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>Frank Masingill wrote to Mark Bloss about Random values                      
                      [1]
 FM> I am especially concerned with your curious statement that some
 FM> "philosophical SYSTEMS have proven to be right!"  What does this have
 FM> to do with the advent of the automobile?  Could you elaborate on the
 FM> analogy a bit more but more to the point WHAT philosophical systems
 FM> have proven to be "right?"  
 Quite simple.  Very very simple.  _You_ said that all philosophical
 _systems_ proved to be "wrong".  If so, then is impossible that any
 should not have been proved to be right.  Because you cannot have
 one without the other.  For example, in order for your statement to
 be true - then the philosophical SYSTEM whereby you derived this 
 truth must be "right".  And therefore you demand a contradiction -
 which is impermissible.
 
 Actually, _you_ were mistaken to use the term "wrong".  It would have
 made more sense to use the word "unworkable" or "useless".  And I then
 would have used the term "workable" or "useful" instead, and we wouldn't
 have this minor flap.
 And it doesn't have anything to do with automobiles.  That's why it is
 an analogy... BECAUSE it is not related in any other way other than to
 demonstrate how one CANNOT say truthfully, that "philosophical SYSTEMS 
 have proved to be wrong."  No.  Some "systems" don't work.  Some DO.
 Those that do not reveal truth do not work, and are thus "wrong" in
 that sense.  Those that reveal truth _do_ work, and are thus "right".
 Now back to this:
 FM> having trouble understanding your meaning and distinctions between the
 FM> "intellectual" and the "intuitive" in consciousness as it respects the
 FM> human experience and the symbolization of experience so will make no
 FM> overall response here. 
 
 The intuition is the mind's nous.  The intellect is the mind's logos.
 
 One philosophic system which has "worked" and is "useful", and many have 
 said to be "right" - is "truth is self-evident".  'What is it that appears
 there?  It is a man.' This is the perfect adequatio rei et intellectus.
 This influence of Kant has been what demonstrated the usefulness of the
 philosophical _system_ which is the "definition of truth" - the agreement
 of knowledge with its object.  Yet simultaneously Kant was aware that
 for this truth "no general criterion can be demanded.  [It] would...
 be self-contradictory".  Arendt's contribution to the obvious is
 "Truth as self-evidence does not need any criterion; it _is_ criterion,
 the final arbiter, of everything that then may follow."
 
 Since the middle ages there has been a distinction made between the
 active life of man in the world, and the solitary +vita contemplativa+.
 But really there can be demonstrated three: the thinking man, the
 willing man, and the judging man.  That the intellectual should be
 concerned with the metaphysical, or the emotional, or the abstractions
 of the vita contemplativa, or whether it should be concerned with the
 physical, the pragmatic or that it should be involutional in the 
 everyday mundane, is an intuitive exercise - NOT an intellectual one.
 
 Perhaps the metaphysical "science" which has produced such tensions
 can be summed up as a natural extension between the theoria and logos,
 between seeing and reasoning with words - whether in the form of 
 dia-legesthai or, on the contrary, of syl-logizesthai (dialectics 
 or syllogism), whether it takes things, especially opinions, apart
 by means of words, or brings them together in a discourse depending 
 for its truth content on a primary premise perceived by intuition, 
 by the nous, which is not subject to error because it is not meta 
 logou, sequential to words.  If philosophy is the mother of the
 sciences, it is itself the science of the beginnings and principles
 of science, of the archai.  These become the topic of Aristotelian
 metaphysics, and can no longer be derived; they are given to the 
 mind in self-evident intuition.  But do I put so much trust in
 intuition?  See here, it is as Bergson said "like children trying 
 to catch smoke by closing their hands"; because nothing expressed
 in words can ever attain to the immobility of an object of mere
 contemplation.
 Since there has been a shift in philosophical thinking here since
 Bergson, from the nous to the logos: thus, the criterion for truth
 has shifted from the agreement of knowledge with its object - the
 adequatio rei et intellectus, to the mere _form_ of thinking whose
 basic rule is the axiom of non-contradiction, of consistency _by
 itself_.
 
... Total Spiritual Enlightenment helps me score with the babes.
--- GEcho 1.11++TAG 2.7c
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