[MD] What is SOM?

[david buchanan]

Krimel said to dmb:
My disappointment stemmed largely from the length of the quotation but primarily from its irrelevance to the point at hand. You brought it up to address this statement: "No where is James saying that physical substance does not give rise to mental events." It simply does not.

dmb says:
You shouldn't delete quotes being debated unless your aim to is hide and obscure. Besides, I can simply dig it up and re-post it. Here is a paragraph from the paper I quoted (by Taylor & Wozniak). The phrase "physical substance" isn't used here but notice what James wishes to get rid of ("this substantial dualism") and what he hopes to replace it with (a "monism of pure experience"). He is denying that there is an entity called consciousness (the subjective self) and he is denying that there "material objects". He says the "primal stufff or material in the world" is not matter but rather "pure experience". 

To deny the existence of "consciousness" is not, for James, to deny the existence of thoughts, but "to deny that the word ['consciousness'] stands for an entity," to deny that there is any "aboriginal stuff or quality of being, contrasted with that of which our material objects are made, out of which our thoughts of them are made."[19] In place of this substantial dualism, James proposes what might best be called a radically pluralistic monism of pure experience. There is, he says, "only one primal stuff or material in the world, a stuff of which everything is composed, and...we call that stuff ' pure experience.'" For James, in other words, all that which exists is pure experience and pure experience is all that exists. In contrast to the dualism of consciousness and content, in other words, James argues for a monism of pure experience.[20]

Krimel said:
James is not saying that there is some kind of unitary form of pure experience. Nor is he advocating a monism of the sort you seem partial toward. He is saying that experience is plural.

dmb says:
Look at that quote from Taylor and Wozniak again - for the third time. They say (just in the quoted paragraph) that James "proposes what might best be called a radically pluralistic monism" and "argues for a monism of pure experience". James is most certainly advocating a monism and it is not at odds with his pluralism. Pirsig does the same sort of thing without contradiction. Quality is his monism, the static-dynamic distinction is the MOQ's dualism and the levels are its pluralism. Your willingness to dispute statements that are right in front of you is a bit astonishing. Are you pulling my leg here or what?

You can check the Stanford encyclopedia too. Their article on James says he "set out the metaphysical view most commonly known as 'neutral monism', according to which there is one fundamental 'stuff' that is neither material nor mental". As James himself explains it in "A World of Pure Experience", this primary empirical reality is "experience in its 'pure' state, plain unqualified actuality, a simple THAT, as yet undifferentiated into thing and thought, and only virtually classifiable as objective fact or as someone's opinion"

Krimel said:
Radical empiricism at least as James expresses it most assuredly does not say that reality and experience are the same thing. 

dmb says:
Again, in "A World of Pure Experience" James says, "Should we not say here that to be experienced as continuous is to be really continuous, in a world where experience and reality come to the same thing?". This notion is also consistent with the basic demands of his radical empiricism, which says that philosophers should include every kind of experience in their accounts of reality and that they shouldn't add anything that is NOT experienced. 

Krimel said:
Reductionism as such is one of the most lasting and profoundly productive tools of science and math. It consists of breaking big problems into smaller ones. What's the problem?

dmb says:
As I already said, the problem arises when the "big problem" is made to disappear by breaking it down into "smaller ones". This problem occurs when it is used to dismiss mystical experience as a brain fart, for example. Looking at what occurs in the organs simply can't address the meaning or validity of the experience. It assumes in advance, for metaphysical rather than scientific or empirical reasons, that such experiences are meaningless epiphenomenon. Again, I'm not saying that we should ignore brains or that science is no good. But scientism and reductionism proceed from and reinforce the very assumptions that Pirsig and James are attacking. It is based on dogma, not empirical evidence. It is a way of interpreting the data as if everything in reality was ultimately and ontologically physical, whereas Pirsig and James are saying that experience is only "virtually classifiable" as "physical" or "mental". Or, to put it very simply, there are many cases in which the complex phenomenon can't be reduced to smaller problems without altogether losing the phenomenon being studied. Where in the brain do we find morals or values, for example? Reductionism dismisses or ignores or can't handle a wide range of experience, which means a wide range of reality. But you don't have to take my word for it. Ask Mr. Google to show you some papers on antireductionism. You'll find that the objections mostly arise when reductionism is applied to phenomenon that are significantly more complex than numbers or cells. It becomes a problem in areas such as history, philosophy, religion, sociology, etc.. 



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