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." [Krimel] Good examples, not deep into history but good examples. James seems to be saying that an object is nothing more or less than the focus of perception. Conception is the meaning, or reduction in uncertainty, derived from this. Perhaps we can agree that his distinction between perception and conception does indeed help make this problem more clear. [dmb quoting more James] "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." [Krimel] Right perception involves the connection of past events with present ones. This is the slurring of time, the integration of past, present and future. As I understand it conjunction is generalization and disjunction is discrimination. This are the two great superpowers that give us pattern recognition. [dmb quoting more James... don't you just love James?] "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." [Krimel] Right, perception precedes conceptually classification... We 'know,' we 'value' before we can talk about what we know or why. Awareness precedes analysis. [dmb] 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. [Krimel] But equal terminology does not mean equal meaning. For example above you quote James saying, "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." Knowledge can't be separated or be made disjunctive of a knower. Conceptual frameworks depend not only a perceiver but agreement among perceivers. [dmb] 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? [Krimel] As I said, good example. Don't you just love James? [dmb] 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." [Krimel] Ok but here your boy has experience unifying subject and object, which is like backasswards from your contention that subject and object are derived from experience. Experience is not something that happens to us. It is a process that we both participate in and result from; a feedback loop. [dmb] 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". [Krimel] I and I are not me. I am: the collection of shit, that has happened to me. [dmb] 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. [Krimel] I will repeat good examples... Not conclusive, I think but productive... But as I say the strawman is the result of using these fairly sophistication and technical arguments as a broad based whitewashing of the other side of the debate. [dmb] 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. [Krimel] So is this a defense of the use of broad based overgeneralization? 'Cause that seems a bit like Pirsig's definition of reduction. 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. [dmb says...] Fortunately, I have a copy of that essay and so I could guess what you were leaving out. [Krimel] Jesus, Dave if you have a copy of the essay why did you have to guess? For Christ's sake, I assume you had a copy of the essay. In fact I renew my offer to send you copies of any of his essays you don't have. Hume and Mill and similar empiricists focus on discrimination or the differences among percepts and James wants us to consider the conjuctions or similarities or generalities. I am down with that. [dmb] 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. [Krimel] Well IDK, pattern recognition, a concept critical to the MoQ, arises from the processes of generalization and discrimination. It involves creating static patterns (concepts) out of the dynamic flow of direct experience (precepts). [dmb] 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? [Krimel] I don't have a clue, Dave. What do you think? I fear it still runs a little long. But before I conclude would it be too much to ask that you throw in a few more "Returns" or "Enters" in your posts. Like this: dmb says: --[Enter]-- Yea, it's easy to name a philosopher... or James says... --[Enter]-- "The first great... I know this is classic, square, techno-geek stuff but everybody has been speculating about it... 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