Joho the Blog
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June 13, 2005
A couple of days ago, I wrote up a thought that I was afraid sounds better than it is. But now I think maybe it isn't as hollow as I'd thought. The idea was this: Aristotle says that to know x is to place x into a relationship of similarity and difference: A robin is a type of bird (same as all other birds) but is a unique species of bird (different from all other birds). This is a world-changing insight, especially since Aristotle thought it was true not just of knowledge but of reality. But as our belief in a single, uninterpreted reality — or our ability to know a single reality — falters, we find ourselves in a global network of conversations. And conversations iterate differences on the ground of shared beliefs — difference and similarity. I was worried that the formal similarity between Aristotle's idea and the nature of conversation was too facile. But this morning I think there's also something right. In these billions of conversations, we attempt to work out what's true. But, especially as the conversation goes global and involves people with deep differences, we (= I) have no hope of ever resolving issues and creating anything like an eternal tree of knowledge. That dream of Reason is gone. (Appropriate exceptions admitted.) Instead, for the rest of our time on the planet, we will be iterating differences, hopefully on an increasing ground of commonality. But we're never going to all agree and fall silent. That's not even a desirable outcome. So, I think maybe I do believe that knowledge is becoming the eternality of conversations dancing difference over common ground. (I reserve the right to change my mind tomorrow.) [Technorati tags: EverythingIsMiscellaneous aristotle philosophy] Posted
by D. Weinberger at June 13, 2005 06:33 AM
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Comments
Glad you stuck with this thought. Here's something I started writing in response to the original post:
The key point here, I think, is that the Aristotelian hierarchy is an achieved system of differences-within-similarity. If we characterise a conversation as 'the iteration of differences on the basis of similarity', the stress should be on iteration, on process. In other words, it's not a collaborative attempt to chip away the accumulated crud of ambiguity and tautology and reveal the true hierarchy of knowledge in all its crystalline precision.
(About here I realised it was getting too long & continued it over on my blog.)
Posted by: Phil Edwards | June 13, 2005 11:20 AM
Resonates with me. It fits everything I've encountered and experienced about life in the domain of language. It even applies to our relentless efforts to fit the formal to the world, and vice versa.
This strikes me as a great theme in philosophical inquiry, from Platonic forms through Aristotle to Heidegger, Wittgenstein, Austin and the recent Wolfram and Christopher Alexander (who apparently goes so far as to say that reality consists of patterns -- I've ordered the first volume of "The Phenomenon of Life" just to see what that's about).
It amazes me that, with what we learn about language through the availability of the digital computer (semantics? what semantics? where?), that the tendency to claim explanatory truth in the identification of concepts with reality is so strong. I hear it in Keith Devlin at times, though I should improve my listening before I take that as a critical appraisal. I continue to love Einstein's disavowal of truth/explanation between theory and reality [with far more subtlety and nuance than I just cast it].
Have you started to toy with this around its implications/contributions for "identity?" Tagsonomy? (formal) ontology? It seems to me that there is a rich territory here.
Posted by: orcmid | June 13, 2005 11:33 AM
Berger and Luckman would say you're spot on (and I'm inclined to agree).
Posted by: Alan | June 13, 2005 06:14 PM
... and if it's not clear from the dense essay, it's through conversation that the social construction of reality takes place.
Posted by: Alan | June 13, 2005 06:15 PM
David, what the hell is your life about??? Merely traveling to conferences and worrying about what Aristotle had to say? Why don't you go out and do a real day's work once in a while?
Posted by: Hayden | June 14, 2005 02:07 PM
Hayden, my life is the hell about pretty much what the hell your life is about.
Please don't confuse what I write about with what what my life is about.
Posted by: David Weinberger | June 14, 2005 02:52 PM
Ooh, and for a minute I thought I'd walked into a Monty Python sketch: "Existentialism? No, sorry love, this is Logical Positivism, try two doors down on the right."
Posted by: Crosbie Fitch | June 14, 2005 06:59 PM