[MD] Does the MOQ invalidate Subjectivity?

[Matt Kundert]

Steve,

Steve said (perhaps facetiously):
Maybe Matt K can sort out the question begging going on here.

Matt:
I haven't been following the conversation, but that's mainly because Ham and 
I already decided that we are irredeemably opposed in philosophical 
substance (and style, for that matter).  I saw Ham's question (to which he 
tagged me, but mistakenly attributed something to me that Mike said), but I 
think the question pretty silly, so I didn't enter into it.  "Uh, no...?"  I 
mean, it could be an alright question if properly handled, but I think Ham 
bobbled the ball again.  He keeps presupposing lots of common ground that 
people like us just don't have with him.  Case in point: you said that you 
follow me in thinking that meaning is determined by use.  That makes us 
followers of Wittgenstein and Ham does not like (the later) Wittgenstein.  
Some of the fundamental differences between Ham and I (and most good 
Pirsigians) are left at Wittgenstein's doorstep.  And that makes conversing 
difficult.  If I'm not mistaken, you've found yourself in the same difficult 
position: trying to untangle Ham's background beliefs that he takes for 
granted and (curiously) assumes everyone else has, too.  Metaphilosophical 
conversation between Wittgensteinians and non-Wittgensteinians will always 
be difficult, but it is made worse by certain styles and Ham exhibits one of 
the those styles.  Here's the bit that needs entangling:

Steve had said:
The MOQ says that the subjective/objective knowledge distinction is a high 
quality intellectual pattern.

Ham replied:
That's nice to hear; but, again, this depends on who's making the judgment, 
since everything in existence is relative.  (That's Ham's Third Law of 
Metaphysics.)

Steve responded:
So you are saying that I've presupposed such a knowledge distinction in 
saying that such knowledge distinctions are patterns of value?

Matt:
In all honesty, I'm confused.  Personally, I think Pirsig and everyone else 
should run as far away as possible from the "subjective/objective knowledge 
distinction".  But that doesn't help decipher anything.

Here's what I think:  you say, "the S-ive/O-ive knowledge distinction is a 
high quality intellectual pattern," Ham thinks that you passing judgment on 
the distinction requires a S/O distinction (and so says, "everything in 
existence is relative [to the Subject]"), and you read him as suggesting 
that you're begging the question by already dictating that distinctions are 
patterns of value.

If that's right, then I think you're (kind of) right: Ham should be 
suggesting that you're begging the question.  The tricky part is the 
movement from "subjective" to "subject" that Ham makes.  I think people 
should be more careful in moving back and forth between the two.

But the basic gist is the same claim Ham's been pressing for a while: that 
for any judgment at all, you're going to need a judger (or a "decider", if 
you will).  Judging presupposes a subject/object distinction.  Ham would 
like to say that Pirsig's project of getting "patterns of value" off the 
ground requires a subject, which is like Scott's claim that Pirsig does a 
terrible job with consciousness, which is why Ham and Scott (as Ham presents 
them) are on the same side of this issue.

I think the way out is to just grasp the nettle Scott offers us and say that 
Value indeed requires Consciousness and Consciousness is ubiquitous.  Not a 
lot, as far as I can see, follows from this.  All we need is to say that a 
locus of consciousness, a monad of judging, is simply a "center of 
evaluative gravity", a point that we call "the pattern of value we call X".  
All this means is that anything can be an object if you judge it to be 
useful to treat it as distinct from other things.  One of the things that's 
useful to distinguish is "you" from "everything else".

What it does not allow you is what Ham wants: a special, milky secretion 
that is different from all that, something called "the proprietary nature of 
experience" or simply "subjectivity."  Ham looks like a phenomenologist, 
somebody who thinks that the _actual experience of experiencing_ is 
different (and prior to) "patterns of value" or anything else we might call 
it or say about it.  That's why he thinks the Subject/Object distinction so 
fundamental--because "patterns of value" will never get at our actual, lived 
experience.

Matt

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