Dear Bo, My grandma remarried a Norweigan after her beloved first husband died. Haaken was a good man and made her happy but MAN that guy was stubborn. Evidently it was more a national trait than a personality quirk as I originally assumed.
> In Royce's four conceptions of Being, the first conception he calls > > "Realism" and asserts that "no serious thinker holds this conception". > > It is the view of the common man that reality is "out there" > > independent of us. That is SOM, just being called by a different name. > > Well, first the obvious, there was'nt any Subject/Object Metaphysics > that Royce faced and possibly tried to refute, but the very same > mind/matter enigma that later faced young RMP A "Conception of Being" is a metaphysics, Bo. That's all any metaphysics is. The Realism that Royce is addressing is the way objects viewed subjectively seems real to us - the common sense view - SOM-which he asserts, that "no serious thinker holds for long" Of course, Royce had quite a bit of exposure to the serious thinkers of the world by the time he wrote The World and the Individual, some twenty plus years of teaching and thinking at Harvard during the golden age of American Philosophy. > and the mentioned > Realism correspond more or less to Materialism, but the SOM that > RMP "discovered) has something called Idealism which says the > opposite of materialism namely: "There is no reality out there, all is > mind" and thinking that the MOQ has any affinity to idealism is wrong. > Royce's second conception of Being is mysticism, he sums up and dismisses (after a whole lot of words I won't unload upon you now) "As a result, we have before us definitions of Being which are the polar opposites of each other. These are the realistic and the mystical definitions. Realism defines Real Being as a total Independence of any idea whose external object any given Being is. Mysticism defines Real Being as wholly within Immediate Feeling. These two concepts, both of them, as I must hold, false abstractions, are still both of them fragmentary views, as I also hold, of the truth,—hints towards a final definition of the Other, of that fulfilment which our finite thinking restlessly seeks." > ------------- > An aside here: SOM began as the "objective attitude", but no sooner > were this born before its counterpoint "subjectivity" popped up (the > Sophists. Note however that the mythological - Aretê - era that SOM > replaced did not know any subjectivity or objectivity, thus the Sophists > did not defend the old myths, but as said represented SOM's > subjectivity, contrasted to Socrates' Truth (objectivity). > > This is what reminds me so much of Haaken. Once his conception was formed, he'd stick to it no matter what logic or alternatives were suggested. His mind was made up, don't confuse him with the facts! History is all conjecture. Your conception of the Sophists and subjectivity popping up are just that and no more. You might have supporting evidence, and you could still be wrong because you're misinterpreting, misconstruing or just plain missing all the information you need to really make a valid conclusion about what happened way back in the dawn of reason. But hey, how can I argue with you? I wasn't there either. This is one good and pragmatic reason, for staying in the now, being what we are and then working out from there. > ------------- > > Thus Royce may have scoffed at "Realism" (materialism) but what > was his alternative? Did he scoff at idealism? > > Didya catch that paragraph I posted for you Uncle? I'll repeat it , at least the most relevant part, just in case you skimmed. "Mysticism defines Real Being as wholly within Immediate Feeling. These two concepts, both of them, as I must hold, false abstractions, are still both of them fragmentary views" There... satisfied? (not the same as happy, I understand. Happiness is giddy silliness and useless as a guide to Norweigan life.) Royce sees the two horns of objectivity and subjectivity and in his differing ways, avoids them both. > > You can read his entire thesis on the subject, if you care to. > > http://www.giffordlectures.org/Browse.asp?PubID=TPWATI&Volume=0&Issue= > > 0&ArticleID=3 > Or you can read his summary dismissal and make your own > > conclusion from that. > > I'm not going to read reams of documents. You tell me, if you have > Royce as your hero you must know his ideas. Well, ok. Fair enough. Except not really fair. I ain't a high-falutin' scholar with lots of experience philosophically wrangling on this forum for years and years, and Royce was deep and complicated. Even modern logicians have not yet taken on his rudimentary beginnings of his logical system, and I'm a woodcutter with 7 years of jr. college. But I can type. I'll give you Kuklick's reading. He's supposedly a smart philosopholigists like y'all understand and speaks your language. "Where we might speak of present facts or of belief, Royce often talks of ideas. His favorite expression in The World and the Individual is "an idea seeking it's other" -- its object. This is a less dubious notion than it might seem if we realize that it means we make statements about supposed factual relations, or have beliefs about the world; and that we verify the truth of our statements, and confirm our beliefs. For Royce an idea never "finds" its other because the verifications to which we subject our beliefs can be inexhaustable; as empiricists have said, our empirical knowledge is probable only and some possible experience may disconfirm our deepest claims. Of greatest interest is Royce's use of this conception to construct a pragmatic notion of the Absolute." Now to me, Bo, that looks like showing how Quality, the primary empirical entity of the world, is still undefinable, but, you can make a "good" attempt at definition and Royce's adaptation of the Erlanger Logic to meet this need looks like a fascinating quest for a young logician to take up and pursue. The Holy Grail of Philosophers Stoned, the Deduction of the Kantian Categories. I'm gonna finish up with some more of Kuklick, because it pertains to Platt and Marsha's recent wrangling over truth and relatives. "The ethical problems which his position generated nearly forced voluntarism on him, and in the Conception of God (CoG sounds sorta like MoQ, come to think of it...) he gave a place to the will. In the World and the Individual, he formulates this doctrine more carefully: he joins his own ideas concerning the the World of Description and some Jamesean principles to the emphasis of the Conception of God to advocate a more subtle voluntarism. He previously urged that the will was a distinguishable yet inseparable "aspect" of the Absolute; he now asserts that the separation of willing and being has no meaning in the Absolute. This denial of traditional dualisms makes Royce not merely a voluntarist but a pragmatist." I hope you're following so far Bo. There's a real good bit coming up. The "usual distinctions" refers to distinctions like "mind/matter", "subject/object". "The usual distinctions take on value in our finite world, but they are imperfect abstractions, however useful they may be. Our ideas, he declares, have a volitional aspect..." See? This is making that big "M" smaller and easier to handle. Who knew that an Absolutist could be so flexible and relative? I guess it's indicative that moROnists are so assertively inflexible and absolutely certain of their randomness. Interesting. "In outlining the relation of ideas to object, Royce, of course, will argue that objects are ideal, but here the argument takes a new turn. Pragmatists have refused to distinguish between volition and cognition, and Royce sees his position as expressing just this point.... The object of knowledge remains beyond our grasp, beyond our activities which define our consciousness of the object. But if we knew it completely, it would not be beyond our will. To know an object perfectly is only to act appropriately in relation to it; indeed there is no "it" there is simply -- "pure activity" which is simultaneously "pure being". In these circumstances we would make no distinction between the object-- existing externally-- and our ideas, our plans of actions." I don't know if that helped you at all Bo, but I feel like somebody finally explained "pure experience" to me. > > "But viewed as an ultimate and complete metaphysical doctrine, and not > > as a convenient half-truth, Realism, as we shall find hereafter, upon a > > closer examination, needs indeed no external opposition. It rends its > > own world to pieces even as it creates it. It contradicts its own > > conceptions in uttering them. It asserts the mutual dependence of > > knowing and of Being in the very act of declaring Being independent. In > > brief, realism never opens its mouth without expounding an antinomy." > > If this is Royce refuting Realism (materialism) I agree 100%, This is Royce refuting SOM by pointing out that it refutes itself. Is materialism the same as SOM? I think materialism is the most pragmatic outworking of SOM, that is of isolated competitive struggle for resources and energy in self-interest, if there's no real value, I'll value my self. > but > exactly the same can be said about Idealism. Don't you know about > the so-called empiricists Locke, Berkeley, Hume who back in the > sixteenth century arrived at the conclusion that all qualities were > subjective (color for instance does not exist, objectively "out there" only > different electromagnetic frequencies. This uncanny "pure reason" > Kant tried to refute but merely ended up with cementing the subjective > "thing for us" vs "the thing in itself". Well I'll try again then. It must be all the icy fijords, your heads get hard and craggy and I'm gonna have to pound real hard to get this into your skull. Kuklick addressing the nature of Royce's synthesis: "The pragmatic-Kantian insight is prima facie innocuous; we participate in the construction of the world. Royce perceives this participation as attention, (Pirsig as "caring") Thus knowing involves activity, but also a realization that there is something foreign to our activity." > And around these SOM poles > Western Philosophy has circled ever since .... until Pirsig broke the > spell. I can't see how Royce criticizing "the thing in itself" or his > friend > William James and arriving at some pre-something that us subjects > bring to life, differs from ordinary SOM. However Phaedrus insight of a > Pre-intellectual dynamic something spawning the static "intellectual" > (subject/object) aggregate.IS REVOLUTION! But - alas - what this > discussion is hell-bent on not recognizing. > > Yes! I agree. This discussion is hell-bent on not recognizing. Take Care, John 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/
