[MD] TiTs and the Illusion of SOM

[david buchanan]

Krimel said to dmb:
... you keep raising the same issues, like this one [SOM], over and over and when I address them you just re-raise them again later and I re-address them and... rinse and repeat.  So here is my response from a previous incarnation of this discussion on 8/22/2008 under the Subject TiTs. I have edited it a bit here but not much. While is not completely about SOM it touches on some other areas of our ongoing dispute about the nature of sensation, perception and conception.


dmb says:

Sorry, Krimel, but your response from 8/22/08 does absolutely nothing to convince me that you have grasped the problem. SOM is a philosophical problem and you are trying to address it by way of physiology. I'm not saying you are wrong about the physiology. I'm simply saying that such an explanation does not address the problem of SOM. In fact, what you've presented is basically a blend of 18th empiricism with contemporary science. 
There are a few spots where you parrot the description of SOM but I can tell by the context that you don't really know what it means. You haven't address SOM as a philosophical problem or radical empiricism as a solution to that problem at all. Your answer would have been great if somebody had asked you to explain Hume's empiricism in contemporary physiological terms. The problem is, Hume was a SOMer and his empiricism and is rejected as such by radical empiricism.

Also, you are trying to refute the notion of undivided experience by pointing out that the sense organs use separate pathways and this, you think, means that experience is not a unity or a whole. I wish you could see these moves from my perspective because it seems that no matter how many times I try to explain it, you don't see how irrelevant that it. You think you've addressed the issue or refuted my claims and I'm trying to tell you that your refutation of my claim is simply not related to my claim. The undivided experience is undivided only in the sense that it is not yet conceptualized, in the sense that concepts have not divided it. This has nothing to do with weather or not the sense organs work independently or in concert. That's just not part of the dispute and the claim does not depend on those facts. 

This is about where you accuse me of ignoring science. I'm not. I'm saying that you need to understand the difference between philosophy and science. SOM is a philosophical problem and the solution offered by James and Pirsig does nothing to alter the practice of science. They get very close insofar as they are doing philosophy of science but for both of them, facts are facts and science is an empirically based system that that any radical empiricist fully endorses. 

And then there is your actual position. You've basically dished up a slightly softened version of the brain-mind identity theory, which would explain why you got so nasty at my refutation of that the other day in a post to DT. This theory is the epitome of reductionistic scientific materialism, which is essentially THEE SOM disease and the central target of the MOQ. Since you embrace the MOQ's central enemy and refute the MOQ's claims from that perspective, I think it's only reasonable to conclude that you really don't understand what the problem is. 

You got as close as you ever get when you said, "SOM is also Pirsig's version of the long standing mind/body dualism debate wherein mental substance and physical substance are two irreducible forms of "stuff" which mysteriously interact but are not dependant on each other". But all you've said is that subjects and objects are two kinds of substances. But that's not what I'm asking you to think about or to understand. Why is that a problem? What's wrong with thinking that way? And how does the re-conceptualization of these categories solve that problem. That's what you're NOT talking about. That's what you're not addressing and that's what I keep bringing up. If we're ever going to have a fruitful conversation about radical empiricism, you cannot avoid this. 

"The first great pitfall from which such a radical standing by experience 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. Representative theories put a mental 'representation,' 'image,' or 'content' into the gap, as a sort of intermediary. Common-sense theories left the gap untouched, declaring our mind able to clear it by a self-transcending leap. Transcendentalist theories left it impossible to traverse by finite knowers, and brought an Absolute in to perform the saltatory act. All the while, in the very bosom of the finite experience, every conjunction required to make the relation intelligible is given in full."


The "representative theories" he refers to are the theories of traditional empiricism, sensory empiricism. You are basically refuting James's attack on SOM with an SOM defense, even while you deny that there is such a thing. This is another instance where I can only conclude that you don't understand what the problem is. This so eludes you that you get angry at my objections and take them as some kind of unfair dirty trick. But even when you're being careful and trying to demonstrate your understanding, I still see no evidence of comprehension. 

Just in terms of your pride, this is not going to go down easy. That's why you're such a prick about it all the time. You just can't believe there's something you don't understand properly. Well, believe it. A lot of people have misunderstood this stuff over the last century and you won't be the last either. I remember being baffled and getting angry and thinking those other guys were talking crazy nonsense. But then Paul Turner helped me out and then I went back to school. It took work and time but I did change my mind about what this stuff meant and now there is a whole range of material that I can read with almost total comprehension, stuff that would have made no sense to me otherwise. I mean, I know what you're doing because I did it too. Been there, done that, you know?


Maybe you could just do a fake it til you make it kind of thing. Tell yourself that you're gonna pretend, just for the sake of argument, that I actually know what I'm saying when I talk about this stuff. It's not that crazy of an idea, you know? I know it offends you, but Pirsig is not the only one who thinks I get this stuff. The author of the Guidebook to ZAMM, the guy who teaches pragmatism of my university and the director of the graduate program are all on my thesis committee and they've not only signed off, they're all pretty psyched about it. I think its just unrealistic that they could all be wrong where you are right. I mean, this pretended trust doesn't take a huge leap of faith. It would only take a decent respect for the opinions of people who are in a position to have an opinion. On top of that, nasty just isn't working. Not unless your aim is to be disliked.