[MD] A fly in the MOQ ointment

[david buchanan]

Mary said:
We are all totally mired in Subject-Object Logic for every minute of every day everywhere.  The breakthrough, the singular THING that makes the MoQ so important is that Pirsig was the FIRST PERSON EVER in the WEST to stand up and point that out.  His idea is enormous.  Every metaphysics the West is founded upon, everything we think we believe, everything we do is based on this fundamental principle of DISCRETENESS.  I am different from you.  I am "in" the world, a part of the world, but I am not the world.  This we believe in the West and all other Western metaphysics takes this as a given. It is not questioned.  It is not examined. ... Is it a heresy in this group to admit that maybe Pirsig isn't the only one that's ever had this idea?  He's just the only one in the West - the only one I could understand.

dmb says:

SOM has been very common among Modern Western philosophers and scientists. It has become ingrained in common sense realism and so I can understand why it might seem so inescapable. 

But it's just not true that Pirsig was the first person ever to point this out. More than a hundred years ago, William James took direct aim at subject-object dualism.

"The first great pitfall from which [radical empiricism] will save us is an artificial conception of the relations between knower and known. Throughout the history of philosophy the subject and its object have been treated as absolutely discontinuous entities; and thereupon the presence of the latter to the former, or the 'apprehension' by the former of the latter, has assumed a paradoxical character which all sorts of theories had to be invented to overcome." 

James talks like a Victorian but it translates into very simple claim; the big bad gap between subjects and objects is fake. He's also offer radical empiricism as a way out of this fake problem. This gap between subjects and objects, I think, is more or less the same thing as your "fundamental principle of discreteness" and so he is addressing your issues and questions pretty directly. After naming a few of the various attempts at solutions to this fake problem in the recent history of philosophy, he says,..

"All the while, in the very bosom of the finite experience, every conjunction required to make the relation intelligible is given in full."

Again, this translates into a simple claim; there is no gap between subjects and objects because they are already connected to each other within experience. To show this connection, James asks us to pay closer attention to the way we actually experience thoughts and things. He makes a huge deal out of the experiences that connect thoughts and things, referring to these transitional experiences as "conjunctive relations". (Always reminds me of Schoolhouse Rock; sing it along with me now... "Conjunction Junction, what's your function?") James is saying that subjects and objects are not "absolutely discontinuous entities". They're not even entities. They're just different portions or phases of experience with one naturally leading to the other and entering into all sorts of relations as stream of experience unfolds from moment to moment. The differences between thoughts and things are known and felt in experience and that experience is quite real but to then take those differences and turn them into ontological realities or construe them as the very ground of reality, well then you've opened up that fake gap and the fake problems come rushing back in.

"continuous transition is one sort of a conjunctive relation; and to be a radical empiricist means to hold fast to this conjunctive relation of all others, for this is the strategic point, the position through which, if a hole be made, all the corruptions of dialectics and all the metaphysical fictions pour into our philosophy. The holding fast to this relation means ... to take it just as we feel it, and not to confuse ourselves with abstract thought about it.."


Lunch is ready, gotta go.
dmb
 




> >  From Lila's Child:
> > Bo: A while back, we spoke about the emergence of intellect and I said
> > that in a way Subject/Object Metaphysics could be seen as identical to
> > the intellectual level of the MOQ!
> > Pirsig: This seems too restrictive. It seems to exclude
> > non-subject-object constructions such as symbolic logic, higher
> > mathematics, and computer languages from the intellectual level and
> > gives them no home. Also the term "quality" as used in the MOQ would be
> > excluded from the intellectual level. In fact, the MOQ, which gives
> > intellectual meaning to the term quality, would also have to be
> > excluded
> > from the intellectual level.If we just say the intellect is the
> > manipulation of language-derived symbols for experience, these problems
> > of excessive exclusion do not seem to occur.
> > 
> > Bo: Long before the Lila Squad days, it had puzzled me greatly that
> > Subject/Object metaphysics may be viewed as the intellectual level of
> > MOQ! I even raised the question in a letter to Pirsig, but he did not
> > respond.
> > Pirsig: I don't remember not responding, so it must have been an
> > oversight. I don't think the subject-object level is identical with
> > intellect. Intellect is simply thinking, and one can think without
> > involving the subject-object relationship. Computer language is not
> > primarily structured into subjects and objects. Algebra has no subjects
> > and objects.
> > 
 		 	   		  
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