[MD] Radical Empiricism and Psychological Nominalism

[118]

Hi Matt,
You are quite right, the tone was negative.  I do this more as a
provocative stance than anything else.  I will agree with you that the
direction of Western Thought is not necessarily negative, just
incomplete.  I appreciate the bridges that have been built by people
such as W. James (whom I have read the most) to provide a more
holistic picture.  So, take my comments in the light of being a bit
extreme simply for rhetorical reasons.

There is certainly a balance between the individual and the society
which needs to be struck.  We tend to overshoot it in both ways.  I
don't consider this as unusual since this wave-like behavior of events
can be found in many disciplines.  For example the predator prey
balance is always overshooting and in constant flux.  So, it is not so
much taking wrong turns, it is getting stuck in a path which deviates
a bit too far.  The recent interest in Eastern Philosophies during the
1900's and continuing is part of the balancing.  A similar note has
been in discussion in terms of the tenacity of academics to stay with
the tried and true.

Certainly any philosophy which attempts to rectify through a holistic
approach through the rejection of the mind/matter dichotomy is not
unusual.  Some philosophies do this by removing the subjective
entirely (Buddhism), others remove the objective side (mystics such as
Eckhart).  This of course becomes a frame of mind which has a hard
time under rational inquiry.  This may indeed be a red herring, but
I'll have to ponder that one.  The unification of one with all seems
to be an endeavor coming from human experience.  It is hard to dismiss
such attempts as meaningless.

So, I get to the fork in the road, which is not so much a fork, but
oversteering.  For me it is not so much the language aspect of SOM, or
even the concept of it.  It is the relationship of oneself with one's
awareness.  There needs to be some kind of balance there.  Being
defined by that within and by that without.  The holistic sense of
Quality provides that.  Quality exists at all stages, and choices are
being made throughout.

I spent some time reading Wittgenstein when I was on my language kick.
 He rejected his own notions of the limits of awareness being
language, and seemed to settle more into specifics rather than
generalities about language.  There is no doubt that language has
subtle power over our sense of being.  One can define language as
everything, but this does not seem to add much to the concept.  So the
notion of language all the way down, could perhaps be expressed as
molecular activity all the way up.  Or if we want to get into modern
physics we could call it probability wave functions throughout.


Cheers,
Mark


On Mon, Dec 13, 2010 at 5:15 PM, Matt Kundert
<pirsigaffliction at hotmail.com> wrote:
>
> Hi Mark,
>
> You tell an interesting story, very similar to the one I would tell, but
> while yours is more or less a downbeat story about how Western
> philosophy keeps taking wrong turns since the ancient Greeks, I
> would tell a more or less parallel story, but upbeat, about how
> Western philosophy keeps taking, eventually, the right turns in order
> to create what we have now.  For example, a lot of what you say
> about communication and social aspects and whatnot I could agree
> with on a philosophical level: the social constrains the individual.
> The only difference is that you give it a very negative spin ("the
> social dominates the individual"), whereas I would give it a positive
> spin (e.g., there would be no individual without the social).
>
> Perhaps the crux can be found when you say, "the critical point as I
> see it, is that we have chosen to define the internal with the external.
> The more holistic approach would be to define the external with the
> internal."  I don't think that's right.  I know exactly what you are
> saying when you imply that "psychological nominalism" attempts to
> define the internal (consciousness) with the external (language),
> and that you wish to go the other direction.  However, I take it be
> the mark of the "holistic approach" to be the _rejection_ of the
> distinction between external and internal at this level of
> philosophical abstraction.  And when one takes into account the
> purposes towards which, e.g., Sellars and Rorty were deploying a
> slogan like "all consciousness is a linguistic affair," then it becomes
> more difficult to tell what the difference is that makes a difference
> between an anti-Platonism that seems to reduce internal to external,
> or external to internal: because when the chips are down, the only
> reason a holist would risk the appearance of reduction is because
> they are banging against what Dewey called that whole nest and
> brood of Greek dualisms.  Because I take it that Pirsig, when he
> rejects the S/O dilemma in ZMM, is saying that the real "fork in the
> road," as you put it, is _not_ the subjective/objective distinction,
> such that you're willing to say that "experience as subjective
> creates the objective."  That, I think, is a red herring.
>
> Matt
>
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