Bo (as well as Mati and Andre):This might be hard to read because I copied and
pasted it from a word document, but here is an example that should demonstrate
what I'm saying about the academic world NOT being SOM through and through. In
what follows I'm quoting John Dewey and a contemporary pragmatist named John J.
Stuhr, the editor of Pragmatism
and Classical American Philosophy: Essential Readings and Interpretive Essays.
Second edition. Oxford University Press, New York
and Oxford, 2000.) This did not confuse or anger my professor (Hildebrand). In
fact, Stuhr's book and the Dewey essay were both assigned reading in his course
and he gave me an "A" on the paper in which I quote them, as well as William
James. The paper opened like this...
The anthology’s editor says, “In beginning
to understand his view, it cannot be overemphasized that Dewey is not using the
word ‘experience’ in its conventional sense. For Dewey, experience is not to be
understood in terms of the experiencing subject, or as the interaction of a
subject and object that exist
separate from their interaction. Instead, Dewey’s view is radically empirical”
(PCAP 437). Stuhr further explains that in this radically empirical view,
“experience is an activity in which subject and object are unified and
constituted as partial features and relations within this ingoing, unanalyzed
unity”. Radical empiricism deserves its own explanation but the first thing to
notice is what that view is not saying about subjects and objects. In the
conventional sense and in
many schools of philosophy, experience is made possible only because these two
pre-existing things. A subjective mind and an objective reality are conceived
as the prerequisites of experience. But for Dewey, and for James as we’ll see,
subjects and objects are products of reflection. Rather than the inner thing
that does the experiencing and the outer thing that is experienced, radical
empiricism says that subjects and objects are ideas about experience and
proceed from experience. As Dewey puts it in the “The Need
for a Recovery of Philosophy”, “the characteristic feature of this prior notion
is the assumption
that experience centres in, or gathers about, or proceeds from a centre or
subject which is outside the course of natural existence, and set over against
it” (PCAP 449). This “prior notion” is what radical empiricism is not saying.
Radical empiricism is, among other things,
a rejection of the assumption that experience depends upon the prior existence
of subjects and objects. This assumption is seen as a mistake and as the source
of many fake problems in philosophy. As Stuhr puts it, “the error of
materialists and idealists alike” is “the error of conferring existential
status upon the products of reflection” (PCAP 437).
Compare that to what I just said in the previous post...
> Look again, for nth time, at what Pirsig says in chapter 29 of Lila.
> "The second of James' two main systems of philosophy ..was his RADICAL
> EMPIRICISM. By this he meant that subjects and objects are secondary. They
> are concepts derived from something more fundamental which he described as
> 'the immediate flux of life which furnishes the material to our later
> reflection with its conceptual categories.' In this basic flux of experience,
> the distinctions of reflective thought, such as those between consciousness
> and content, subject and object, mind and matter, have not yet emerged in the
> forms which we make them. Pure experience cannot be called either physical or
> psychical; it logically precedes this distinction.In his last unfinished
> work, SOME PROBLEMS OF PHILOSOPHY, James has condensed this description to a
> single sentence: 'There must alwasy be a discrepancy between concepts and
> reality, because the former are static and discontinuous while the latter is
> dynamic and flowing'. Here James had chosen exactly the same words Phaedurs
> had used for the basic subdivision of the MOQ."
>
> This is not a matter of sneaking SOM in through the back door. Quite the
> opposite. He's using the distinction between concepts and reality to show
> that subjects and objects are concepts rather than reality. It's incorrect to
> equate the "pure experience" of radical empiricism with the objective reality
> of SOM for exactly this reason. But that's what you keep doing, repeatedly.
> You're converting this alternative back into SOM when in fact the whole point
> is to adopt this as an alternative to SOM.
>
> And if the academic world is SOM through and through, then how do you explain
> the fact that I recently took a class on pragmatism at the University and we
> read about, wrote about and discussed this anti-SOM stance throughout the
> semester? I mean, as a student I can testify to the fact that SOM is under
> attack and has been for a long time. It still tends to dominate in the
> sciences because, for the most part, it works. But I'm telling you for the
> nth time that this just isn't the case in the philosophy department. James
> isn't the only one either. Dewey, Heidegger, Nietzsche and even Rorty all
> reject it in their own ways. I've discussed with non-famous professors and
> students too. You certainly don't have to take my word for it. You could read
> this stuff for yourself.
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