Steve, I think you have pegged an important issue here. I agree with your take on this but more on that later. About all the sense one can make out of SOM discussions here is that whatever SOM is it is bad. Make that BAD. It has caused the decline of western civilization and contributes mightily to bedwetting.
For the longest time I thought it was mainly just the mind/body problem reenvisioned, but then maybe not. After all Descartes' deal was that there is mind stuff and body stuff and that the brain transduces body stuff into mind stuff in the pineal gland; much as the eyes transduce light energy into electrochemical energy. But many here think mind stuff exists disconnected from matter in anyway and is just floating around out there somewhere until nature builds little transceivers like us to pick up the signal. I think this is all just wishful thinking but that's just me. With regard to subjective/objective knowledge I agree with you as far as you have taken it. I would add that there really is only subjective knowledge. I only know what I know. I will only ever know whatever it is I wind up knowing. There is only one subject, at least in my world. Objective knowledge is knowledge that you and I can agree upon or at least agree to disagree about. I like to think of it as intersubjective knowledge and there the dualism is swept away. The subject/object distinction is really little more than a matter of linguistic convenience. Similarly the mind/body dualism dies with the recognition that the mind is what the brain does. It is a product of the physical processes of our nervous systems in the same way that heat and light are properties of fire. One of the problems with the MoQ is that it really only treats the internal subject aspect of things. Experience, from which subject and object are derived, is purely a mental process. OK, there are those among us who claim that rocks have experience but that's another story. Since we only know what registers through our senses it is just as well that we leave the great unknown of "reality" alone. Pirsig calls it Quality. As far as I can tell Kant called it "things in themselves" (TiTs). I call it Tao. Krimel Hi Bo, All What I'm seeing in the exchange quoted below is a lot of difference in view of what SOM is. I've started a new thread here to see what if we can clarify. I think if SOM mostly in terms of subjective/objective knowledge distinctions while you see it as symbol/what is symbolized. Can others provide evidence of what Pirsig means by subject-object metaphysics? Thanks, Steve 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/
