Dave said to dmb:
I thought this was a discussion of Pirsig's work. ...Your pattern here has been
to interpret Pirsig's mention of "pragmatism" as meaning he adopts the entire
field from Pierce to Putnam. ... It allows you to defend almost any point by
claiming that Pirsig subscribes to that position because is subscribes any
notion related to "radical empiricism" and "pragmatism."
dmb says:
Sorry, but I think this complaint is not legit. I've never likened the MOQ to
Pierce or Putnam and have tried many times to point out key differences between
the MOQ and Rorty's neo-Pragmatism. Matt and Steve will testify to that.
Secondly, Pirsig is very clear and explicit about aligning the MOQ with James's
Radical Empiricism, making equations right down to the most central terms
(Quality, static and dynamic). Pirsig doesn't just "mention" pragmatism, he
says the MOQ is a form of mainstream American pragmatism. On page 363, Pirsig
says "it seemed that James' generalizations were heading toward something very
similar to the MOQ. ..Everywhere he read it seemed as though he was seeing fits
and matches that no amount of selective reading could contrive". After a few
pages presenting James's ideas, on page 366 Pirsig says, "The MOQ is a
continuation of the mainstream of 20th century American philosophy. It is a
form of pragmatism, of instrumentalism, which says the test of the t
rue is the good." To suggest that there is something wrong with using James or
pragmatism in a discussion of the MOQ seems pretty weird to me. Since Pirsig
identifies the MOQ with pragmatism and radical empiricism and since there is a
mountain of scholarship on pragmatism and radical empiricism, it would be
downright foolish NOT to use James and pragmatism.
Dave said to dmb:
Did question say anything about "thing", "entity" or "substance" or anything
about what I though about "consciousness" at all. I asked about what the MoQ
says about "consciousness." Which as of now, you have failed to address.
dmb says:
This complaint seems quite illegitimate too. You don't think the status of the
subjective self is relevant to the question of consciousness? You don't think
it's important to be explicit about what James is denying when he denies the
existence of consciousness? James and Pirsig attack SOM in the same way and
they both take the Cartesian self to be a fiction. This issue is simply
unavoidable if you want to talk about the MOQ's view of consciousness. The
suggestion that it fails to address the question is hard to fathom.
Dave said to dmb:
I will not deny it, Chalmers is a very tough read for me. He is a mathematician
first, analytic school philosopher of the mind, functionalist, with a strong
bent towards scientific materialism and reductionism. And yes he does use the
words subjects and objects. The problem slapping SOM label on any work that
happens to mention subject, object, subjective, objective, or mind, mental is
that it eliminates 99.999% of all scientific or philosophic work old and new.
Great defense.
dmb says:
I agree that is doesn't help to go around slapping the SOM label on stuff
indiscriminately. But obviously these assumptions about the subjective self are
going to make a huge difference. If Pirsig and James are rejecting those
assumptions and you want to compare them to what Chalmers is saying, then we
have to know whether he joins in that rejection or not. If he's coming at the
issue from the position of scientific materialism and reductionism, it's very
likely that he disagrees with Pirsig and James in a fundamental way, at the
level of basic assumptions.
It seems to me that all three of your complaints are really just a product of
being unable to see the relevance. Your objecting to my answer by asking what
James or pragmatism have to do with it, what does consciousness as an entity
has to do with it and what SOM has to do with it? If you want to know the MOQ's
view on consciousness, you simply can't avoid these things. The are entirely
relevant. And yet you construe its use as some kind of dirty trick?
For a guy who can't even formulate a specific question, you're being WAY too
picky about the answer.
I thought this part of his Wikipedia page was most relevant:
"Chalmers .. makes the distinction between "easy" problems of consciousness,
such as explaining object discrimination or verbal reports, and the single hard
problem, which could be stated "why does the feeling which accompanies
awareness of sensory information exist at all?" The essential difference
between the (cognitive) easy problems and the (phenomenal) hard problem is that
the former are at least theoretically answerable via the standard strategy in
philosophy of mind: functionalism. Chalmers argues for an "explanatory gap"
from the objective to the subjective, and criticizes physical explanations of
mental experience, making him a dualist. ...Though Chalmers maintains a formal
agnosticism on the issue, even conceding the viability of panpsychism places
him at odds with the majority of his contemporaries."
Hmmm. The FEELING with accompanies awareness. Hmmm. Panpsychism. I'm not so
sure your description of him as a scientific materialist and a reductionist is
very accurate. I think I like this guy.
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