David, I accept Mr Burgess's assertions but do not see the relation his essay has to my point - the giant works according to SOM rules. We find this as fact; now I wonder if this is of necessity. That is, a comprehensive social organization MUST operate according to subject/object metaphysics.
If so, we here are largely "kicking against the pricks" (Acts 9:5) of inevitability. I would appreciate your thoughts on this issue. John On Sat, Jan 25, 2014 at 10:55 AM, david <[email protected]> wrote: > In a different thread... > > John said to Arlo: > SOM is a social pattern. > > ...successful intellectual patterns are those that are chosen by a > majority of a group. An intellectual pattern that resides in the head of > one person, dies quickly and is forgotton, so there has to be a society for > intellect to happen as much as there have to be biological beings in order > to make up a society. When a society has evolved out of a chosen (at some > earlier time) set of metaphysical premises, it gets labeled by the premises > it follows - thus our social system is SOM because that's its king. > > ...SOM is a Western European evolved construct, with so much intellect > woven into it's social patterns which has given it power over objects. > ...You have to bow down to the powerful subjects with objective power - > they rule. > > > dmb says: > I think that doesn't make much sense, John. > The following article does a pretty good job of explaining subject-object > metaphysics and its role in Modern Western philosophy - and it does so > without even mentioning Pirsig or pragmatism. It's freshly pressed and > mercifully short. I hope you read it and I sincerely hope it helps. > > ---------------------------------- > Kant’s idea that one can never see what the world is really like > “underneath” the phenomenological world we are in, whilst a great > departure, is still minimally in the tradition of the Empiricists before > him: it still had a veil of perception model. His world was still a bit > like the world of Hume, were we had a subject receiving bits of information > – it’s just that Kant gave us a way in his Transcendental Subject of > preserving objectivity, causality and so on across this series. He gave an > account of how experience can be structured objectively and reliably. > This system still has certain minimal metaphysical commitments: there is a > subject, there are things in themselves (which we might call objects), and > there is the symptomal phenomenal which we have direct contact with. There > is still what we call a subject-object distinction. An “out there” that > becomes an “in here”. A world that enters a mind. > This model is explicitly rejected by early 20th Century continental > philosophers in the Husserl-Heidegger-Sartre lineage. For these figures, > there is no God or external world pumping the mind with information through > the senses; the world is just the world, and we should infer things about > it using the phenomenological method. We should make no global assumptions > about where it “comes from,” but just treat it as it is: as we are in it. > Of course scientific ideas about the brain and so on are perfectly > consistently with this (though the account varies considerably among > Husserl, Heidegger, and Sartre). > Further to this line of reasoning, we might even get rid of the > transcendental subject and just say the world is already as part of its > being, structured and meaningful (the Hiedeggerian insight). It isn’t in a > mind being processed for us: concepts, beliefs, knowledge, rules, goals, > and so on – features of conscious reflection are not the prima faschie way > in which the world is. > To motivate this starling conclusion, let’s take a few examples and begin > from the Husserlian point-of-view, that is, phenomenologically. > When I arrive in a room, and reflect, finding myself in it, do I have > memories of turning the door handle to get in? Do I remember walking here, > that is, putting one foot in front of another? No. Yet these things are > historically necessary to connect the memories I do have – memories of > being in a place before this room and now being here. > Let’s be more immediate: When I’m typing quickly on a keyboard, am I > representing the keys in my mind, forming beliefs about them and acting on > these beliefs? Is, in other words, my engagement with the keyboard mediated > through my consciousness, through mental representations of what’s going > on? No. However, were a key to break – or become stuck – suddenly I would > engage with the key in this fashion: I would create models of what’s going > on (“it’s broken,” “it’s sticky,” etc.) I would respond to these models > based on conscious reasoning. > What is the state of the world before these kinds of problems are > introduced: before the door handle sticks, or they keyboard breaks? It is a > kind of flow – a “being in the zone” – in which there is no self as such. > The world is just moving seamlessly my body and the world are responding to > one another in an unmediated way – I’m not “loading the world” into > consciousness. When things break in fact, I really have no memory of being > in this flow and have to form retrospective beliefs about what was > happening. > This pre-reflective moment has a characteristic which we might call > transparency. Things in the world do not show up as things, as objects > about which to form models/beliefs, etc. They are transparent. > The classic example of the first, is a hammer. A hammer, > phenomenologically speaking (of course!) – does not show up to us as merely > a piece of wood and metal. One can relate to it as a piece of wood and > metal, but that’s not the immediate nature of its being. Compare here a > piece of wood laying about on a floor, with the very same piece of wood > placed in a doorway – it becomes transformed from something much more like > a material or substance (“wood”) into a piece of equipment (“something > used”). These two modes of being which Heidegger calls present-to-hand and > ready-to-hand are quite useful in clarifying the “phenomenology of > scientific realism” – that is, precisely what is going on when a realist > goes about making claims about atoms. He sees very well that there’s a door > in front of him but nevertheless insists that it’s just wood, or worse, > strings of hydrocarbons. This is because the realist is always inclined, > upon reflection, to opt to relate to things as substances (present-to-hand). > -Michael Burgess > > ---------------------------------------------- > > > > > > > > > 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 > 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
