukkavirtaperko.net
Fri Dec 23 03:23:26 PST 2016


John,

There's lot to read here, but something caught my eye here:  
https://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/Formal_ontology

Endurants and perdurants.

I've been looking for a quadrant-independent way of describing the  
levels of AMOQ. It would seem that the first level is that of  
endurants and the second level is that of perdurants. These  
generalizations are useful, but similar generalizations for third and  
fourth levels are lacking so far.

As for mereotopology, from which I found a link to the aforementioned  
article, apparently Clarke repaired Whitehead's work in a similar  
manner as I repair Pirsig's work.

What all this has to do with rhetoric, I don't know. Thanks anyway.

Tuk



Quoting John Carl <ridgecoyote at gmail.com>:

> Sometimes when you're curious about something, Wikipedia is a good place to
> start.  Probably it's not a good place to end an argument, but it's
> definitely a good place to start one:
>
> From the wikipedia article on process philosophy we find:
>
> In opposition to the classical model of change as accidental (as argued by
> Aristotle) or illusory, process philosophy regards change as the
> cornerstone of reality—the cornerstone of Being
> <https://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/Being> thought of as Becoming
> <https://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/Becoming_(philosophy)>. Modern philosophers
> who appeal to process rather than substance include Friedrich Nietzsche
> <https://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/Friedrich_Nietzsche>, Martin Heidegger
> <https://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/Martin_Heidegger>, Charles Sanders Peirce
> <https://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/Charles_Sanders_Peirce>, Alfred North
> Whitehead <https://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/Alfred_North_Whitehead>, Alan Watts
> <https://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/Alan_Watts>, Robert M. Pirsig
> <https://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/Robert_M._Pirsig>, Charles Hartshorne
> <https://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/Charles_Hartshorne>, Arran Gare
> <https://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/Arran_Gare>, Nicholas Rescher
> <https://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/Nicholas_Rescher>, Colin Wilson
> <https://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/Colin_Wilson>, and Gilles Deleuze
> <https://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/Gilles_Deleuze>. In physics Ilya Prigogine
> <https://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/Ilya_Prigogine>[4] distinguishes between the
> "physics of being" and the "physics of becoming". Process philosophy covers
> not just scientific intuitions and experiences, but can be used as a
> conceptual bridge to facilitate discussions among religion, philosophy, and
> science.[5][6]
>
> hmmm.
>
> jc
>
>
> PS:  Tuk,  are you familiar with the field of
>
> Mereotopology
>
> ???
>
>
> Seems right your ally -
>
> a branch of metaphysics <https://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/Metaphysics>,
> and in ontological
> computer science <https://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/Ontology_(computer_science)>,
> *mereotopology* is a first-order theory
> <https://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/First-order_theory>, embodying mereological
> <https://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/Mereology> and topological
> <https://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/Topological> concepts, of the relations
> among wholes, parts, parts of parts, and the boundaries
> <https://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/Boundary_(topology)> between parts.
>
>
>
>
>
> On Sun, Nov 20, 2016 at 2:47 PM, david <dmbuchanan at hotmail.com> wrote:
>
>> Hello, MOQers:
>>
>> I suppose everyone knows that people are suspicious of the emotional
>> language in "rhetoric" and consider "sophistry" to be a form of
>> manipulative deception. The conventional meaning isn't likely to change
>> anytime soon and that's fine because there is empty speech and there are
>> plenty of manipulative deceivers that deserve the name. In telling the
>> story of philosophy Pirsig turns those meanings upside down.
>>
>>
>> “Plato’s hatred of the rhetoricians was part of a much larger struggle in
>> which the reality of the Good, represented by the Sophists, and the reality
>> of the True, represented by the dialecticians, were engaged in a huge
>> struggle for the future mind of man.” -- Robert Pirsig
>>
>>
>> As the story is usually told, rhetoric is too emotional to be considered
>> serious about the truth. Our feelings have no bearing on the truth, this
>> story goes, and clear thinking is about cool logic and putting one's
>> passions aside. But, Pirsig says, this story doesn't make as much sense as
>> it used to.
>>
>>
>> “It’s been necessary since before the time of Socrates to reject the
>> passions, the emotions, in order to free the rational mind for an
>> understanding of nature’s order which was as yet unknown. Now it’s time to
>> further an understanding of nature’s order by reassimilating those passions
>> which were originally fled from. The passions, the emotions, the affective
>> domain of man’s consciousness, are a part of nature’s order too. The
>> central part.” — Robert Pirsig
>>
>>
>> At certain points in the re-telling and inversion of this old slanderous
>> story Pirsig is downright angry about it. He finally realizes that the
>> Platonic demand for passionless dialectic has the effect of excluding
>> Quality, which is the whole thing for Pirsig.
>>
>>
>>
>> “Phædrus’ mind races on and on and then on further, seeing now at last a
>> kind of evil thing, an evil deeply entrenched in himself, which pretends to
>> try and understand love and beauty and truth and wisdom but whose real
>> purpose is never to understand them, whose real purpose is always to usurp
>> them and enthrone itself. Dialectic - the usurper. That is what he sees.
>> The parvenu, muscling in on all that is Good and seeking to contain it and
>> control it."
>>
>>
>> And he's feeling triumphant about this discovery because it turns out that
>> the Sophists weren't demagogues, hucksters, or confidence men. They were
>> teaching Quality and they were teaching it the same way he had been
>> teaching it to his student in Montana.
>>
>>
>> "Lightning hits! Quality! Virtue! Dharma! That is what the Sophists were
>> teaching! Not ethical relativism. Not pristine 'virtue.' But areté.
>> Excellence. Dharma! Before the Church of Reason. Before substance. Before
>> form. Before mind and matter. Before dialectic itself. Quality had been
>> absolute. Those first teachers of the Western world were teaching Quality,
>> and the medium they had chosen was that of rhetoric."
>>
>>
>> And this re-telling of ancient history is part of the book's central
>> project, which is a root expansion of rationality. The criticisms of
>> rationality that he offers almost always involve the problem of objective
>> truth. Value-free science has got to go, he says. Attitudes of objectivity
>> make our thinking stiff and narrow and entail a denigration of subjectivity
>> so that Quality is JUST what you like, is JUST your opinion or assessment
>> of some thing or other. But this is part of that same old slander against
>> the Sophists and rhetoricians, Pirsig says, and our form of rationality
>> would actually be vastly improved by putting Quality at the cutting edge of
>> all experience and all thought. Quality is right there at the very roots of
>> our thinking and by including Quality our thinking is broadened and
>> deepened and enriched by the inclusion of the emotional and aesthetic
>> quality that pervades our thought regardless of whether we acknowledge it
>> or not. You gotta have a feel for the work, he says, and that's not just
>> about fixing motorcycles. It's about everything. All the time.
>>
>>
>> For Pirsig, "rhetoric" simply means excellence in thought and speech.
>> Rhetoric is truer than objective truth because it includes the heart as
>> well the head, so to speak. To talk truthfully will mean that the claim is
>> supported by evidence and its expression logically sound, just as before,
>> but that's no longer good enough. Speaking truthfully also means that you
>> care about the truth, have feelings about that truth and maybe your
>> expression shows the power or the beauty of that truth. To move or persuade
>> another is not a sinister manipulation or a deception. It's a good thing
>> and we should love it somebody does it right.
>>
>>
>>
>>
>>
>> ________________________________
>>
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>> Robert M. Pirsig's MoQ deals with the fundamentals of existence and
>> provides a more coherent system for understanding reality than our current
>> paradigms allow
>>
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>
>
>
> --
> "finite players
> play within boundaries.
> Infinite players
> play *with* boundaries."
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