[MD] Intellectual Level

[MarshaV]

On Dec 31, 2010, at 3:25 AM, MarshaV wrote:

> 
> On Dec 30, 2010, at 8:41 PM, ARLO J BENSINGER JR wrote:
> 
>> [Marsha again]
>> "Pirsig uses the term ‘subject-object metaphysics’ (SOM) for any
>> metaphysics (explicitly or implicitly) that perceives reality as either mind
>> and/or matter such as idealism, materialism, and dualism. " (MoQ Textbook)  
>> 
>> [Arlo]
>> I see nothing here at all about language "implicitly suggest[ing] a
>> subject-object metaphysical underpinning". (Nor do I see anything about
>> "grammar rules").
>> 
>> Instead, its just as I've said from the beginning. "SOM" is a very particular
>> metaphysical orientation regarding the primacy of subjects and objects (such as
>> "idealism, materialism, and dualism").
> 
> Marsha:
> To you it is just as you've said, not to me.  Since this discussion is not to the 
> death of one or another concept we'll have to live with the difference.  Thanks 
> for your time.    


David R. Loy writes of Nagarjuna's Chapter 2 in the MKK:

"In chapter 2, perhaps we see the problem most clearly by inquiring into the status of that-which-moves: in itself, is it a mover or not? Neither answer makes sense. For a mover to then be moving would be redundant ("a second motion"), and a non-mover moving is a contradiction. In contemporary analytic terms, we might say that Naagaarjuna is pointing out a flaw in the ordinary language we use in describing (and hence in our ways of thinking about) motion and rest: our ascription of motion predicates to substantive objects is actually unintelligible. In everyday life we constantly fudge this, sometimes assuming that things exist apart from their predicates and at other times identifying things with their predicates (a good example is the relationship between me and "my" body). Naagaarjuna's dialectics demonstrates this inconsistency simply by distinguishing clearly between the possibilities. It may be that this tendency to distinguish substance from attribute reflects the inherent dualism of language: a statement predicates something about something, for learning a language is learning what things there are (nouns correspond to things) and what these things do (verbs correspond to actions and processes) or have (adjectives correspond to attributes). But that such a dualism is widespread and even in a certain sense necessary (the "lower truth") does not make it a correct description of the way things really are ("the higher truth"), according to Nagaarjuna."

http://ccbs.ntu.edu.tw/FULLTEXT/JR-PHIL/ew91342.htm

 
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