[MD] now it comes

[david buchanan]

Krimel said to dmb:
...The world of experience and of consciousness is continuous not discrete. Why do you feel the need to forcefully repeat arguments I have already made? Shouldn't it be clear but now that we are not disagreeing about this? ... Fuck this I am skipping the boring and irrelevant quotefest. Seriously Dave! Maybe you could skip the feigned outrage and my alleged insincerity and just answer simple questions in your own words.  Radical empiricism, blah, blah, radical empiricism, blah, blah, blah... You stick to a single line of thought, trapped in the first quarter of the last century. ... But maybe a restatement of the question would help. You claim that James claims that SOM is "just" a concept derived from experience. I claim that anything we say is a concept derived from experience. My question is how should we decide among concepts?


dmb says:

You're skipping the quotefest and screaming "fuck you" at radical empiricism (blah, blah, blah) but you're also demanding an answer?

Well, dude, that was your answer. Your question doesn't really make any sense and I'm not claiming what you say I'm claiming in the preface to your question. So all I can do is try to explain what SOM actually means to James, why he saw it as a problem to be overcome. There is no way to avoid radical empiricism in explaining that because his attack on SOM is laid out in the essays on radical empiricism. 

And of course this is extremely relevant to the MOQ because it's identical to Pirsig's attack on SOM. If you want to know why the MOQ is a better idea than SOM, then you first have to understand what James's claims actually mean. That's what I was trying to help you with. I used quotes and sprinkled some comments to help you read and understand them, or at least understand how I'm reading them. If that isn't good enough for you, then I really don't know what could be good enough. I'm not saying it was anything more than a good start, which might have prompted an actual conversation - god forbid. But how you can dismiss it as a boring and irrelevant quotefest is beyond me. 

I repeat this stuff because you're not getting it. I was sticking to this line of thought because that's what you asked about. It seems to me that the clearest and best supported explanations are the ones that make you the angriest. That's one of the reasons I doubt your sincerity. It seems you ask questions but always dismiss the answer. In the course of our conversations in a long-term view, how many times have your responses actually duplicated and/or directly addressed the textual evidence I provide? How many times did you pay any real attention to the answers I gave? Not many, that's for sure. Wouldn't surprise me one bit if that NEVER happened. I certainly do not recall any such treatment.

What the first step to take in deciding between two rival concepts? Understanding those concepts, of course. You want to know how James defeats SOM by saying that subjects and objects are just concepts? Read that boring, irrelevant quotefest again, but for real this time.