[MD] MacIntyre, Pirsig, Crawford & Damasio

[Ian Glendinning]

Ron,

I can clearly see how that example exchange with Krim and DMB (the
feeling vs thinking, radical-empirical vs some reductive SOMist,
materialist thinking) relates to the one point from Damasio - that was
the pont of my making that reference. To link to a "brain scientist"
view that showed / reinforced the same distinction, if anynody needed
further convincing.

But, the reason I draggged you across, was the relationship between DQ
(in the much rehearsed Jamesian / Pirsigian version of the above
debate) and "Greek Love" in your own earlier thread - where Sam had
also written his Eudaimonia essay, which he himself says had
influences from both MacIntyre & Damasio. I was joining those dots.

Regards
Ian

On Thu, Jul 9, 2009 at 5:35 PM, X Acto<xacto at rocketmail.com> wrote:
> Ian,
> Dmb, Krimel and myself had a recent discussion on Pirsigs use of "empirical" as it relates
> to william James which applies to the questions in your blog post....
>
>
> Ron quoted William James:
> The conclusion is that our worldview does not need "extraneous trans-empirical connective support,
> but possesses in its own right a concatenated or continuous structure." ...James is in fact refining
> empiricism to exclude "trans-empirical connective support" which is a kind of rationalism, the charge
> against positivism as well. Pragmatic Value and meaning therefore has a "truer" grip on the
> interpretation of experience.
> dmb says:I think "extraneous trans-empirical connective support" is another way of saying "metaphysical fiction"
> or "invented entities not known in experience". Or, as John Stuhr put it in relation to Dewey, James is talking
> about the error of conferring existential status upon the products of reflection". This error is also known simply
> as "reification". Reification is when you treat abstract concepts as if they were concrete realities. I think
> James is charging both the rationalists and the traditional empiricists with this error. In the case of the
> Hegelians, their main metaphysical fiction is Absolute Mind and in the case of the Humians their main metaphysical
> fictions are subjects and objects. The positivists would certainly count as traditional empiricists so this
> charge applies to positive science as well. It's really quite sweeping. Since radical empiricism is an attempt
> to get rid of these trans-empirical fictions, meaning metaphysical entities that are beyond experience, it is
> more empirical than traditional empiricism. Radical empiricism also insists that we cannot exclude from our
> philosophical constructions "any element that is directly experienced". That also makes it more empirical
> than traditional empiricism. The particular element that the traditional empiricists tended to exclude despite
> the fact that it is directly experience, was the experience of conjunctive relations. Thus his emphasis on the
> continuity of experience. These are the relations that connect into a seamless whole the elements that had been
> made discrete by traditional sensory empiricism. Radical empiricism excludes un-empirical things and includes a
> wider range of things that are experienced and so I think it's more than fair to say it expands upon traditional
> empiricism. It's not just an extension however. The relation between the two forms of empiricism is something
> like the relation between Newtonian physics and Einstein's physics. In both cases you'll find them working with
> "gravity" but that word means one thing to Newton and quite another thing to Einstein. You see the same sort of
> thing in these rival forms of empiricism. Both schools of thought are going to use the word "experience" and that
> term will be central to both schools but the traditional meaning of the word is very different from the meaning it
> is given within radical empiricism.
> "To be radical, an empiricism must neither admit into its constructions any element that is not directly experienced,
> not exclude form them any element that is directly experienced. For such a philosophy, THE RELATIONS THAT CONNECT
> EXPERIENCES MUST THEMSELVES BE EXPERIENCED RELATIONS, AND ANY KIND OF RELATION EXPERIENCED MUST BE ACCOUNTED AS
> 'REAL' AS ANYTHING ELSE IN THE SYSTEM. Elements may indeed be redistributed, the original placing of things getting
> corrected, but a real place must be found for every kind of thing experienced, whether term or relation, in the final
> philosophic arrangement." (From "A World of Pure Experience", the emphasis is James's)
> Ron said:
> I think what he points to is the idea that sensory empiricism IS in fact a kind of rationalism, this is the
> rationalism he builds his argument against in his essays on radical empiricism. So you are correct, he does
> rail against rationalism, but its the rationalism of sensory empiricism. ... Ironically, Dave is actually
> charging YOU with being a rationalist by calling you a reductionist.
> dmb says:No, I don't think of it like that. Rationalism and empiricism are nearly opposite approaches and I
> don't think it's very helpful to confuse or conflate them. James is accusing them both of creating fictional
> metaphysical entities to work as a kind of philosophical glue to overcome fake philosophical problems, however.
> He's accusing them both of reification. I'd say my accusation of reductionism against Krimel is aimed at what I
> see as his adherence to SOM and traditional empiricism and contemporary scientific materialism. As we saw in
> the wiki article on radical empiricism, James was also concerned with the reductionistic tendencies of that
> outlook. In fact, I think the discussion of the differences between the two kinds of empiricism is quite
> appropriate and relevant to reductionism, the topic of this thread.
> Krimel said:
> ...No, I have not been saying that James is the same as Hume and Locke. He is adding the experience of
> conjunction and disjunction to overcome the limits of simple sensory empiricism. In terms of radical
> empiricism his aim to still to overcome rationalism. It certainly is not his aim to do some kind of
> reverse zwabydah and turn empiricism into rationalism. Dave would paint James as a rationalist in
> empirical clothing. But I am saying that he is just adding to the British empiricists not throwing them out.
> dmb says:
> Well, no don't see James as a rationalist. Not at all. And I think it would be a huge mistake to think that
> James is merely adding to British empiricism. Let me remind you that this last set of exchanges was prompted
> by your assertion that SOM was just a vague label, a straw man that no philosophers took seriously. In reply,
> I posted quotes wherein James identifies subject-object philosophies as a philosophical problem. By going
> after that problem, James's radical empiricism undermines the most basic metaphysical assumptions of the British
> empiricists. It is simply wrong to call that an addition or extension. He's upsetting and overturning the very
> foundations upon which those empiricists stood. In ZAMM, you'll recall, this overturning of SOM is compared to
> a Copernican revolution. I think that's much closer to a proper characterization of the scope and scale of the
> difference between radical empiricism and sensory empiricism. It's true that in both cases, the empiricist says
> that experience is the starting point of reality but "experience" means two totally different things, depending
> on which type of empiricism you're discussing. In the old school, it meant the experience of the objective reality
> by a subjective experiencer so that subjects and objects are the pre-requisites of experience, are the concrete
> realities that give rise to experience. But in radical empiricism it is the other way around. Experience comes
> first and subjects and objects are derived from that. They are secondary and conceptual, not primary and existential.
>
>
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