[MD] What is SOM?

[gav]

hiya,

krimel:
I do think there is an external world independent of any observer. But that
says nothing whatever about its nature.

gav: 
i don't think there is an objective external world. and i know it.
 and of course its putative independence does say something about its nature: IT SAYS ITS INDEPENDENT FOR PETE'S SAKE (happy now pete?). quantum physics threw the independent objective reality idea out the window about 100 years ago. i mean c'mon! get real.

krimel continues:
 It does now claim that I am a
subject existing independently of that external world.

gav: 
typo?

krimel continues:

 As with all of my
assumptions, it is provisional.

gav:
and wrong....but that's okay cos its provisional.

krimel continues:
 I do infer the existence of such an external
world as the overlap of shared experience with other observers who report
commonality in our experience. Such a reality is objective in that sense.

gav: 
okay so you have changed your mind already - nice.
so the objective external world is now the intersubjective world....very different thing krimel - in fact a totally different thing. an intersubjective reality is by definition not objective, it is a consensus, based primarily on culture and language.

krimel:
 As
Ham might point out not much can be said about such a reality in the absence
of any observer. But I don't think that the MoQ demands that we discard
inference as a tool for acquiring knowledge. It is after all vital to
pattern recognition.

gav: 
 what are you on about mate?

krimel:
I would say that claiming that "the external world comes in to us through
our senses and that we organize that sensory data into a picture of the
world," is exactly what James says radical empiricism is about; Pirsig as
well.

gav: 
we are the external world observing itself. perception is synaesthetic...try separating taste and smell and touch when you eat. what need to reunify a unity?

krimel:
So yes I am saying this but I don't think this is at all what Pirsig is
railing against as the evil SOM. There is no duality. There is no
disconnection between me and my experience or me and the world external.
There are no fixed rigid objects existing in and of themselves. There is
only experience guiding my own particular understanding of the world around
me. 

gav:
you what? you are talking of a (rather confused) quasi-objective external world that comes to me through my senses, and is then organised into a picture of the world. how is this not dualistic? it is about as SOM as it gets: the external world that i sense and organise - object and subject.

krimel:
What you seem to be advocating is some extreme form of phenomenology that is
indistinguishable from solipsism.

gav:
you just haven't taken the logic chain far enough. it is not that just you exist and everyone else is imaginary: you are imaginary aswell.

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