Steve, Marsha:
Marsha said:
To recap why I think Buddhism cannot be used as an exception to the
Intellectual Level being SOM, I offer these to quotes that indicate that
Buddhism used logic and the scientific method for an objective study of 'Mind'.
dmb says:
Can SOM be equated with logic and the scientific method? I don't think so. In
fact, when James published his essays in radical empiricism, Dewey was
impressed with the way it retains empirical science even though it explicitly
rejects SOM. He was pretty psyched, in fact.
Anyway, I offer these quotes to show you how most pragmatists line up on this...
“The instant field of the present is at all times what I call the ‘pure
experience’. It is only virtually or potentially either a subject or an object
as yet” (James 1912, 23).
“When a subject-object metaphysics regards matter and mind as eternally
separate and eternally unalike, it creates a platypus bigger than the solar
system” (Pirsig 1991, 153).
“Realists and idealists assume that subject and object are discrete and then
debate which term deserves first rank. Dewey assumes that what is primary is a
whole situation – ‘subject’ and ‘object’ have no a priori, atomistic existences
but are themselves DERIVED from situations to serve certain purposes, usually
philosophical” (Hildebrand p27)
Hildebrand says, "An empirical approach to metaphysics need not presuppose a
subject/object dualism - indeed, if experience is perspicuously attended to, it
should not...Since Dewey will not begin metaphysical inquiries by presupposing
a subject/object dualism, he does not need to ward off the same skeptical
demons that plagued Descartes...Dewey hoped that through examples and empirical
observations his distinction between primary and secondary experience would be
patent and its adoption might economize intellectual effort"
Notice that they are not only rejecting SOM here but also taking up those two
categories of experience. Primary and secondary are dynamic and static or
preconceptual and reflective. Dewey also calls them Had and Known. He, James
and Pirsig are all the list of Pragmatic radical empiricists. But Rorty is not
one of these precisely because he rejects this other, non-SOM distinction.
"To understand why Rorty is wrong," Hildebrand says, "requires that we briefly
revisit and defend the underlying distinction between primary and secondary
experience, a distinction Rorty also rejects as 'bad faith'". (116-7)
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