[MD] Another parallel

Thu Jul 16 12:53:55 PDT 2009

Marsha:
Okay, I think I matched the quotes, but I do not see anything that expressly states that James was using an intellect that was not SOM based. 

Ron:
And I can't see anything that expressly states that James is using an
intellect that is SOM based.

ah but Bo doesent require a shred of proof because he already
shares your prejudices.

hmmm

________________________________
From: Marsha Valkyr <valkyr at att.net>
To: moq_discuss at moqtalk.org
Sent: Thursday, July 16, 2009 3:26:55 PM
Subject: Re: [MD] Another parallel

Dave, your thoughts are not the center of the MoQ universe.  I will be most happy if the MoQ is academically accepted.  Go for it!  But until you make that happen, excuse me if I do not hang on your every word.  Further, I haven't the slightest idea what you are talking about when you write "I also don't see how it's possible to portray this intellectual description as anti-intellectual."  Huh?   Yet, there are any statements that can be considered s/o because they are composed using a s/o-language (tool).   

Marsha

________________________________

From: david buchanan <dmbuchanan at hotmail.com>
To: moq_discuss at moqtalk.org
Sent: Thursday, July 16, 2009 1:36:01 PM
Subject: Re: [MD] Another parallel

"

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Marsha said to Ron:
... Dmb seems to me to be in University mode and is projecting too much academic assumption.  It all sounds very "academic" but seems to me not stand on its own.  I've enjoyed hearing about Radical Empiricism and Pragmaticism, but I am more inclined to think that the MoQ has gone beyond them both.

Ron replied:
Just because MoQ is being taught in universities doesent mean it's objectivism.

dmb quotes from chapter 26 of Lila:

Anyway, the reason Phaedrus bought these books on James was that it was necessary to bone up a little in order to protect his MOQ against attack. So far he had pretty much ignored the philosophologists and they had pretty much returned the compliment. But with the next book he was unlikely to be so lucky, since a metaphysics is something anyone can pick to pieces. Some of the, at least, would be at it, picking and sneering in the time-honored tradition of literary critics, musicologists, and art historians, and he had better be ready for them.
A review of his book in the Harvard Educational Review had said that his idea of truth was the same as James. The London Times said he was a follower of Aristotle. Psychology Today said he was a follower of Hegel. If everyone was right he had certainly achieved a remarkable synthesis. But the comparison with James interested him most because it looked like there might be something to it. 
It was also very good philosophological news. James is usually considered a very solid mainstream American philosopher, whereas Phaedrus' first book had often been described as a 'cult' book. He had a feeling the people who used that term WISHED it was a cult book and would go away like a cult book, perhaps because it was interfering with some philosophological cultism of their own. But if philosophologists were willing to accept the idea that the MOQ is an offshoot of James' work, then that 'cult' charge was shattered. And this was good political news in a field where politics is a big factor.
... However, in his rereading of James, he had found three thing that were beginning to dissolve his early prejudice. The first wasn't really a reason but was such an unlikely coincidence Phaedrus couldn't get it out of his mind. James was the GODFATHER of William James Sidis, the child prodigy who could speak five languages at the age of five and who thought colonial democracy came from the Indians. The second was a reference to James' dislike of the dichotomy of the universe into subjects and objects. That, of course, put him automatically on the side of Phaedrus' angels. 

dmb also quotes from chapter 29 of Lila:

He particularly wanted to see how much actual evidence there was for the statement that James' whole purpose was to 'unite science and religion'. That claim had turned him against James years ago, and he didn't like it any better now. When you start out with an axe like that to grind, it's almost guaranteed that you will conclude with something false. That statement seemed more like some philosophological simplification written by someone with a weak understanding of what philosophy is for. To put philosophy in the service of any social organization or any dogma is immoral. It's a lower form of evolution trying to devour a higher one. ...
There was nothing that he was reading that suggested James was some kind of religious ideologue interested in proving some forgone conclusion about religion. Ideologues usually talk in terms of sweeping generalities and what Phaedrus was reading seemed to confirm that James was about as far as you can get from these. In his early years especially, James' concept of ultimate reality was of things concrete and individual. He didn't like Hegel of any of the German idealists who dominated philosophy in his youth precisely BECAUSE they were so general and sweeping in their approach. 
However, as James grew older his thoughts did seem to get more and more general. This was appropriate. If you don't generalize you don't philosophize. But to Phaedrus it seemed that James' generalizations were heading toward something very similar to the MOQ. This could, of course, be the 'Cleveland Harbor Effect', where Phaedrus's own intellectual immune system was selecting those aspects of James' philosophy that fit the MOQ and ignoring those that didn't. But he didn't think so. Everywhere he read it seemed as though he was seeing fits and matches that no amount of selective reading could contrive. ...
Anyway, all this certainly answered the question of whether the MOQ was a foreign, cultish, deviant way of looking at things. The MOQ is a continuation of the mainstream of twentieth century American philosophy. It is a form of pragmatism, of instrumentalism, which says the test of the true is the good. It adds that this good is not a social code or some intellectualized Hegelian Absolute. It is direct everyday experience. Through this identification of pure value with pure experience [James' term from his radical empiricism], the MOQ paves the way for an enlarged way of looking at experience which can resolve all sorts of anomalies that traditional empiricism has not been able to cope with.  

dmb says:
As I read these passages, there is just no way to maintain the idea that all intellectual activity is SOM-based. Here we have a fairly detailed explanation of how and why James and the MOQ are not SOM-based, how and why the MOQ is opposed to SOM while still being an intellectual description of reality. I also don't see how it's possible to understand these passage as anything other than an effort to get the MOQ to be taken seriously within the academic philosophical world. I also don't see how it's possible to portray this intellectual description as anti-intellectual. I don't see how this can be dismissed as SOM at all, let alone on the basis of a norwegian wiki article. 
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From: X Acto <xacto at rocketmail.com>
To: moq_discuss at moqtalk.org
Sent: Thursday, July 16, 2009 3:35:58 PM
Subject: Re: [MD] Another parallel