[MD] subject/object: pragmatism

[Ron Kulp]

Matt,
You make very relevant points 

Matt said:

My problem is that I don't think SOM was anything but a set of metaphors (which is what I think everything linguistic is), and I balk at the distinction between cultural and intellectual.  The notion that logic and reason suddenly appeared on the playing field of humanity around the time of Greece, or around any time for that matter, is a myth, created in the West to make the West look cooler.  Cultures do it all the time to make their innovations look like the culmination of humanity.

Ron:
I'll sure go along with that.

Matt:
The way I think we need to frame this issue is to first fully naturalize the parts as part of our eviction of SOM.  Doing this, I think, requires us to think of reason as just what every other animal does when it decides what to do.  It is just that our reasoning process is much more complicated.  Reason didn't suddenly appear in Greece, though they thought it did.  What appeared were certain new beneficial cultural products, like democracy, philosophy, math, de-anthropomorphized religion, etc.

Like all beneficial cultural products, some of them lose their benefits when compared to new cultural products that come on the market.  The reification of reason (in its opposition to tradition, which Plato began and got a new lease on life during the Enlightenment) was beneficial for a time, but a bunch of intellectuals, including I think Pirsig, are thinking there are new cultural products on the market to replace it.

Ron:
An excellent metaphor for expressing this.

Matt:
SOM was a step towards naturalizing our culture by de-anthopomorphizing our explanations of reality.  I think Plato saw with great foresight that there was something silly going on with Zeus, Hera and the rest.  What SOM became was just another supernatural double.  What the MoQ needs to be is a fully naturalized replacement of SOM.  I think it can be this.

Ron:
Hmm, I would agree that MoQ is taking the next step toward 
de-anthropomorphizing our explanations but I have a problem 
with the replace term, I think append is a better word for it.
And a more practical explanation of it's function.

Matt:
That's why I don't go for the distinction between intelligence and
intellect as what divides Pirsig's levels.  Intelligence is obviously
the biologically linked thing that we share with the animals, but I
think that's all there is.  "Intellect" is a reification of a set of
cultural innovations that humans were able to create in part through
their creation of language.  Language was just a tool we created to
help us survive.  So were all the other innovations that language made
possible.  Some of these innovations took on a life of their own, but
how do we tell an evolutionary story about the creation of "intellect"
if it isn't a set of cultural innovations?  We haven't been able to do
it for "mind" or "representations" yet, and that's partly why
philosophers of a pragmatist stripe have been working so hard to retire
them.

Ron:
Well said, a most excellent post. I have learned a great deal.
Thank you for addressing my questions head on.




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