Hi Dan, I snipped everything since we seem to agree except this possible point of disagreement.
> Steve: >> For Rorty, (and also obviously for Pirsig), "what guarantees the >> objectivity of the world in which we live is that this world is common >> to us with other thinking beings. Through the communications that we >> have with other men we receive from them ready-made harmonious >> reasonings. We know that these reasonings do not come from us and at >> the same time we recognize in them, because of their harmony, the work >> of reasonable beings like ourselves. And as these reasonings appear to >> fit the world of our sensations, we think we may infer that these >> reasonable beings have seen the same thing as we; thus it is that we >> know we haven't been dreaming. It is this harmony, this quality if you >> will, that is the sole basis for the only reality we can ever know." >> Of course we know that this is also how Pirsig sees the situation as >> well since he wrote that bit in ZAMM. Apparently Pirsig didn't see any >> non-conversation constraints on knowledge, either. I would add here >> when Pirsig says that the piles of analogues upon analogues is the >> only reality "we can ever know," that that reality is all we ever mean >> by "reality." We only get into SOM when we think of comparing that >> reality to some more real reality. > > Dan: > I've always taken subject/object metaphysics to represent the common > sense notion that reality is composed of objects that exist > independently of the subjective observer. In the MOQ these "harmonious > reasonings" are secondary to Dynamic Quality. I would add the > qualifier that "this quality if you will, that is the sole basis for > the only reality we can ever [intellectually] know." Steve: I think SOM is more than thinking that "reality is composed of objects that exist independently of the subjective observer." I think it depends on how that common sense notion is used for doing philosophy if at all. If all one means in saying that is that most things are unaffected by our beliefs about them, then I don't see anything metaphysical in there let alone a metaphysical problem. We have good reason to think that when our beliefs about something change, it isn't the "something" that changes (and no good reason to doubt that) in lots of ordinary situations. Where I think SOM comes in is when we use the concepts of subjects and objects as the _basis_ for a systematic approach to thinkngn--for metaphysics. As Pirsig said, the SOM is also a metaphysics of Quality, but it takes the first division of Quality to be into subjects and objects rather than into DQ and sq. When we _start_ with subjects and objects as our first cut expecting all the puzzle pieces to fall neatly into place, we find that they actually don't. We are left with a nest and brood of resolution-resistant dualisms that have plagued thinkers for thousands of years. Certain of these dualisms are the root of certain psychological problems which Bernstein describes as "Cartesian Anxiety." If, as pragmatism suggests, we can do well to understand beliefs by thinking of them as habits of action, then we recognize that a person has a given philosophy not only by what a person says but by also what a person does and what the person fears. An SOMer is not simply a person who is prone to say things like, "reality is composed of subjects and objects" but a person who lives the consequences of that belief in certain ways which "Cartesian Anxiety" helps explicate. For them, certain "philosophical problems" are problems. But if a person who says, "reality is composed of subjects and objects" and doesn't display this anxiety, then perhaps this person has simply made the usual practical inference (evolved the usual static pattern) that almost all babies eventually do labelled "object permanence" rather than made a claim about what is _ really_ going on in the metaphysical sense of "really"--the One True Way the the universe itself demands we describe it. Best, Steve 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/md/archives.html
