[MD] Intellect's Symposium

[skutvik at online.no]

Dave T.

31 Jan.

Bo before,
> > Isn't empiricism the claim that the source of everything is the
> > senses, which is SOM's objective-materialist camp in contrast to
> > thinking as the source which is SOM's subjective-idealist camp? 

Dave: 
> No what the SOM camp says is that your senses delude you and your
> thinking is muddled and only abstract reasoning using the S/O premise
> is the source of the most valuable information, truth.

You make so many strange assertion Dave that it's hard to take you 
seriously. First of all there is no SOM outside the MOQ which claims 
that SOM has two camps:the S=idealists and the O=materialists. 
Further it's MOQ's claim that whatever of these camps claims to be 
the source of the other, it meets with paradoxes. And I cannot see 
how  empiricism or radical empiricism transcends SOM. For 
Chrissake SOM knows no SOM. .     

A little history lesson: SOM emerged as the search for eternal 
principles. What this search transcended was the mythological Aretê 
past. This resulted in the notion that the "eternal principles" were 
TRUTH and what distorted truth was what only looked like truth, but 
was illusory, i.e. the first recognizable SOM. WHAT was true and 
what was illusory has varied wildly. Plato ascribed truth to IDEAS 
while illusion resided with the SENSES. Aristotle's real was 
SUBSTANCE while FORM was illusory. So you see what is illusory 
and what is true has varied, but SOM's "essence" is the S/O 
DISTINCTION. Write that down on your little kindergarten blackboard. 

> Empiricism makes no claims about sensing or thinking other than they
> happen and from this happening is all knowledge formed. Just how this
> happens and the conclusions reached are not part of the empirical
> premise. 

You must be totally ignorant of phiosopical history Mr Thomas. The 
empiricists (Locke, Hume, Berkeley) arrived at the weird conclusion 
that the was no qualities out there, these were all subjective, yes the 
most "radical empiricist" Berkeley denied any world "out there" at all. 
This uncanny conclusions was what Kant called "reinen Verunft" (pure 
reason) and   set out to criticize in his gand work "Kritik Der Reinen 
Vernunft". His conclusions was that much of reality (space, time and 
causality, is subjective but there is a residual "Thing in itself" (out 
there) and this has been the "last word", not until Pirsig has Western 
philosophy moved forward after Kant.   

> Our experience indicates that overtime "concepts of thought" develop in
> the mind to help order experience. Some may be inventions of the mind,
> but most often these are not conscience decisions but adoptions based
> on similar experience and knowledge shared within social groups. 

THis is so arch-somish that I have no comment, With friends like you 
the MOQ hardly need enemies.

Bodvar