dmb continues" Compare Dewey's phrases "distinctions made in reflection" and "products of reflection" with Pirsig's notion of things as "intellectually constructed". Compare Dewey's "unanalyzed unity" with Pirsigian notions like "indefinable quality", "pre-intellectual experience" or "undifferentiated aesthetic continuum". These are ways of talking about the static/dynamic split, where the distinctions, reflections and intellectual constructions are all static while the primary reality is dynamic and prior to all that. More to the point for our purposes here, both of them are trying to explain how the individual subject is derived from experience rather than the locus of experience. They both insist than this is a case of giving existential status to an idea, of treating a concept about or interpretation of experience as if it were the cause of experience, the pre-requisites of experience. It is in this sense that they reject the the subjective self and objective reality. Like I said, these are perfectly fine AS CONCEPTS. But when we take them as metaphysical assumptions, we can get very confused, especially if we read Dewey, James or Pirsig as if they hadn't abandoned those assumptions.
Ron: solid assessment Dmb, Ham has his own distinctive version of transcendental idealism that rests firmly on one of Fichte's most characteristic and controversial claims - one already has to be convinced, on wholly extra-philosophical grounds, of the reality of one's own freedom before one can enter into a chain of deductions and arguments. This is the meaning of Fichte's oft-cited assertion that "the kind of philosophy one chooses depends upon the kind of person one is." 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/
