Hello everyone
>From: "david buchanan" <[EMAIL PROTECTED]>
>Reply-To: [EMAIL PROTECTED]
>To: [EMAIL PROTECTED]
>Subject: Re: [MD] subject / object logic
>Date: Wed, 15 Aug 2007 15:02:01 -0600
>
>Ron Kulp said:
>"I feel value is a function, that which happens when subject meets object.
>No subjects and objects, no value. I interpret most of you saying that
>MOQ's patterns of value are distinct from the subjects and objects it
>refers to and therefore subjects and objects can be "dropped" leaving only
>the value.
Dan:
I think what I said is that subject/object is convenient shorthand for
static patterns of value. There is no need to drop the terms as
subject/object are not separate and distinct from static patterns of
value... but if one does then all that's left is value.
>Ron:
> ...I contend subject/object value perception naturally eludes to dualism
>intellectually and that many in the past, set to resolve this by focusing
>on value between the two. An intellectual awareness interpreted as
>mysticism. ..."
>
>dmb says:
>I'm not sure I follow you here but would like to offer some ideas on the
>topic from the Introduction of an anthology titled, PRAGMATISM AND
>CLASSICAL AMERICAN PHILOSOPHY. John Stuhr, the editor and author of the
>introduction, describes classical American philosophy in terms of seven
>main features; 1) The rejection of modern philosophy, 2) Fallibilism, 3)
>Pluralism, 4) Radical empiricism, 5) The continuity of science and
>philosophy, 6) Pragmatism and meliorism and 7) The centrality of community.
>None of these are irrelevant but the first and fourth features bare most
>directly on SOM.
>
>Under number one ("The rejection of modern philosophy") Stuhr says,
>"Classical American philosophy confronted and largely dismissed the
>categories, language and notions central to earlier thought. This thought
>was fundamentally dualistic: ...reason/will, thought/purpose,
>intellect/emotion... mind/matter, appearance/reality, experience/nature,
>..and so on. Classical American philosophers did not refuse to use these
>terms; instead, their point was that these notions refer to distinctions
>made in thought rather than to different kinds of being or levels of
>existence. That is, these terms have a functional rather than an
>ontological status: they stand for useful distinctions made within
>reflection, and not for different kinds of being, discrete and separate
>prior to reflection. This is crucial because it is bound up with the
>wholesale rejection of the central problems of modern philosophy, problems
>which presuppose the above dualistic categories. Classical American
>philosophers, that is, did not attempt to provide better answers to
>traditional problems as much as they sought to dissolve, dismiss, and
>undercut these problems altogether by denying the metaphysical assumptions
>which gave rise to them." Page 3
>
>And that brings us to Radical empiricism. The emphsis is the author's...
>
>"The classical American philosophers reject traditional empriicism because
>it is not sufficiently empirical, not radically empirical. These concerns
>are developed most fully by James in ESSAYS IN RADICAL EMPIRICISM and by
>Dewey in "The Need for a Recovery of Philosophy" and EXPERIENCE AND NATURE,
>they insist that experience is an active, onging affair in whcih
>experiencING subject and experiencED object constitute a primal, integral,
>relational unity. Experience is not an interaction of separate subject and
>object, a point of connection between a subjective realm of the experiencer
>and the objective order of nature. Instead, experience is existentially
>inclusive, continuous, unified: it is that interaction of subject and
>object which CONSTITUTES subject and object - as partial features of this
>active, yet unanalyzed, totality. Experience, then, is not an "interaction"
>but a "transaction" in which the whole constitutes its interrelated
>aspects. Experience is primal or pure, and contains no "inner duplicity".
>Thus, the separation of it into knowing consciousness and known content can
>be explained, writes James, "as a particular sort of relation towards one
>antoher into which portions of pure experience may enter. The relation
>itself is a part of pure experience; one of its 'terms' becomes the subject
>or bearer of the knowledge, the knower, the other becomes the object
>known". The implications of this view are many and profound. Negatively,
>radical empiricism is the basis for the rjection of modern philosophy
>described above: it demonstrates the artificiality of philsophical problems
>of somehow uniting mand and world, experience and nature, self and
>not-self, mental and physical, and so on. Positively, it points to a new
>direction for philosophy: philosophy myst examine the conditions under
>which the preceding distinction as are made and applied, and it must
>critially examine the values sered by these distinctns. It is this aim that
>motivates Dewey, for example, in his wtiting onethics, education, politics,
>and asesthetic and religious experience: today we are in desperate need of
>a philosophy that searates not experience from reality, but rather 'blind,
>slavish, meaningless action' from 'action that is free, significant,
>direted and responsible'." Pages 4&5
>
>The phrase that really caught my eye here was, "Experience, then, is not an
>'interaction' but a 'transaction'." If I understand this rightly, this is
>what Pirsig means when he says that experience is not caused by subjects
>and objects but rather subjects and objects are caused by experience. They
>are derived from that primal, pure experience. They are a product of
>reflection. They're inventions of the intellect.
Hi David
Yes, this seems a crucial point to forming an understanding with the MOQ.
Subject and object metaphysics is an intellectual invention which has no
relation to reality. We invent such notions and believe them to be true.
>Of course we don't have to re-invent this interpretation after every blink.
>This way of interpreting experience is given to us through language. This
>way of understanding the nature of experience has become common sense and
>we all do it so habitually and so automatically that most folks never doubt
>it for a moment.
Right. This is subject/object metaphysics... a commonsense belief that we
are all separate individuals existing apart from the objects of our
perception. It's ingrained into the fabric of our culture and so it is
practically impossible to escape from this point of view and still remain
part of that culture.
>One need not become a mystic to overcome this inheritance, although I would
>welcome that route too. In a way its as simple as noticing that our
>thoughts and theories about experience are always going to come after the
>experience. And when we realize that subjects and objects are among those
>thoughts and theories it seems an obvious thing to say they are derived
>from experience. Saying that subjects and objects are the cause of
>experience, then, is a bit like saying books are caused by book reviews.
That's a good point.
Thanks for sharing your thoughts,
Dan
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