Hi Matt Interesting post. You mention secularism and values. I wonder is not secularism not closely tied to SOM and therefore not also tied to the de-valuing of values that SOM brings about? I think this is one of the problems Charles Taylor raises in his interesting book on Secularism:
http://www.amazon.com/Secular-Age-Charles-Taylor/dp/0674026764/ref=sr_1_8?ie=UTF8&s=books&qid=1196096317&sr=1-8 Regards David M ----- Original Message ----- From: "Matt Kundert" <[EMAIL PROTECTED]> To: <[EMAIL PROTECTED]> Sent: Friday, November 16, 2007 4:30 AM Subject: Re: [MD] subject/object: pragmatism Ron,I'd like to comment on this, and the other thread you started, austerely titled, "SOM".Ron said:Hmm, I would agree that MoQ is taking the next step toward de-anthropomorphizing our explanations but I have a problem with the replace term, I think append is a better word for it. And a more practical explanation of it's function.Matt:I'm currently writing a short, potted description of the origins of SOM for another project, and I've been struggling over calling what the Greeks did "de-anthopomorphizing". It seems easy to say that when describing what they did to Homeric religion, but it becomes difficult to sustain when you sweep it forward as an impetus for intellectual progress in the West. It becomes most obvious when you look at Pirsig: who would call the notion of calling rocks "static patterns of value" _less_ anthropomorphic? It leads me to think that there's something wrong with the terms in which we are writing the history, just as I think saying that "rationality" is what suddenly hit Greece around the time of Thales. Cornford, Grube, and Snell (even contemporaries like Julia Annas and the brilliantly original Pierre Hadot) contain that kind of talk, but it doesn't sound right for the kind of volte-face I would think pragmatists would like to make.One thing I'm more convinced about is that "replace," or some variation of, is the better way to go then a variation of "append." The way I conceive of SOM is as a finite thing, not nearly as pervasive as some think it (or at least, the problems it creates are not as insidious to the common person as some think it). It is all the bad things we need to cut from the branches. I don't go in at all with Bo's idea that SOM is a permanent stage in our evolution, like our cells. SOM is simply a constellation of metaphors and distinctions that we can shunt out of philosophical discussion and replace with better metaphors and distinctions.Ron said (in "SOM"):Plato's Idea, the value of what is, is an attempt to establish a basic understanding of certainty Through the axiom of excluded middles by working with assumed absolutes as a matter Of convenience. This immediately gives rise to the process event trap that things are fixed And do not change. It also gives rise to another form of anthropomorphism the theory of forms. I say it has become cultural because it influences how we perceive, describe and understand the reality We experience every day. Although I think rather highly of the MoQ I find it rather un realistic to expect it to REPLACE Thousands of years of the cultural formation of religion, mathematics,and scientific discovery that we utilize And which have become such an integral part of our modern lives.Matt:Not only do I disagree with Bo in thinking of SOM as synonymous with thinking, and therefore unavoidable, but I also disagree that SOMic problems follow, say, our use of math. Pirsig uses SOM as his cover-all bad guy term, but I think in the long run it would be more profitable to think of individual problems, metaphors, distinctions, and the like, and stop thinking of shunting aside something awesomely huge. Pirsig's philosophy isn't meant to replace religion or math or science. It is an atmospheric change, a shift in how we perceive other cultural formations. For instance, certainty. Nobody now thinks of certainty as Plato did: except for philosophers. Nobody thinks there is a kind of certainty that gains its credence from the necessity of existence itself. Nobody pays much mind to what certainty is except philosophers because most people know what certainty is when they have it--a probabilistic kind that came to existence in the 17th century. Philosophers are the only ones who still pay any attention to the notion of certainty as it is in itself, and I think most of the manna has fallen from that conversation. The changes I'm talking about are in the short-run negligible because they would mainly be changes for philosophers. By high-end, atmospheric talk does trickle down and I think there would be a good long-run cultural change. But I think it has nothing to do with accepting particular philosophical planks, and everything to do with what most people raised in a certain culture think are good questions and bad questions, open roads of inquiry and lines of reasoning beyond the pale. For instance, most people have a homely notion of truth that follow along with realism/Platonism. However, many of these same people are also secularists. In the short run, it matters less to me whether one defends one's secularism using realistic noises or pragmatist noises, just so long as one _is_ a secularist. In the long run, on the other hand, I think the more secularist we become, the more congenial pragmatism will look, which will make pragmatism more likely to help us become more secularist, which will eventually help us replace realism with pragmatism (playing out something like Dewey's means/ends contiuum, playing back and forth between means and ends). But in no way do I think a systematic philosophy does anything more than articulate a coherent vision, which we then pick through for wisdom to apply to the pressing problems of our time. What it should not do is make us think that the letter is more important than the spirit. I think the most important shift we should make when thinking about philosophy is from thinking that philosophy comes before cultural politics to thinking that philosophy is an extension of cultural politics. This is the shift from thinking that doing philosophy (i.e., talking about Plato or the general nature of experience) has a direct effect on culture to thinking that philosophy is just one more cultural sphere that must be won over to one's vision of life. That we often call "philosophy" what one is doing _when_ one articulates one's vision of life is just one of the tastier apparent-paradoxes stemming from the reduction of everything to the play of values. Matt _________________________________________________________________ Boo! Scare away worms, viruses and so much more! Try Windows Live OneCare! http://onecare.live.com/standard/en-us/purchase/trial.aspx?s_cid=wl_hotmailnews Moq_Discuss mailing list Listinfo, Unsubscribing etc. http://lists.moqtalk.org/listinfo.cgi/moq_discuss-moqtalk.org Archives: http://lists.moqtalk.org/pipermail/moq_discuss-moqtalk.org/ http://moq.org.uk/pipermail/moq_discuss_archive/ Moq_Discuss mailing list Listinfo, Unsubscribing etc. http://lists.moqtalk.org/listinfo.cgi/moq_discuss-moqtalk.org Archives: http://lists.moqtalk.org/pipermail/moq_discuss-moqtalk.org/ http://moq.org.uk/pipermail/moq_discuss_archive/
