Hi Matt, In your conversation with Dan, you said, "This distinction [between > subject and object] is very valuable, if it wasn’t it would never have > been made and wouldn’t now be assumed to exist by so many people." > I understand that this is an allusion to Pirsig's map-coordinates analogy, > but I was wondering if you'd be willing to substitute (the qualified) > praise of that distinction for, say, praise of this cross-section > > mind/matter > consciousness/environment > subject/predicate > user-of-sentence/what-the-sentence-is-about > autonomous-creature/non-autonomous-creature > first-person/third-person >
It wasn't so much praise as an acknowledgement that the distinction has served the evolution of static patterns well, particularly in the physical sciences, and that babies wouldn't find "a complex pattern of values called an object to work well" if the distinction wasn't valuable. I think all of the distinctions above probably have value in some circumstances but that value doesn't extend to them having any ontological or epistemological significance. > > This doesn't empty out the list of distinctions that the S/O distinction > has > been used synonymously with by a long shot, but my curiosity in your > assent comes from my general dismay at saying that the S/O distinction > is valuable. I tend to think that the S/O metaphysics was created in the > first place because all of these (perhaps) useful distinctions were laid > over > each other, creating a conceptual blur and a philosophical hydra. It's > this > blur that made Galen Strawson doubt there was an SOM, while at the > same time knowing full well the history of philosophical controversy that > Pirsig was directing his attention to. (Another good pernicious blur to > refer to is the Christian God, all-knowing, all-powerful, all-good, > all-present, all-wrathful.) > > Assenting to the willingness to substitute, I think, just commits us to > taking up the other distinctions one by one to test their utility. (For > example, some people might balk at the mind/matter one.) It doesn't > commit us to rejecting Pirsig's analogy. For my guess is that there isn't > anything to the subject/object distinction except a slew of other ones, > and that the point of Pirsig's analogy is less to commit us (in some > manner) to SOM and more to intellectual distinction-making as a > pragmatic endeavor. > I agree with your last point. I did make a point of separating the subject-object distinction from the subject-object metaphysics. You seem to suggest that one inevitably leads to the other, or at least has done so historically. This is where context (1) comes in for me and the Buddhist precept of non-attachment may also assist. Certainly I think it is better to talk about patterns of value than subjects and objects but I sometimes detect the understanding of some people to be that what *appears* to be subjects and objects are *really* patterns of value and that's what was on my mind. This appearance-reality distinction is the one to be avoided. Paul 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
