dmb said: ...if SOM is a straw man a large number of famous philosophers have been mistaken for over a century...
Krimel replied: Perhaps you could name a single philosopher who has used the phrase SOM or couched the argument in those terms. SOM, despite Ant's tepid treatment of the issue is a strawman precisely because of its selective treatment of this historic debate. The arguments advanced may be in the tradition of the mind/body debate but that is not what makes it a stawman. It becomes a strawman when it is simply used in an unsophisticated attempt to dismiss that which makes you uncomfortable. dmb says:Yea, it's easy to name a philosopher who couched his argument in those terms. William James uses those terms in his essays on radical empiricism. You know, the writings you're been quoting from and understand so much better than Pirsig does. In fact, I'll quote from the same place where you got the fragmentary quote on the continuity of experience. This idea of continuity is directly aimed at SOM. In "A World of Pure Experience" James says... "The first great pitfall from which such a radical standing by experience will save us is an artificial conception of the relations between knower and known. Throughout the history of philosophy the subject and its object have been treated as absolutely discontinuous entities; and thereupon the presence of the latter to the former, or the 'apprehension' by the former of the latter, has assumed a paradoxical character which all sorts of theories had to be invented to overcome." "But continuous transition is one sort of a conjunctive relation; and to be a radical empiricist means to hold fast to this conjunctive relation of all others, for this is the strategic point, the position through which, if a hole be made, all the corruptions of dialectics and all the metaphysical fictions pour into our philosophy." "The instant field of the present is always experienced in it's 'pure' state, plain unqualified actuality, a simple THAT, as yet undifferentiated into thing and thought, and only virtually classifiable as objective fact or as someone's opinion about fact. This is as true when the field is conceptual and when it is perceptual." As you can see, James considers the subject/object distinction to be a source of philosophical paradoxes, their discontinuity to be a hole through which metaphysical fictions pour and even though pure experience lacks all differentiations, he names that subject-object differentiation particular when describing it. It's pretty funny to watch you deny what's clearly contained in James and even funnier that he presents his case against SOM in the very essay you've been quoting. Read much? Just in case you're tempted to construe this as my own quirky, Pirsigian interpretation of what James is saying about radical empiricism and the difference between that and traditional SOM empiricism here is John Stuhr, a contemporary pragmatist, explaining Dewey's conception of experience... "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 form their interaction. Instead, Dewey's view is radically empirical: experience is an activity in which subject and object are unified and CONSTITUTED as partial features and relations within this ongoing, unanalyzed unity. Dewey warns us not to misconstrue aspects of this unified experience-activity: distinctions made in reflection do not refer to things that exist a separate substances prior to and outside of that reflection. If we do confuse them, we invent the philosophical problem of how to get them together". "The error of materialist and idealist alike - the error of conferring existential status upon the products of reflection - is the result of neglect of the context of reflection on experience." Dewey himself says it like this... "The philosophical 'problem' of trying to get them together (subject and object, man and world, self and not self) is artificial. On the basis of fact, it needs to be replace by consideration of the conditions under which they occur as DISTINCTIONS, and of the special uses served by the distinctions". Pirsig talks about SOM, James not only talks about it, he says it has existed throughout the history of philosophy. Dewey and contemporary Dewey scholars talk about it. The guy who edited the text book assigned in my grad school course on pragmatism talks about it. And these are just a few of the most relevant examples. I've encountered so many discussions of SOM, so many attacks on it that the idea of it being a straw man literally makes me chuckle. It's just absurd. dmb complained: ...the quote you offered up was a fragment. It lists examples of what he was saying but you forgot to include the part where he's actually saying it. Krimel replied: So on the one hand I am long winded and on the other I am tossing out fragments. Dave a quote is by definition a fragment. Here is the whole paragraph and if you like I can e-mail digital version of just about anything James wrote. [Here is the part the was missing] "Now, ordinary empiricism, in spite of the fact that conjunctive and disjunctive relations present themselves as being fully co-ordinate parts of experience, has always shown a tendency to do away with the connections of things, and to insist most on the disjunctions. Berkeley's nominalism, [Here's how the fragment was originally posted]...Hume's statement that whatever things we distinguish are as 'loose and separate' as if they had 'no manner of connection.' James Mill's denial that similars have anything 'really' in common, the resolution of the causal tie into habitual sequence, John Mill's account of both physical things and selves as composed of discontinuous possibilities, and the general pulverization of all Experience by association and the mind-dust theory, are examples of what I mean." dmb says:Okay, so my guess was correct and the key idea really was missing. You don't see that? He's talking about ordinary empiricism's "tendency to do away with the conjunctive relations, and to insist most on the disjunctions". I think the first first sentence is needed to make sense of the following sentences and my complaint about its absence is perfectly reasonable. To post examples of the idea without the idea itself is like giving me a cup of coffee without the cup. I can't really use what you're offering and it only makes a mess. Fortunately, I have a copy of that essay and so I could guess what you were leaving out. Hopefully, because of the quotes I drew from it and explained, now you can see how this emphasis on the continuity in experience plays into the expansion of empiricism, the attack on SOM and the difference between traditional empiricism and radical empiricism. ...No, that's probably too much to hope for. You'll say this effort is just to vague or general or just a much of labels because it will mean almost nothing to you. You'll say I've avoided the issue even though I just quoted five guys to answer your "challenge" about SOM. It's just a straw man anyway, right? It doesn't matter what Stuhr says, that we "cannot overemphasize" the radical empiricism of Dewey, because SOM is just a fiction I made up to pick on you, right? This could be fun and even productive if you'd be willing to sincerely grapple with this response, to actually engage with these quotes and the ideas in them. But when you dismiss, distort and otherwise evade these sorts of ideas, it's not fun. It just a chore. It's about as fun as cleaning up somebody else's mess. No, it's not LIKE that, it is THAT. Frankly, I'm tired of your drivel. Is a clear and direct response to the actual substance of the ideas too much to ask in a philosophy forum? I sure don't think so. I think that is just one of the most basic requirements. Go ahead, give it your best shot. Explain this all away and tell me again how SOM is a straw man and tell me again what radical empiricism means. What could be more relevant and proper in a forum like this? I'll even put reductionism on the back burner to acommodate your forthcoming, brilliant, elegant essay on the topic. _________________________________________________________________ Lauren found her dream laptop. Find the PC that’s right for you. http://www.microsoft.com/windows/choosepc/?ocid=ftp_val_wl_290 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/
