[MD] What is SOM?

[david buchanan]

Krimel said:
no self respecting Christian, Taoist or MoQer should be willing to give credence to the idea that they are espousing a dualism or a plurality.

dmb says:
The original MOQer says otherwise. Last time you made this point I quoted Pirsig saying so from the Baggini interview. It was only a week or two ago. How could you forget so soon?

Krimel said:
In his misuse of the art gallery example dmb does a bit of slight of hand when he says, "...the MOQ says there is no ontological ground to which our intellectual descriptions must correspond." This is obviously nonsense. Without ontological fixity, pigs really might fly out of dmb's butt. The sky might turn tangerine and apples might fall up. dmb's slight of hand here is to confuse ontology, what is, with epistemology, or what we know. We might come up with any number of descriptions of what is, epistemologically. These we can and do judge esthetically. But this is very different from saying the ontological ground is in any sense arbitrary

dmb says:
Again, the original MOQer says otherwise. In the MOQ, where experience IS reality, epistemology replaces ontology. Or, if you prefer, there is no ontology except for experience. You could say there are no essences or things-in-themselves. This is follows from radical empiricism, where ontological categories such as subjects and objects are seen as reified concepts, as abstractions mistakenly given concrete existence. There are many, many ways to say it but sticking with the MOQ's empiricism and LILA's art gallery example, Pirsig says,...

When it is seen that value is the front edge of experience, there is no problem for empiricists here. It simply restates the empiricists' belief that experience is the starting point of all reality. The only problem is for a subject-object metaphysics that calls itself empiricism.
This may sound as though a purpose of the MOQ is to trash all subject-object thought but that's not true. Unlike subject-object metaphysics the MOQ does not insist on a single exclusive truth. If subjects and objects are held to be the ultimate reality then we're permitted only one construction of things - that which corresponds to the 'objective' world - and all other constructions are unreal. But if Quality or excellence is seen as the ultimate reality then it becomes possible for more than one set of truths to exist. One doesn't seek the absolute 'Truth'. One seeks instead the highest quality intellectual explanation of things with the knowledge that if the past ins any guide to the future this explanation must be taken provisionally; as useful until something better comes along. One can examine intellectual realities the way he examines paintings in an art gallery, not in an effort to find out which is the 'real' painting, but simply to enjoy and keep those of value. There are many sets of intellectual reality in existence and we can perceive some to have more quality than others, but that we do so is, in part, the result of our history and current patterns of thought.

I'll spare myself the task of looking it up and typing in another quote but I'll remind you that at the end of ZAMM, at what I take to be the philosophical climax of the book Pirsig says that Plato's Good and his own Quality were almost identical. The difference is that Plato's Good was a fixed and rigid thing while his Quality was dynamic. This does not mean that it is arbitrary or capricious, as he puts it, but the difference between them could very well be described as "ontological fixity". Plato had it but the MOQ does not. 

Krimel said:
Materialism implies material substance of the sort imagined first by Democritus, that of all matter being reducible to itty bitty BBs in the void. Even as a mere description no one holds this view any more. The "material" world is composed of energy and fields, sometimes bound up as particles and sometimes flowing like waves. If the argument were against matter as particulate substance then few would argue against it.

dmb says:
That's completely ridiculous. Nobody has been fighting Democritus and every normal adult knows perfectly well that physics is not limited to objects with mass. Pirsig's comments in the SODV paper obviously deals with contemporary physics and his critique of scientific materialism is largely aimed at the 20th century versions.

Krimel said
When dmb attempts to argue that James and Dewey are using radical empiricism to allow the supernatural in through the back door he is joining them. Claiming for example that mysticism or the perennial philosophy allows for experiences that are not dependant on the natural processes occurring in the nervous system is balderdash. It does an injustice to James and Dewey and opens the door to a magical world where butt monkeys rule.

dmb says:
I do not argue any such thing. There is nothing supernatural about radical empiricism or philosophical mysticism. In fact, they both reject the supernatural and so do I. And for the fifth time, my objections to your reductionism to not mean that I deny natural processes or the working of the nervous system. It is simply a denial that these processes and systems are caused by or equivalent to the experiences which involve them. Every mystic I ever heard of had a brain and used it. But I am beginning to wonder what's in your skull, Krimel. As I see it, you've still got zero points on the board. What is it, four to nothing? Five? 



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