[MD] subject/object: pragmatism

[David M]

Hi Matt

Interesting post. You mention secularism and values. I wonder is not 
secularism not
closely tied to SOM and therefore not also tied to the de-valuing of values 
that SOM
brings about? I think this is one of  the problems Charles Taylor raises in 
his interesting
book on Secularism:

http://www.amazon.com/Secular-Age-Charles-Taylor/dp/0674026764/ref=sr_1_8?ie=UTF8&s=books&qid=1196096317&sr=1-8

Regards
David M

----- Original Message ----- 
From: "Matt Kundert" <pirsigaffliction at hotmail.com>
To: <moq_discuss at moqtalk.org>
Sent: Friday, November 16, 2007 4:30 AM
Subject: Re: [MD] subject/object: pragmatism



Ron,I'd like to comment on this, and the other thread you started, austerely 
titled, "SOM".Ron said: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:I'm currently writing a short, potted 
description of the origins of SOM for another project, and I've been 
struggling over calling what the Greeks did "de-anthopomorphizing".  It 
seems easy to say that when describing what they did to Homeric religion, 
but it becomes difficult to sustain when you sweep it forward as an impetus 
for intellectual progress in the West.  It becomes most obvious when you 
look at Pirsig: who would call the notion of calling rocks "static patterns 
of value" _less_ anthropomorphic?  It leads me to think that there's 
something wrong with the terms in which we are writing the history, just as 
I think saying that "rationality" is what suddenly hit Greece around the 
time of Thales.  Cornford, Grube, and Snell (even contemporaries like Julia 
Annas and the brilliantly original Pierre Hadot) contain that kind of talk, 
but it doesn't sound right for the kind of volte-face I would think 
pragmatists would like to make.One thing I'm more convinced about is that 
"replace," or some variation of, is the better way to go then a variation of 
"append."  The way I conceive of SOM is as a finite thing, not nearly as 
pervasive as some think it (or at least, the problems it creates are not as 
insidious to the common person as some think it).  It is all the bad things 
we need to cut from the branches.  I don't go in at all with Bo's idea that 
SOM is a permanent stage in our evolution, like our cells.  SOM is simply a 
constellation of metaphors and distinctions that we can shunt out of 
philosophical discussion and replace with better metaphors and 
distinctions.Ron said (in "SOM"):Plato's Idea, the value of what is, is an 
attempt to establish a basic understanding of certainty Through the axiom of 
excluded middles by working with assumed absolutes as a matter Of 
convenience. This immediately gives rise to the process event trap that 
things are fixed And do not change. It also gives rise to another form of 
anthropomorphism the theory of forms. I say it has become cultural because 
it influences how we perceive, describe and understand the reality We 
experience every day. Although I think rather highly of the MoQ I find it 
rather un realistic to expect it to REPLACE Thousands of years of the 
cultural formation of religion, mathematics,and scientific discovery that we 
utilize And which have become such an integral part of our modern 
lives.Matt:Not only do I disagree with Bo in thinking of SOM as synonymous 
with thinking, and therefore unavoidable, but I also disagree that SOMic 
problems follow, say, our use of math.  Pirsig uses SOM as his cover-all bad 
guy term, but I think in the long run it would be more profitable to think 
of individual problems, metaphors, distinctions, and the like, and stop 
thinking of shunting aside something awesomely huge.  Pirsig's philosophy 
isn't meant to replace religion or math or science.  It is an atmospheric 
change, a shift in how we perceive other cultural formations.  For instance, 
certainty.  Nobody now thinks of certainty as Plato did: except for 
philosophers.  Nobody thinks there is a kind of certainty that gains its 
credence from the necessity of existence itself.  Nobody pays much mind to 
what certainty is except philosophers because most people know what 
certainty is when they have it--a probabilistic kind that came to existence 
in the 17th century.  Philosophers are the only ones who still pay any 
attention to the notion of certainty as it is in itself, and I think most of 
the manna has fallen from that conversation.

The changes I'm talking about are in the short-run negligible because they 
would mainly be changes for philosophers.  By high-end, atmospheric talk 
does trickle down and I think there would be a good long-run cultural 
change.  But I think it has nothing to do with accepting particular 
philosophical planks, and everything to do with what most people raised in a 
certain culture think are good questions and bad questions, open roads of 
inquiry and lines of reasoning beyond the pale.  For instance, most people 
have a homely notion of truth that follow along with realism/Platonism. 
However, many of these same people are also secularists.  In the short run, 
it matters less to me whether one defends one's secularism using realistic 
noises or pragmatist noises, just so long as one _is_ a secularist.  In the 
long run, on the other hand, I think the more secularist we become, the more 
congenial pragmatism will look, which will make pragmatism more likely to 
help us become more secularist, which will eventually help us replace 
realism with pragmatism (playing out something like Dewey's means/ends 
contiuum, playing back and forth between means and ends).

But in no way do I think a systematic philosophy does anything more than 
articulate a coherent vision, which we then pick through for wisdom to apply 
to the pressing problems of our time.  What it should not do is make us 
think that the letter is more important than the spirit.  I think the most 
important shift we should make when thinking about philosophy is from 
thinking that philosophy comes before cultural politics to thinking that 
philosophy is an extension of cultural politics.  This is the shift from 
thinking that doing philosophy (i.e., talking about Plato or the general 
nature of experience) has a direct effect on culture to thinking that 
philosophy is just one more cultural sphere that must be won over to one's 
vision of life.  That we often call "philosophy" what one is doing _when_ 
one articulates one's vision of life is just one of the tastier 
apparent-paradoxes stemming from the reduction of everything to the play of 
values.

Matt
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