Hi Matt, Paul said: > 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. > > Matt: > That's interesting. This might be a genuine disagreement, then, > because I'm not sure I would say that the subject/object distinction > served at all in the history of the physical sciences, for example. It's > beyond my ken to substantiate the claim one way or the other, but to > answer it would mean to isolate an operative sense of the distinction > that isn't replaceable with, say, one of the one's I offered, or others > (observer/observed is another one I thought of just now). I'm not sure > there is a differentiable sense.
You seem to think I said that the subject-object distinction is more important than the other ones you listed. That's not what I said or at least meant. I was first commenting on your suggestion that I'd praised the subject-object distinction and second commenting about the value of the other distinctions as well, but that may not have been crystal clear. My general point is that they all probably have value in some circumstances but I didn't go through them in detail to "test" them or anything. Regarding the subject-object distinction, and no doubt some of the others you listed, and its support of physical sciences, what I had in mind was that the belief that the physical world of objects operates independently of subjective observers - and by extension that at all times in all cases it follows knowable rules that can be discovered - has provided a basic assumption behind the laws of nature that have been invented. Before that belief took hold my understanding is that people generally believed that things happened in the universe because capricious gods made them happen and that understanding and meeting the demands of gods was the way to influence what happened. Of course this is just based on what I've read. > (One person I know who does make a > big deal of the distinction is Bruno Latour in We Have Never Been > Modern, but I think he's wrong when he suggests that the overlapping > conceptual senses of subject and object that Boyle and Hobbes > unconsciously exploited in unconscious collaboration to separate politics > from science was necessary to unlock the power of something he calls > "modernity." However, I do think he is right that there was some > conceptual promiscuity going on.) > I'm afraid I haven't read that book. > > So, because I suspect there isn't any sense to the distinction that can't > be had by another one, I'm reticent to grant any historical power to it. > However, I'm also not sure what import to attach to the question of > whether or not, e.g., the mind/matter or first-person/third-person > have "any ontological or epistemological significance." My inclination > is to say, "Seriously?" Such historically significant concepts like "mind" > and "autonomy" make me wonder what importance you attach to > that claim. That was me saying that I don't think the subject-object distinction or any of the others should be afforded ontological or epistemological significance, and more to the point on this forum, I suggest the MOQ does not afford them that value. > My second inclination is to say that such significance is > conferred by the contextual role played by the terms in the > philosopher's vocabulary. For example, Robert Brandom thinks the > user-of-sentence/what-the-sentence-is-about distinction has significant > epistemological and metaphysical implications (this worked out in > detail in his Making It Explicit). So the question would be why the > subject/object distinction has ontological and epistemological > significance, but not these others. Granted you might view the term > "mind" like I do "subject"--as being insignificant philosophically or > historically because replaceable (I should add that I view "mind" like > this)--but it's the criteria you're using for conferring significance that > would need elaboration. > Hopefully I've cleared up the confusion here. > > Paul said: > I agree with your last point [about Pirsig's map-coordinates analogy > being about pragmatic intellectual distinction-making]. 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. > > Matt: > Well, I guess I wouldn't say that the subject/object distinction leads > inevitably to SOM. I've learned my lesson about thinking any > distinction or metaphor is inherently bad. (It took me a long time, but > eventually I figured out that a consequence of the panrelationalism > pragmatists tend to subscribe to is the impropriety of the > intrinsic/extrinsic distinction at the level of metaphysics, which means > that every distinction or metaphor just needs to be means-tested for > seeing whether or not its being used in an undesirable way.) My real > point is that I can't think of a use for it that can't be performed by a > different distinction, and these other distinctions might lack the > multipurpose ability of the subject/object distinction and so be much less > likely to create the blur that I think produces much of the congestion in > metaphysical inquiry. > > As an example of the kind of lesson I've learned about metaphysics over > the past ten years, above you say that "the appearance-reality > distinction is the one to be avoided" in the context of the locution "what > appears to be subjects and objects are really patterns of value." > Divorced of any other collateral premises (e.g., about having a method > for determining when one has detected reality qua reality), I'm now no > longer inclined to think there's anything suspicious about saying that > subjects and objects are really patterns of value. This is because > conceptual redescription is the genre to which pernicious metaphysical > reductionism (e.g., Platonism) is simply one species. "Really," above, is > simply a commendation about what will work better. If that's all people mean then I agree. But I think you see pragmatist people.....everywhere. > There are > probably many contexts in which substituting "patterns of value" > -doesn't- help, but also doesn't harm (think of Pirsig on causation). This > makes the conceptual redescription aesthetic on that particular score. > (Divorced of any examples, of course, also makes "what appears to be > subjects and objects are really patterns of value" appear pretty vacuous, > except as an indication that the person wielding the locution is a > Pirsigian, since the only way to judge the commendatory "really" is to > specify the context in which "patterns of value" works better than > "subjects and objects.") > > Of course, I as much as you want to avoid the appearance/reality > distinction and most of the locutions that call it into being when we are > doing metaphysics. But neither it nor the subject/object distinction > leads inevitably to SOM. Perhaps I'd be willing to say that -no- > distinctions, by themselves, lead to SOM. What we need is a picture of > the premises that work together to create it. On the other hand, at the > level of avoidance-strategy, we might ask, "Which is more important to > avoid? The subject/object distinction or the appearance/reality > distinction?" And there I would agree with you--the appearance/reality > distinction is more conceptually pernicious than the other. There'd be > nothing wrong with talk about "objectivity" if it could be detached from > the premise that "only objective things are real." > I tend to see the appearance-reality distinction as the big problem because when you use this to analyse anything philosophically it inevitably leads to the same questions about "how do you detect that which is real?" etc. I think the other distinctions mentioned can be considered taxonomical, pragmatic distinctions in philosophical debate but appearance-reality is ontological by definition, or at least loses all meaning if it is defined otherwise. I see you suggest it can be divorced from such "collateral premises" but I would need some convincing. 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