Rationalism vs Empiricism

The dispute between rationalism and empiricism concerns the extent to which we are dependent upon sense experience in our effort to gain knowledge. Rationalists claim that there are significant ways in which our concepts and knowledge are gained independently of sense experience. Empiricists claim that sense experience is the ultimate source of all our concepts and knowledge.

Rationalists generally develop their view in two ways. First, they argue that there are cases where the content of our concepts or knowledge outstrips the information that sense experience can provide. Second, they construct accounts of how reason in some form or other provides that additional information about the world. Empiricists present complementary lines of thought. First, they develop accounts of how experience provides the information that rationalists cite, insofar as we have it in the first place. (Empiricists will at times opt for skepticism as an alternative to rationalism: if experience cannot provide the concepts or knowledge the rationalists cite, then we don't have them.) Second, empiricists attack the rationalists' accounts of how reason is a source of concepts or knowledge. SEE: Markie, Peter, "Rationalism vs. Empiricism http://plato.stanford.edu/entries/rationalism-empiricism/", The Stanford Encyclopedia of Philosophy (Summer 2013 Edition), Edward N. Zalta (ed.),

 Long before I had come to understand this nature of rationalism there were already signs that such a journey was already being awakened. This was an understanding for me as to the nature of what could be gained from the ability to visualize beyond empirical nature of our journey into the sensible realm.

I guess in a such an awakening,  as to what we know,  there is the realization that what comes after helps to make that sense. So in a way one might like to see how rationalism together with Empiricism actually works. It is not in the sense that I might define one group of historical thinkers to contrast each other to say that one should excel over another, but to define how such a rationally sound person moves toward empiricism to understand the reality we created by experimentation and repeatability that empiricism enshrouds.

So this awakening while slow to materialize, comes from understanding something about the logic of the world and the definitions and architecture of that logical approach. To me in this day and age it has lead to some theory about which computational view could hold the idea about how we might see this reality. I am reticence to view this  as a form of that reality. It is for what holds me back is a self evident moment using deducted features of our reasoning,  which could move us to that moment of clarity.

 The Empiricism Thesis: We have no source of knowledge in S or for the concepts we use in S other than sense experience Empircism -

 Empirical fact would not be the basis of reality for Nick Bostrum's simulation argument for instance. I hope to explain why.

 The basis of this association(Rationalist, or, a Empiricist) is whether one gains by a deductive method, or, an inductive method. A sense experience tells us, science as we know it, is inductive. We must garner repeatable experiments to verify reality, a rationalist, by logic and reason of theory alone. Verification, comes afterward. This for a rationalist is a deductive something which can be true, can be "innate" before we accept the inductive method means,  that is it can be rationally ascertained. It is only after ward that such a process could be said to be true or false.

If the late character of our sources may incite us to doubt the authenticity of this tradition, there remains that, in its spirit, it is in no way out of character, as can be seen by reading or rereading what Plato says about the sciences fit for the formation of philosophers in book VII of the Republic, and especially about geometry at Republic, VII, 526c8-527c11. We should only keep in mind that, for Plato, geometry, as well as all other mathematical sciences, is not an end in itself, but only a prerequisite meant to test and develop the power of abstraction in the student, that is, his ability to go beyond the level of sensible experience which keeps us within the "visible" realm, that of the material world, all the way to the pure intelligible. And geometry, as can be seen through the experiment with the slave boy in the Meno (Meno, 80d1-86d2), can also make us discover the existence of truths (that of a theorem of geometry such as, in the case of the Meno, the one about doubling a square) that may be said to be "transcendant" in that they don't depend upon what we may think about them, but have to be accepted by any reasonable being, which should lead us into wondering whether such transcendant truths might not exist as well in other areas, such as ethics and matters relating to men's ultimate happiness, whether we may be able to "demonstrate" them or not.See: Frequently Asked Questions about Plato by Bernard SUZANNE

When you examine deeply the very nature of your journey, then, you come to realize what is hidden underneath "experience." So while being an empiricist, it is necessary to know that such a joining with the rationalist correlates with the reasoned only after the mentioned experience. These are "corollary experiences," which serve to identify that which had been identified long before the sensible world had been made known.

Paradoxically, it was Einstein who reluctantly introduced the notion of spontaneous events, which might after all be the root of Bellʼs theorem. The lesson for the future could, however, be that we should build the notion of locality on the operationally clear 'no-signalling' condition—the impossibility of transferring information faster than light. After all, this is all that theory of relativity requires. The moral of the story is that Bellʼs theorem, in all its forms, tells us not what quantum mechanics is, but what quantum mechanics is not. Quantum non-locality—it ainʼt necessarily so... -

Empiricism then is to validate as a corollary that which had been cognate(maybe poor choice of word here but instead should use cognition). This does not mean you stop the process, but to extend the visionary possibility of that which can be cognitive....peering into the very nature of reality. Becomes the " we should build the notion of locality on the operationally clear 'no-signalling' condition."

Here the question of entanglement raises it's head to ask what is really being trasmitted as the corrallary of information,  as a direct physical connection in a computational system. In a quantum gravity scheme what is exchanged as a spin 2 graviton we might examine in the corollary of this no signalling condition but as a direct understanding of gravitational signalling.?

Such an examination reveals the Innate process with which we may already know "some thing,"  is awakened by moving into the world of science. While we consider such computational reality in context of a ontological question,  then,  such a journey may be represented as the geometry of the being which reveals a deeper question about the make-up of that reality.


Affective Field Theory of Emotion regarding sensory development may aid in the journey for understanding the place with which "the idea/form in expression arises," and that which is reasoned, beyond the related abstractions of "such a beginning," by becoming the ideal, in the empiricist world.

First Alcibiades

Papyrus fragment of Alcibiades I, section 131.c-e.

The First Alcibiades or Alcibiades I (Ancient Greek: Ἀλκιβιάδης αʹ) is a dialogue featuring Alcibiades in conversation with Socrates. It is ascribed to Plato, although scholars are divided on the question of its authenticity.

Contents 1 Content 2 Authenticity 3 Dating 4 References 5 Bibliography 6 External links

Content

In the preface Alcibiades is described as an ambitious young man who is eager to enter public life. He is extremely proud of his good looks, noble birth, many friends, possessions and his connection to Pericles, the leader of the Athenian state. Alcibiades has many admirers but they have all run away, afraid of his coldness. Socrates was the first of his admirers but he has not spoken to him for many years. Now the older man tries to help the youth with his questions before Alcibiades presents himself in front of the Athenian assembly. For the rest of the dialogue Socrates explains the many reasons why Alcibiades needs him. By the end of Alcibiades I, the youth is much persuaded by Socrates' reasoning, and accepts him as his mentor.

The first topic they enter is the essence of politics – war and peace. Socrates claims that people should fight on just grounds but he doubts that Alcibiades has got any knowledge about justice. Prodded by Socrates’ questioning Alcibiades admits that he has never learned the nature of justice from a master nor has discovered it by himself .

Alcibiades suggests that politics is not about justice but expediency and the two principles could be opposed. Socrates persuades him that he was mistaken, and there is no expediency without justice. The humiliated youth concedes that he knows nothing about politics.

Later Alcibiades says that he is not concerned about his ignorance because all the other Athenian politicians are ignorant. Socrates reminds him that his true rivals are the kings of Sparta and Persia. He delivers a long lecture about the careful education, glorious might and unparalleled richness of these foreign rulers. Alcibiades has got cold feet which was exactly the purpose of Socrates’ speech.

After this interlude the dialogue proceeds with further questioning about the rules of society. Socrates points to the many contradictions in Alcibiades’ thoughts. Later they agree that man has to follow the advise of the famous Delphic phrase: gnōthi seautón meaning know thyself. They discuss that the "ruling principle" of man is not the body but the soul. Somebody's true lover loves his soul, while the lover of the body flies as soon as the youth fades. With this Socrates proves that he is the only true lover of Alcibiades. "From this day forward, I must and will follow you as you have followed me; I will be the disciple, and you shall be my master", proclaims the youth. Together they will work on to improve Alcibiades' character because only the virtuous has the right to govern. Tyrannical power should not be the aim of individuals but people accept to be commanded by a superior.

In the last sentence Socrates expresses his hope that Alcibiades will persist but he has fears because the power of the state "may be too much" for both of them.
 

Authenticity

 

In antiquity Alcibiades I was regarded as the best text to introduce one to Platonic philosophy, which may be why it has continued to be included in the Platonic corpus since then. The authenticity of the dialogue was never doubted in antiquity. It was not until 1836 that the German scholar Friedrich Schleiermacher argued against the ascription to Plato.^[1] Subsequently its popularity declined. However, stylometrical research supports Plato's authorship,^[2] and some scholars have recently defended its authenticity.^[3]

Dating

 

Traditionally, the First Alcibiades has been considered an early dialogue. Gerard Ledger's stylometric analysis supported this tradition, dating the work to the 390's.^[4] Julia Annas, in supporting the authenticity of Rival Lovers, saw both dialogues as laying the foundation for ideas Plato would later develop in Charmides.

A later dating has also been defended. Nicholas Denyer suggests that it was written in the 350's BC, when Plato, back in Athens, could reflect on the similarities between Dionysius II of Syracuse (as we know him from the Seventh Letter) and Alcibiades—two young men interested in philosophy but compromised by their ambition and faulty early education.^[5] This hypothesis requires skepticism about what is usually regarded as the only fairly certain result of Platonic stylometry, Plato's marked tendency to avoid hiatus in the six dialogues widely believed to have been composed in the period to which Denyer assigns First Alcibiades (Timaeus, Critias, Sophist, Statesman, Philebus, and Laws).^[6]


R.S. Bluck, although unimpressed by previous arguments against the dialogue's authenticity, tentatively suggests a date after the end of Plato's life, approximately 343/2 BC, based especially on "a striking parallelism between the Alcibiades and early works of Aristotle, as well as certain other compositions that probably belong to the same period as the latter."^[8]

References

 

1. ^ Denyer (2001): 15.
2. ^ Young (1998): 35-36.
3. ^ Denyer (2001): 14-26.
4. ^ Young (1998)
5. ^ Denyer (2001): 11-14. Cf. 20-24
6. ^ Denyer (2001): 23 n. 19
7. ^ Pamela M. Clark, "The Greater Alcibiades," Classical Quarterly N.S. 5 (1955), pp. 231-240
8. ^ R.S. Bluck, "The Origin of the Greater Alcibiades," Classical Quarterly N.S. 3 (1953), pp. 46-52

 

Bibliography

 

• Denyer, Nicholas, "introduction", in Plato, Alcibiades, Nicholas Denyer (ed.) (Cambridge: Cambridge University Press, 2001): 1-26.
• Foucault, Michel, The Hermeneutics of the Subject: Lectures at the Collège de France, 1981–1982 (New York: Picador, 2005).
• Young, Charles M., "Plato and Computer Dating", in Nicholas D. Smith (ed.), Plato: Critical Assessments volume 1: General Issues of Interpretation (London: Routledge, 1998): 29-49.

 

External links

 

• Greek text: Greek Wikisource, HODOI (with French translation and concordance)
• First Alcibiades, trans. Benjamin Jowett (Project Gutenberg)

On the Question of a Daemon

( Arthur Koestler on Creativity )

 You’ve seen it before? Perhaps you found it scrawled in goat’s blood on the walls of an abysmal abbey, written in the crabbed hand of one who purported to teach the whole of the law...Ain Soph

Just so you understand that what happens in the past may have set the course for humanity in thinking such and such so  is with some concern that anyone would think that what I had to say resounds with such historical distaste of what the future might bring?

Historical Figures Lead Us to the Topic of Entanglement

 
We do no want to be ever so arrogant that we cannot see the seeds of the past had paved the way for our understanding of that future and spread the progression of the subject so as to be well founded in experimental processes necessary.

But, said Timarchus, I see nothing but stars leaping about the hollow, some carried into it, and some darting out of it again. These, said the voice, are Daemons; for thus it is. Every soul hath some portion of reason; a man cannot be a man without it; but as much of each soul as is mixed with flesh and appetite is changed, and through pain or pleasure becomes irrational. Every soul doth not mix herself after one sort; for some plunge themselves into the body, and so in this life their whole frame is corrupted by appetite and passion; others are mixed as to some part, but the purer part still remains without the body, — it is not drawn down into it, but it swims above, and touches the extremest part of the man’s head; it is like a cord to hold up and direct the subsiding part of the soul, as long as it proves obedient and is not overcome by the appetites of the flesh. That part that is plunged into the body is called the soul, but the uncorrupted part is called the mind, and the vulgar think it is within them, as likewise they imagine the image reflected from a glass to be in that. But the more intelligent, who know it to be without, call it a Daemon. Therefore those stars which you see extinguished imagine to be souls whose whole substances are plunged into bodies; and those that recover their light and rise from below, that shake off the ambient mist and darkness, as if it were clay and dirt, to be such as retire from their bodies after death; and those that are carried up on high are the Daemons of wise men and philosophers. See:A DISCOURSE CONCERNING SOCRATES’S DAEMON. - Plutarch, The Morals,

The question raises the idea that with "matter trained" we had lost our way in terms of what matters. What we work has somehow become the the part of the belief that we no longer hold to what spiritually might be capable of, but steadfastly have chosen matter as the principle of some higher intelligence?

Trivium:Three Roads

 

Logic is the art of thinking; grammar, the art of inventing symbols and combining them to express thought; and rhetoric, the art of communicating thought from one mind to another, the adaptation of language to circumstance.Sister Miriam Joseph

 Painting by Cesare Maccari (1840-1919), Cicero Denounces Catiline.

In medieval universities, the trivium comprised the three subjects taught first: grammar, logic, and rhetoric. The word is a Latin term meaning “the three ways” or “the three roads” forming the foundation of a medieval liberal arts education. This study was preparatory for the quadrivium. The trivium is implicit in the De nuptiis of Martianus Capella, although the term was not used until the Carolingian era when it was coined in imitation of the earlier quadrivium.^[1] It was later systematized in part by Petrus Ramus as an essential part of Ramism.

Formal grammar

A formal grammar (sometimes simply called a grammar) is a set of rules of a specific kind, for forming strings in a formal language. The rules describe how to form strings from the language's alphabet that are valid according to the language's syntax. A grammar does not describe the meaning of the strings or what can be done with them in whatever context —only their form.

Formal language theory, the discipline which studies formal grammars and languages, is a branch of applied mathematics. Its applications are found in theoretical computer science, theoretical linguistics, formal semantics, mathematical logic, and other areas.

A formal grammar is a set of rules for rewriting strings, along with a "start symbol" from which rewriting must start. Therefore, a grammar is usually thought of as a language generator. However, it can also sometimes be used as the basis for a "recognizer"—a function in computing that determines whether a given string belongs to the language or is grammatically incorrect. To describe such recognizers, formal language theory uses separate formalisms, known as automata theory. One of the interesting results of automata theory is that it is not possible to design a recognizer for certain formal languages.

Parsing is the process of recognizing an utterance (a string in natural languages) by breaking it down to a set of symbols and analyzing each one against the grammar of the language. Most languages have the meanings of their utterances structured according to their syntax—a practice known as compositional semantics. As a result, the first step to describing the meaning of an utterance in language is to break it down part by part and look at its analyzed form (known as its parse tree in computer science, and as its deep structure in generative grammar).

Logic

As a discipline, logic dates back to Aristotle, who established its fundamental place in philosophy. The study of logic is part of the classical trivium.

Averroes defined logic as "the tool for distinguishing between the true and the false"^[4]; Richard Whately, '"the Science, as well as the Art, of reasoning"; and Frege, "the science of the most general laws of truth". The article Definitions of logic provides citations for these and other definitions.

Logic is often divided into two parts, inductive reasoning and deductive reasoning. The first is drawing general conclusions from specific examples, the second drawing logical conclusions from definitions and axioms. A similar dichotomy, used by Aristotle, is analysis and synthesis. Here the first takes an object of study and examines its component parts, the second considers how parts can be combined to form a whole.
Logic is also studied in argumentation theory.^[5]

Philemon and the Liber Novus

Giving a dream to a Jungian analyst is a little bit like feeding a complex quadratic equation to someone who really enjoys math. It takes time. The process itself is to be savored. The solution is not always immediately evident.The Holy Grail of the Unconscious

The conclusion of the whole matter is just this,—that until a man knows the truth, and the manner of adapting the truth to the natures of other men, he cannot be a good orator; also, that the living is better than the written word, and that the principles of justice and truth when delivered by word of mouth are the legitimate offspring of a man’s own bosom, and their lawful descendants take up their abode in others. Such an orator as he is who is possessed of them, you and I would fain become. And to all composers in the world, poets, orators, legislators, we hereby announce that if their compositions are based upon these principles, then they are not only poets, orators, legislators, but philosophers.

Plato, The Dialogues of Plato, vol. 1 [387 AD] PHAEDRUS.

As Socrates travel through the citizenry of the time the question of what was to issue forth from, was always held in the bated breath of Socrates, that he would hear the wisdom of the Over-soul?

How many "degrees of freedom" to see that the chance always exists that what will come forth, is the illumination of something that resides within one's own self and completely accessible.

 The upcoming publication of Carl Jung's Red Book — a record of his fantasies and hallucinations during a sort of breakdown — has excited Jungians the world over. But is Jung still relevant today?

According to a New York Times Magazine article by Sara Corbett, the psychoanalyst Jung "got lost in the soup of his own psyche" when he was 38. He said he was "menaced by a psychosis" and that visions were coming at him in an "incessant stream." "In order to grasp the fantasies which were stirring in me ‘underground,'" he wrote, "I knew that I had to let myself plummet down into them." His method of "plummeting" was to write these fantasies down in what is now called his Red Book, a volume full of cramped text and intricate paintings that his family has guarded closely until recently. Now it has been translated into English, and will be published in October. See: Does Carl Jung Matter

Some might find some faint relevance to Robert Pirsig's journey,  to find that such compulsion to materialize in figurative speech, something that arose within Pirsig himself, also arose in Carl Jung?


This is a photograph of author and philosopher Robert M. Pirsigtaken by Ian Glendinning on the eve of the Liverpool conference of 7th July 2005.

What is in mind is a sort of Chautauqua...that's the only name I can think of for it...like the traveling tent-show Chautauquas that used to move across America, this America, the one that we are now in, an old-time series of popular talks intended to edify and entertain, improve the mind and bring culture and enlightenment to the ears and thoughts of the hearer. The Chautauquas were pushed aside by faster-paced radio, movies and TV, and it seems to me the change was not entirely an improvement. Perhaps because of these changes the stream of national consciousness moves faster now, and is broader, but it seems to run less deep. The old channels cannot contain it and in its search for new ones there seems to be growing havoc and destruction along its banks. In this Chautauqua I would like not to cut any new channels of consciousness but simply dig deeper into old ones that have become silted in with the debris of thoughts grown stale and platitudes too often repeated.

Zen and the Art of Motorcycle Maintenance Part 1 Chapter 1.(Bold added by me for emphasis)

While being presented Pirsig's book for reading,  and the subsequent work that arose from that time,  also pointed toward something  real and potential within any of us in my mind, that we might considered in one context as delusional, could be an aspect of our own self as we learn to see this aspect as the higher self "manifest within our own dreams,"  to know what can exist "both delusively and real, subjectively as an imagery of creative recognition is an access to that collective unconscious. The key here is a fishing line, hook and sinker to know that the fisherman has really got "an idea on his mind" as he castes his line.

If one is to understand the "wisdom of illumination," under this context,  then it will ring more true to those who have familiarity in seeking to understand the makeup of the person we are. Some might even recognize an aspect cognitively arising in familiarity with what they observe in the real world.  For them to know that subjectively the imagination is strong and very capable in merging with the areas of  continued research in discoveries in science at the microscopic level.

It seems that anomaly by it's discovery takes keen observation and not just luck. It's a kind of observation that connects many things and not having taken the time to look, will have past the time of as an aspect of probability, and life circumstance, that really holds no meaning? It was just a "moment in time," gone unnoticed until someone close to the path of realization came  along and discovered it for them self.

That's the realization,  that in this opportunity as always existing, it was just waiting for you.

The Red Book, also known as Liber Novus (The New Book), is a 205-page manuscript written and illustrated by Swiss psychologist Carl Gustav Jung between approximately 1914 and 1930, which was not published or shown to the public until 2009. Until 2001, his heirs denied scholars access to the book, which he began after a falling-out with Sigmund Freud in 1913. The book is written in calligraphic text and contains many illuminations.

I was excited when I heard news of this book.

As some will know I am a fan of Carl Jung because of what he represented to me in terms of self discovery and understanding of what one finds when one takes  a look at what they are capable of finding inside. You will pass this off very quickly as a subjective adventure, and relevant only to what can pass off as some supernatural event within the context of science's requirements.

But what I want people to know, regardless of their background in science, that such a pursuant to understand the greater complexity of what they can find inside does not relegate them to quackery and crack pottery. It's basically learning something about them self now having taken time.

The Red Book was a product of a technique developed by Jung which he termed active imagination. As Jung described it, he was visited by two figures, an old man and a young woman, who identified themselves as Elijah and Salome. They were accompanied by a large black snake. In time, the Elijah figure developed into a guiding spirit that Jung called Philemon (ΦΙΛΗΜΩΝ, as originally written with Greek letters). Salome was identified by Jung as an anima figure. The figures, according to Jung, "brought home to me the crucial insight that there are things in the psyche which I do not produce, but which produce themselves and have their own life."^[3]

The Philemon figure represented superior insight, and communicated through mythic imagery. The images did not appear to come from Jung's own experience, and Jung interpreted them as products of the collective unconscious.

The Rhetorician

This raises all sorts of questions, the most basic of which are: “What counts as `looking’ vs. `not looking’?” and “Do we really need a separate law of physics to describe the evolution of systems that are being looked at?” Sean Carroll

Zen and the Art of Motorcycle Maintenance

AN INQUIRY INTO VALUES

Robert M. Pirsig

Afterword

This book has a lot to say about Ancient Greek perspectives and their meaning but there is one perspective it misses. That is their view of time. They saw the future as something that came upon them from behind their backs with the past receding away before their eyes.

When you think about it, that's a more accurate metaphor than our present one. Who really can face the future? All you can do is project from the past, even when the past shows that such projections are often wrong. And who really can forget the past? What else is there to know?

Over the last couple of days my mind seems focused on time lines. It seems I am adjusting perspective, while knowing full well that while the day can be assessed, and so a life. One is facing the past as Pirsig did in writing his book. Imagine him actually looking to his past as it recedes to where the words become "a place" and behind, a sun shines. We see where such an adjustment of thinking here helps one to see what Pirsig was doing.

Plato:

So in that case it was not normal experience that suffered, but what came out of the sickness that allowed an "ultimate realization" that you or I do not have to contend with, but sick men who struggle to search and found something, that normal people would not. So this is why the time line is important to be realized.

It can indeed seem quite confusing but it is an interesting idea here, much as one could be unsettle here with the Chicken before the egg scenario. This took me back to some of the things Sean Carroll wrote. This is not about biology or creationism, but about how perspective has been orientated in a historical sense to how we see it today. For Pirsig and Nash, they had to recount their past in order for us to understand their struggle.

Sean Carroll has a interesting set of four entires about the backwardness of the arrow of time and how it would appear. This is an interesting exercise for me on how perception about the current direction of the universe could have represented "the Egg before the chicken" scenarios.

Incompatible Arrows, I: Martin Amis
Incompatible Arrows, II: Kurt Vonnegut
Incompatible Arrows, III: Lewis Carroll
Incompatible Arrows, IV: F. Scott Fitzgerald

Chicken or Egg

Illustration from Tacuina sanitatis, Fourteenth century

Reverse chronology — narrating a story, or parts of one, backwards in time — is a venerable technique in literature, going back at least as far as Virgil’s Aeneid. Much more interesting is a story with incompatible arrows of time: some characters live “backwards” while others experience life normally.

***



PHAEDRUS. - Plato, The Dialogues of Plato, vol. 1 [387 AD]Edition used:

The Dialogues of Plato, vol. 1, translated into English with Analyses and Introductions by B. Jowett, M.A. in Five Volumes. 3rd edition revised and corrected (Oxford University Press, 1892).


Phaedr.I think that I understand you; but will you explain yourself?

Soc.When any one speaks of iron and silver, is not the same thing present in the minds of all?

Phaedr.Certainly.

Soc.But when any one speaks of justice and goodness we part company and are at odds with one another and with ourselves?

Phaedr.Precisely.

Soc.Then in some things we agree, but not in others?

Phaedr.That is true.

Soc.In which are we more likely to be deceived, and in which has rhetoric the greater power?

Phaedr.Clearly, in the uncertain class.

Soc.Then the rhetorician ought to make a regular division, and acquire a distinct notion of both classes, as well of that in which the many err, as of that in which they do not err?

Phaedr.He who made such a distinction would have an excellent principle.

Soc.Yes; and in the next place he must have a keen eye for the observation of particulars in speaking, and not make a mistake about the class to which they are to be referred.

Phaedr.Certainly.

Soc.Love belongs to the debatable class.

Now to which class does love belong—to the debatable or to the undisputed class?

Phaedr.To the debatable, clearly; for if not, do you think that love would have allowed you to say as you did, that he is an evil both to the lover and the beloved, and also the greatest possible good?

Soc.Capital. But will you tell me whether I defined love at the beginning of my speech? for, having been in an ecstasy, I cannot well remember.

Phaedr.Yes, indeed; that you did, and no mistake.

Soc.Lysias should have begun, as I did, by defining love.

Then I perceive that the Nymphs of Achelous and Pan the son of Hermes, who inspired me, were far better rhetoricians than Lysias the son of Cephalus. Alas! how inferior to them he is! But perhaps I am mistaken; and Lysias at the commencement of his lover’s speech did insist on our supposing love to be something or other which he fancied him to be, and according to this model he fashioned and framed the remainder of his discourse. Suppose we read his beginning over again:

Phaedr.If you please; but you will not find what you want.

Soc.Read, that I may have his exact words.
Phaedr.‘You know how matters stand with me, and how, as I conceive, they might be arranged for our common interest; and I maintain I ought not to fail in my suit because I am not your lover, for lovers repent of the kindnesses which they have shown, when their love is over.’
Soc.He begins at the end.

Here he appears to have done just the reverse of what he ought; for he has begun at the end, and is swimming on his back through the flood to the place of starting. His address to the fair youth begins where the lover would have ended. Am I not right, sweet Phaedrus?

Phaedr.Yes, indeed, Socrates; he does begin at the end.

Soc.No order or arrangement of parts in his discourse.

Then as to the other topics—are they not thrown down anyhow? Is there any principle in them? Why should the next topic follow next in order, or any other topic? I cannot help fancying in my ignorance that he wrote off boldly just what came into his head, but I dare say that you would recognize a rhetorical necessity in the succession of the several parts of the composition?

Phaedr.You have too good an opinion of me if you think that I have any such insight into his principles of composition.

Soc.At any rate, you will allow that every discourse ought to be a living creature, having a body of its own and a head and feet; there should be a middle, beginning, and end, adapted to one another and to the whole?

Phaedr.Every discourse should be a living creature, having a body, head, and feet.

Certainly.

Soc.Can this be said of the discourse of Lysias? See whether you can find any more connexion in his words than in the epitaph which is said by some to have been inscribed on the grave of Midas the Phrygian.

Phaedr.What is there remarkable in the epitaph?

Soc.It is as follows:—

 * ‘I am a maiden of bronze and lie on the tomb of Midas;
    * So long as water flows and tall trees grow,
    * So long here on this spot by his sad tomb abiding,
    * I shall declare to passers–by that Midas sleeps below.’

The discourse of Lysias had no more arrangement than the silliest of epitaphs.

Now in this rhyme whether a line comes first or comes last, as you will perceive, makes no difference.
Phaedr.You are making fun of that oration of ours.

Soc.Well, I will say no more about your friend’s speech lest I should give offence to you; although I think that it might furnish many other examples of what a man ought rather to avoid. But I will proceed to the other speech, which, as I think, is also suggestive to students of rhetoric.
Phaedr.In what way?

Soc.The two speeches, as you may remember, were unlike; the one argued that the lover and the other that the non–lover ought to be accepted.

Phaedr.And right manfully.

Soc.You should rather say ‘madly;’ and madness was the argument of them, for, as I said, ‘love is a madness.’
Phaedr.Yes.

Soc.And of madness there were two kinds; one produced by human infirmity, the other was a divine release of the soul from the yoke of custom and convention.

Phaedr.True.

Soc.Four subdivisions of madness—prophetic, initiatory, poetic, erotic.

The divine madness was subdivided into four kinds, prophetic, initiatory, poetic, erotic, having four gods presiding over them; the first was the inspiration of Apollo, the second that of Dionysus, the third that of the Muses, the fourth that of Aphrodite and Eros. In the description of the last kind of madness, which was also said to be the best, we spoke of the affection of love in a figure, into which we introduced a tolerably credible and possibly true through partly erring myth, which was also a hymn in honour of Love, who is your lord and also mine, Phaedrus, and the guardian of fair children, and to him we sung the hymn in measured and solemn strain.

Phaedr.I know that I had great pleasure in listening to you.

Soc.Let us take this instance and note how the transition was made from blame to praise.

Phaedr.What do you mean?

Soc.The myth was a creation of fancy, yet true principles were involved in it: (1) unity of particulars in a single note; (2) natural division into species.

I mean to say that the composition was mostly playful. Yet in these chance fancies of the hour were involved two principles of which we should be too glad to have a clearer description if art could give us one.

Phaedr.What are they?

Soc.First, the comprehension of scattered particulars in one idea; as in our definition of love, which whether true or false certainly gave clearness and consistency to the discourse, the speaker should define his several notions and so make his meaning clear.

Phaedr.What is the other principle, Socrates?

Soc.The second principle is that of division into species according to the natural formation, where the joint is, not breaking any part as a bad carver might. Just as our two discourses, alike assumed, first of all, a single form of unreason; and then, as the body which from being one becomes double and may be divided into a left side and right side, each having parts right and left of the same name—after this manner the speaker proceeded to divide the parts of the left side and did not desist until he found in them an evil or lefthanded love which he justly reviled; and the other discourse leading us to the madness which lay on the right side, found another love, also having the same name, but divine, which the speaker held up before us and applauded and affirmed to be the author of the greatest benefits.The dialectician is concerned with the one and many.

Phaedr.Most true.

Soc.I am myself a great lover of these processes of division and generalization; they help me to speak and to think. And if I find any man who is able to see ‘a One and Many’ in nature, him I follow, and ‘walk in his footsteps as if he were a god.’ And those who have this art, I have hitherto been in the habit of calling dialecticians; but God knows whether the name is right or not. And I should like to know what name you would give to your or to Lysias’ disciples, and whether this may not be that famous art of rhetoric which Thrasymachus and others teach and practise? Skilful speakers they are, and impart their skill to any who is willing to make kings of them and to bring gifts to them.


***

The idea here is that the argument can be held in objective analysis as a defining relation to perspective about what is real, in the here and now. So any describing from it's source to something more defined topologically in movement from the vacuum, is a move to a finer substrate of the reality? What shape in the valley? Which one?

While scientifically engaged, "what if" internally you face the past as a lesson in history, and look upon the world, as our sun? Change it up, and the world is our past, while internally a sun shines behind us. This asks that the internal world is configured according to this dimensional perspective. Subjective yes, but allegorical to what any state of mind garners as it rests to it's ideological state?

Heaven

In the modern age of science and space flight the idea that Heaven is a physical place in the observable universe has largely been abandoned.[citation needed] Religious views, however, still hold Heaven as having a dual status as a concept of mind or heart, but also possibly still physically existing in some way on another "plane of existence", dimension, or perhaps at a future time.[citation needed] According to science there are unobservable areas of the universe (everywhere beyond earth's Particle horizon), although by their very nature it is not possible to observe them.

In this examination of "position" we are always facing our past. If we are to examine our scientific position, is this then real in how we analyze all of the experiments that are currently being undertaken?

You see, looking to an event in the cosmos, this orientation of looking back is to place "a measure" between the earth we stand on, and the event. The event is receding as we are gazing. While some of this observation is picked out in Pirsig's afterword, the subsequent revelation given by Socrate to Phaedrus raises some perspective in my mind about what I had always believed.

As I look at the world, it is receding, yet, internally connected as if in a Ambigram of continuous rotation. It has to be symmetrical, in that asymmetry is to move into the world, while internally, it has always been where symmetry resides?

Why move into an objective status of scientific belief that what can exist in relation to the values that science call its dimensional, is the realization that such an existence is as if matched internally according to the degrees of freedom that we match according to the nature I had assigned Colour of Gravity.


***

See:

Incompatible Arrows

Our Consciousness can "Contain the Future?"

Memories Arise Out of a Equilibrium

Understanding our Angels and Daemons

So, every "story line" is about a Journey? IN Angel and Demons, we follow the story of Professor Robert Langdon.

The Vatican summons Professor Robert Langdon (Tom Hanks) and Vittoria Vetra (Ayelet Zurer) from CERN to help them solve the Illuminati's threat, save the four preferiti, and find the hidden bomb. Langdon listens to the Illuminati message and deduces that the four cardinals will die at the four altars of the Path of Illumination. See: Angels and Demons

So in relation, I pointed out that Dan's Brown's book which I read, and the  film I have yet to see has it's differences, while we see the transfer from one medium to the next.   Same storyline. Pirsig's touch with the recognition of the Chautauquas, "the traveling tent-show Chautauquas that used to move across America, this America, the one that we are now in, an old-time series of popular talks intended to edify and entertain, improve the mind and bring culture and enlightenment to the ears and thoughts of the hearer."

Anyway, I presented the Dialogues of Plato and the Plays of William Shakespeare as forums in which characters real or imagined, help to move forward the reader under "ideological progressions," as if,  dealing with this inductive/ deductive realization of information and probable outcomes once given the scenarios which are displayed for the mind to entertain.

Earlier in this thread I had mentioned Robert Pirsig and it is here as well I mention, "The Beautiful Mind." Both situations here are recognition of the Demons both indivudals(John Forbes Nash) under go,  as their story written is told in a life lesson and in John Nashes case, a film. Must we recognize that genius courts closely the aberrations of a sane and inquisitive mind, who looses touch with reality. Not so different then, when one who holds to this "other agenda of the Illuminati" in the Angel here Demons story here?

After suffering a nervous breakdown, Pirsig spent time in and out of mental hospitals from 1961 – 1963. After undergoing a psychiatric evaluation, he was diagnosed with paranoid schizophrenia and clinical depression, and was treated with shock therapy. Pirsig had made a progressive recovery and had discontinued psychotherapy in 1964. He later began working as a freelance writer. See: Robert Pirsig

So who was Robert Pirsig's Demon(Daemon)?

The words daemon, dæmon, are Latinized spellings of the Greek δαίμων (daimôn),^[1] used purposely today to distinguish the daemons of Ancient Greek religion, good or malevolent "supernatural beings between mortals and gods, such as inferior divinities and ghosts of dead heroes" (see Plato's Symposium), from the Judeo-Christian usage demon, a malignant spirit that can seduce, afflict, or possess humans See:Daemon (mythology)

If one has the chance to read Robert Pirsig's book Zen and the Art of Motorcycle Maintenance , one should most certainly do so. I had seen this book lying around over the years and never really gave it much notice until a gentlemen spoke to me about the issue of "Quality and the Good."

Being a reader of Plato and seeing this influence in science today, I was after something quite substantial as I look to see how ideas could enter the mind, and that in general, not to conceive of it as an portend of evil( that Daemon), but as an acquisition of the inquiring mind of the student to reveal "a higher wisdom" resides in each of us.

This was part of setting the stage if you might, to recognizing this "dual nature,"  as an inductive/deductive relation we use in our relationship with the world. So in this sense,  a scientific position and responsibility of becoming an open person to receive information,  as you delve ever deeper into the nature of things. I am not saying this is the way it is, just that it is a "point of view" I was able to gather, once one does their  own homework. Pays attention to the politics. What is "self evident?"

So indeed Noise presents a "climatic realization of assumption after assumption." In the real world,  we are only armed with what we are expose too? Is this not the way it seems? Why such medium exposure might be thought of,  as to the "way the world is according too," which point of view. You have to be given the power back for discernment of what it means to you and ever the role of a scientific mind as to inquiry, for being responsible.

The conclusion of the whole matter is just this,—that until a man knows the truth, and the manner of adapting the truth to the natures of other men, he cannot be a good orator; also, that the living is better than the written word, and that the principles of justice and truth when delivered by word of mouth are the legitimate offspring of a man’s own bosom, and their lawful descendants take up their abode in others. Such an orator as he is who is possessed of them, you and I would fain become. And to all composers in the world, poets, orators, legislators, we hereby announce that if their compositions are based upon these principles, then they are not only poets, orators, legislators, but philosophers.

Plato, The Dialogues of Plato, vol. 1 [387 AD] PHAEDRUS.

It is important to know then that Robert Pirsig's Angel or Daemon, was Phaedrus( depends on how you look at it in terms of what was given to Pirsig). As real or imagined the story line in the Journey across America with his son, was the realization of the lost years in an identity that went on a excursion, and never came home until the breakdown. John Nash had his own characters in the film, discovered later on, were the imaginings of a mind,  lost in the battle of what is real with paranoid schizophrenia. For John Nash it was always then later on in dealing with reality the struggle of who John Nash was while facing these imaginary people.

So while I say "real or imagined" one understands fully here that while we had identified the use of characters under the notion of "creative writing of Plato or of Bacon's Shakespeare,"  it was apparent that in the cases that I have sighted of Robert Pirsig and John Nash, that while sick mentally,  genius and brilliance were courted.

While I would point to John Nashes mathematical astuteness while sick, I am more wanting to point out the "Quality and the Good" of Pirsig as I continue. This is an understanding of that finer attribute of theoretical thinking that we ventured too. To see if reality by experimentation thusly engendered, then qualifies. How indeed did progression be marked if it did not allow one to see anew, with a new perspective and experiments are validated. In sociological thinking of our everyday,  how did our assumptions prove we were thinking theoretically, while assessing the politico defalcates of position and inherent of a party? What is the basis of this discernment then we can discriminate the truth of applied rights of constitutions written for democracies were written for freedoms and rights?

Rising Above the Duality

The Tao of heaven is to take from those who have too much and give to those who do not have enough. Man’s way is different. He takes from those who do not have enough to give to those who already have too much. (verse 77. Tr. Gia Fu Feng)

Gia-Fu Feng (1919 - 1985) was prominent as both an English translator (with his wife, Jane English) of Daoist classics and a Daoist teacher in the United States, associated with Alan Watts, Jack Kerouac, The Beats and Abraham Maslow.

He was born in Shanghai in 1919 into a fairly wealthy family of some influence. His father was a prominent banker, one of the founders of the Bank of China; his mother died when he was 16. He was educated privately in his own home in the classics of the Chinese tradition and in private boarding schools. He was for several months tutored by the wife of the British Consul-General. His family members were Buddhist. For the springtime holiday, they travelled to the ancestral tombs in Yu Yao, in Chekiang Province, for the spring festivals. During the Japanese Occupation, Gia-Fu went to Kunming in Free China to complete his Bachelor's Degree at Southwest Associated University in the liberal arts. Gia-Fu once commented that he had become a millionaire three times in his life, giving his money away each time. The first time was when he worked for the bank in Kunming.

Xiuzhen TuThis is the Yin-yang symbol or Taijitu (太極圖), with black representing yin and white representing yang. It is a symbol that reflects the inescapably intertwined duality of all things in nature, a common theme in Taoism. No quality is independent of its opposite, nor so pure that it does not contain its opposite in a diminished form: these concepts are depicted by the vague division between black and white, the flowing boundary between the two, and the smaller circles within the large regions.

Secret of the Golden Flower

Chinese Taoists believe this bright image has close relation to the "Original Essence", "Golden Flower", and "Original Light" . If the practitioner sees the Mandala, that means he/she see part of "Original Essence", and he/she are entering the beginning level of the immortal essence. In the book of Wilhelm's translation, he describes some of the pictures of the Mandala.

Some might know of my references to the Mandala throughout this blog and more specific the understanding of what the "Pure land" means. If you had never known of what the Koan symbolizes then how would you know to understand that the communication of that "very essence of quality" is transmutable to another human being in it's most pure from?

The Golden Flower is the Elixir of Life (literally, golden ball, golden pill). All changes of spiritual consciousness depend upon the Heart. Here is a secret charm, which, although it works very accurately, is yet so fluent that it needs extreme intelligence and clarity, and complete absorption and calm. People without this highest degree of intelligence and understanding do not find the way to apply the charm; People without this utmost capacity for concentration and calm cannot keep fast hold of it.

***

This is a photograph of author and philosopher Robert M. Pirsigtaken by Ian Glendinning on the eve of the Liverpool conference of 7th July 2005.

What is in mind is a sort of Chautauqua...that's the only name I can think of for it...like the traveling tent-show Chautauquas that used to move across America, this America, the one that we are now in, an old-time series of popular talks intended to edify and entertain, improve the mind and bring culture and enlightenment to the ears and thoughts of the hearer. The Chautauquas were pushed aside by faster-paced radio, movies and TV, and it seems to me the change was not entirely an improvement. Perhaps because of these changes the stream of national consciousness moves faster now, and is broader, but it seems to run less deep. The old channels cannot contain it and in its search for new ones there seems to be growing havoc and destruction along its banks. In this Chautauqua I would like not to cut any new channels of consciousness but simply dig deeper into old ones that have become silted in with the debris of thoughts grown stale and platitudes too often repeated.

Zen and the Art of Motorcycle Maintenance Part 1 Chapter 1.(Bold added by me for emphasis)

This article is more about what Robert Maynard Pirsig accomplished. What I had learnt as I came to realize what the value of thought I had taken from the reading. I had already read a lot over the years, and it was that reading that brought it together for me, so that now I can describe what I feel needs to be done.

The title of this post is specific in that the Tao here is the realization that we can constantly move in this relation. Is still to remain part of the earthly state of existence, as the "square" shows in my model of thinking.

Here in this mandala it is interesting to see how such a construction of the diagram becomes focused. Foursquare. If you look at the pyramid and us being over top of, then we can keep this in mind. The Seal of Solomon or Star of David is a symbolism of a kind that warrants the mind to think of involution and evolution. The central location is the place of the heart. Those six smaller triangles then become what?:)

Central to this evolution of the thinking, and the rising above this duality, is to recognize "the Heart" in this relation. It is the idea of the quality that must come into one's thinking to see that what transpires after the distinction of such dualism is to become part of the quality of the new thinking mind. Then the thinking mind has been raised in a "energy configuration" that holds all thoughts to a transforming hierarchy within the pyramid, as a colour of gravity depiction and ascension, as possible in each and every person.

The dream is a little hidden door in the innermost and most secret recesses of the soul, opening into that cosmic night which was psyche long before there was any ego consciousness, and which will remain psyche no matter how far our ego consciousness extends.... All consciousness separates; but in dreams we put on the likeness of that more universal, truer, more eternal man dwelling in the darkness of primordial night. There he is still the whole, and the whole is in him, indistinguishable from nature and bare of all egohood. It is from these all-uniting depths that the dream arises, be it never so childish, grotesque, and immoral. Carl Jung

The very image at the bottom of this blog page again is a type of koan that was given to me "in literal form" to come to understand it's message. I pass it onto others so that they might consider it's message. It is about life, and about the transformation to a spiritual person. This is a necessary recognition of when we choose to "rise above that dualism" to become situated in the heart mind.

This is also the time when we take the earthly design, and move over top of the pyramid, to see that what lays before us is a recognition of the cyclical nature that dualism enfolds into the living of, as a human being. One needs the heart in order to rise to the higher principals of the intellect, taking that energy and transforming it into new thought processes. So then the pyramid then becomes a dynamical model of the human body and mind.

To ever get the sense of this momentum of opposites transforming into the one other is to realize that a pressure exists on the forearm. IN this contact a oppositional force will cause the realization that if you were empty, no resistance, to allow that opposing movement to move forward. You allow it to become centrifugal, as if, in a rotation, to return the force back onto itself.

Such momentums are the things which propel my own mind through the vast journeys of space on a imaginary spaceship, that while in the Lagrangian mode, one can understand how such rockets can travel with the least amount of energy expedited.

Such an exchange is the idea then that the economy in caught in this kind of action of dualism?

***

See:

Distortions of Reality

Ancient Notion of "Matter Four Squared" Called Earth

Orators Reduced to Written Words

Oh Dear!... How Technology has Changed Things