[MD] The Quality/MOQ dichotomy.

[Krimel]

Krimel said to dmb:
Cartesian assumptions? ...Saying that you are rejecting solipsism by
rejecting Descartes is just rearranging the bumper stickers on your car.
...By the way Descartes "cogito" is not at all to be equated with Cartesian
dualism.


dmb replies:
Descartes' famous saying (I think therefore I am) is the classic case of
solipsism. It comes from his famous Meditations, where he concludes that his
own existence is the only thing he could know for sure and God is the only
thing that rescues him from this solipsism. His "cogito" would be just one
half of mind/matter dualism. Pirsig corrects that famous saying, pointing
out that it would be more correct to say, "French language exists, therefore
I think, therefore I am". That's just one passage where we find the
assertion that ideas are culturally derived but that one goes right to the
point.

[Krimel]
Wow, thanks for the history lesson. Do you really think I don't know this?
What I think is, that you miss the point entirely. Descartes' cogito is his
attempt to find a statement that skeptics could not refute. I would insist
emphatically that his cogito meets that test. Where he goes from there is an
entirely different story. He asserts the existence of God. He talks about
mind and body as different substances but neither of these is dependent on
or reflects back on the initial statement. Pirsig's statement also miss the
point. While Descartes is indeed a product of French culture his statement
is not dependant on French culture and provides a toehold on certainty
regardless of culture.

[dmb]
Radical Empiricism, by the way, is a direct attack on this dualism. As I've
said here many, many times you'll find Pirsig talking about this a quoting
James on exactly this point at the end of Lila's chapter 29. "Subjects and
objects are secondary. They are concepts derived from something more
fundamental which he described as 'the immediate flux of life which
furnishes the material to our later reflection with its conceptual
categories.' 

[Krimel]
I honestly think you have not the slightest clue what I am talking about
most of the time. You ramble on about my failure to appreciate the
"problem". What you miss most of the time is that I am fully aware of the
problem but think your solutions to it are totally mistaken. In fact you
throw up this ruse as an excuse for even reading what I have said. SOM is
JUST a bumper sticker the way you use it. Nowhere in James will you find him
claiming that there is no external world. James is not an Idealist. Nor does
James claim that we can understand "experience" independent of the
physiology that produces it.

[dmb]
In this basic flux of experience, the distinctions of reflective thought,
such as those between consciousness and content, subject and object, mind
and matter have not yet emerged in the forms which we make them. Pure
experience cannot be called either physical or psychical; it logically
precedes this distinction." Obviously, this involves far more than bumper
stickers.

[Krimel]
As I have said many times this is a big area of disagreement. You claim that
somehow experience is a unity. This is just patently false. The perception
of unity is the result of the synthesis of sensory stimulation. Thus far all
you have ever come up with to refute this is either just to ignore it or to
try to paper over it with bumper stickers.

[dmb]
I would also point out, as I have many times, that this Cartesian dualism
(SOM) is the problem which the MOQ is meant to overcome. It's simply a
logical necessity that a person needs to understand the problem before the
solution to it can be properly understood. And maybe you just think I'm just
trying to score points while playing a game with you. Or maybe you take it
as mere insult but, dude, it really is quite pointless to discuss these
things with you until you understand the problem. 

[Krimel]
The problem with Cartesian dualism is that it postulates two separate and
distinct kinds of "substance" mental and physical. This problem is not that
difficult to resolve. Mental activity is the result of physical processes.
It emerges from the complexity of the nervous system. It is not separate
from those processes anymore than heat is separate from fire. It is the
result of those processes. You seem to think that one can resolve the
difficulty by denying the existence of a physical world. I just don't see
how that solves anything. If you are going to deny that mental activity is
not rooted in physical processes then where does it come from? Are you
onboard with Ham's psychic powers?

[dmb]
And when you do things like confuse the MOQ with solipsism it becomes pretty
clear that you don't understand the problem.

[Krimel]
It is not I, who confuses the MoQ with solipsism. You are the one who
formulates his own version of the MoQ that I find indistinguishable from
solipsism. Rather than showing how it is different, you break out the Goo
Gone and move your bumper stickers around. It really is disingenuous of you.