dmb asked a rhetorical question:
If SOM and the intellectual level are identical, then how would it be possible
for all four of these philosophers to reject it for intellectual reasons?
Mary Replied:
I wonder if what you weren't driving at, though, DMB, was the question of how
one (or 4 philosophers as in your example) can reject SOM by using SOM? This is
a perfectly natural outgrowth of SOM. A somewhat overdue next logical step
wouldn't you say? I could as well turn the question back around and ask you
why not?
dmb says:
The next logical step? Huh? I can't make any sense of the idea that one can
reject SOM by using SOM. That's what I'm getting at. Now please remember that
the nature and scope of SOM is the issue in dispute and I'm convinced that
you've defined SOM way too broadly. I'm operating with the view that is much
more specific than intellect. SOM is the view that reality is made of two
distinctly different substances; subjects and objects or mind and matter. If we
look your question with that notion in mind, it becomes something like this...
"How can philosophers reject the idea of subject-object dualism by using
subject-object dualism? This is a perfectly natural outgrowth of subject-object
dualism, the next logical step. Why can't we use subject-object dualism to
reject subject-object dualism?"
Hopefully, you can see how this becomes nonsense. If you use SOM to reject SOM
then what you have left when you're done is SOM. And that means you've haven't
rejected it. It's just a logical absurdity. It's like rejecting a beer so you
can have a beer, like using mud to clean off the dirt, like fighting for peace
or bragging about humility.
Mary also said:
It is entirely possible to trash SOM by SOM. You can see it every day in this
very forum. It is a valid - high Quality - use of SOM. It is exactly what
Pirsig himself did.
dmb says:
The intellect can produce any number of metaphysical systems. SOM and the MOQ
are two such systems and they can hang next to countless other painting, as in
the art gallery analogy. In that analogy, equating intellect with SOM is like
equating one of the paintings with the whole gallery in which it hangs. It
would be like equating Catholicism with the whole social level, like saying
lions are the biological level or equating gold with the whole inorganic level.
The scope and meaning of SOM is inflated wildly out of proportion when it is
equated with the intellect. It eliminates all of the other elements, all of the
other life forms, all of the other religions and all of the other intellectual
visions. It would eliminate all non-SOM philosophies and that means eliminating
the MOQ. When Pirsig said Bo's theory undermines the MOQ, I think he was being
a bit too euphemistic and polite about.
Hildebrand:
"Realists and idealists assume that subject and object are discrete.. Dewey
assumes that what is primary is the whole situation - 'subject' and 'object'
have no a priori, atomistic existences but are themselves DERIVED ..." (Beyond
Realism and Antirealism, p27).
"Throughout the history of philosophy the subject and object have been treated
as absolutely discontinuous entities; ... a paradoxical nature which all sort
of theories had to be invented to overcome"
(James, A World of Pure Experience, p 27).
As you can see, like Pirsig, James and Dewey are attacking the notion that
subjects and objects are "discrete", that they are "absolutely discontinuous
entities". That's what I mean by "subject-object dualism". That's SOM. And
these guys are saying that SOM creates a lot of fake problems, that we should
NOT assume reality is made of two discrete substances and realize that is just
an idea, an interpretation of experience that begins to break down and causes
problems if we mistake it for the way things really are.
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