[OT] Re: [NCLUG] Linux can do THIS too??!!!

[marciot]

>===== Original Message From nclug at nclug.org =====
>On Sun, 2002-10-27 at 05:39, Marcio Luis Teixeira wrote:
>> On Sunday 27 October 2002 11:29 am, Evelyn Mitchell wrote:
>>
>> > One of the things I learned studying Academic philsophy is that any
>> > Platonic Ideal we believe we're (moving | progressing | evolving ) 
towards
>> > is just a projection of our beliefs.
>>
>> I believe that one of Pirsig's point was that Quality has absolutely 
nothing
>> to do with a Platonic ideal. I don't think he would have been 
sympathetic to
>> Plato, in so far as Plato defines the ideal (for instance, Plato would 
have
>> said that "the set of all points equidistant from a central point" is a
>> Platonic ideal for a circle).
>
>I'm not sure that Plato _would_ have argued that. Descartes certainly
>would have, though. Plato would have argued that we all have an 
inherent
>idea as to what the perfect circle would be.
>
>It's kinda like OO programming -- everything is an (imperfect)
>instantiation of the ideal. Quality, then, is the degree to which the
>instantiation resembles the class. This would be treating quality as a
>metaphysical topic.

> efm pointed out that quality can be treated as a
>value statement (in a moral/virtue context), and that removes the
>problem of trying to ascribe any universality to quality.

Removes the problem? Doesn't it just create the problem? I thought the 
main point of all of Pirsig's book was that quality = value = morals and that 
neither one can be defined. Lila touches on this more deeply He seems 
to believe that quality is as much a part of the universe as gravity. We don't 
ask "what is gravity" because we know it is a fundamental force. I think 
Pirsig makes the point that quality is a fundamental as well and we can't 
reduce it to anything else. We can't explain it. We can't define it. We simply 
must accept that it is there.

He makes the interesting point that all religions have a concept of an 
absolute which is unknownable. I don't think it is too different from 
Christians believing in God and not questioning it. I only like Pirsig's 
arguments better because his theory doesn't unnecessarily quality with 
religious meanings and rituals.  I must say that I learned a whole lot 
about religion and science by seeing how Pirsig striped it down to the 
bare essentials. I can finally believe that there is something science 
cannot explain, something orthodox religions have hirtherto failed to 
demonstrate to me convincingly.

>That's too bad you didn't read that. Descartes' appeal to God was not to
>appease the church, but because it was the only way he could defend 
the
>proposition that sense perception is an accurate way of determining
>information about the external world.

Actually, I did read the whole thing. In fact, I think that the first part was 
very 
plausible. It's just that IMHO, once he demonstrated that the universe 
could not exist, his argument as to why it does exist seem very 
unconvincing to me. So, as far as I am concerned, Descartes convinced 
me that the world does not exists and left me here, alone and abandoned. 
I would ask for help, but who do I ask, as I am alone here, under the 
illusion that I actually am typing this letter in front of my computer, when 
in 
reality I am a desembodied thought in the middle of nothing?

Geez, thanks Descartes...

>That is what Husserl argued against in the _Crisis of European
>Sciences_, that the cogito is invalid. He and others argued
>(successfully, in my opinion) that science itself is incapable of
>producing truth, as it makes assumptions that are logically invalid. If
>you are interested, a shorter but similar book on the same topic is
>_What Is Philosophy_ by Jose Ortega y Gasset.

Thanks for the reference. I'll check it out. Have you heard of a book called 
"The Social Construction of Reality: A Treatise on the Sociology of 
Knowledge" by Peter L. Berger. The writing was a bit dense (as it seems 
like most works in sociology are) but it had some very interesting points. 
Basically reality is defined by society and there is no reality without 
society. Interesting stuff.

Marcio Luis Teixeira