[MD] Reading & Comprehension

[skutvik at online.no]

DMB, All. 

11 May you quoted  a lot of philosophers allegedly having rejected 
SOM and you conclude (I must begin with the end to make sense  :  

> If SOM and the intellectual level are identical, then how would it be
> possible for all four of these philosophers to reject it for
> intellectual reasons? 

Phaedrus rejected SOM for Quality reasons and so did "these 
philosophers", but they brought it no further. 

> Doesn't prove that Bo's position is untenable? I think so. SOL is RIP
> and Bo is a no go, bro. 

These philosophers knew no S/O metaphysics the way Pirsig presents 
it in ZAMM - a world view having arrived at a point in history and 
subsumed Good by " ...converting it to a rigid, immobile Immortal 
Truth" and further - in LILA - presented a new world view which in turn 
subsumes SOM by making "immortal Truth" - i.e. intellect -  into its 
own highest static Good. 

The point is that it's no great feat to criticize the S/O  but without a new 
metaphysics where the S/O is subsumed it's stillborn, I can come up 
many more S/O critics but - as said - without a system which provides 
a place for the S/O it leads nowhere.      

dmb quotes Hildebrand:
 
> "Realists and idealists assume that subject and object are discrete
> and then debate which term deserves first rank. Dewey assumes that
> what is primary is the whole situation - 'subject' and 'object' have
> no a priori, atomistic existences but are themselves DERIVED from
> situations to serve certain purposes, usually philosophical" (Beyond
> Realism and Antirealism, p27).

Yes, what I repeatedly have said about intellect's (as SOM) eternal 
see-saw.  

> "The first great pitfall from which such a radical standing by
> experience will save us is and artificial conception of the relation
> between knower and known. Throughout the history of philosophy the
> subject and object have been treated as absolutely discontinuous
> entities; thereupon the presence of the latter to the former, or the
> 'apprehension' by the former of the latter, has assumed a paradoxical
> nature which all sort of theories had to be invented to overcome"
> (James, A World of Pure Experience, p 27).

Can't find better preliminaries for a rebellion against the S/O, but it 
peters out here,  where is the realization of S/O as SOM and the 
alternative Metaphysics that will subsume it? 

> It probably goes without saying, but Dewey is rejecting SOM and
> conceiving the primary reality in terms of "the whole situation"
> rather than anything dualistic. The "whole situation" is whole
> precisely because it is as yet undifferentiated into thought and
> thing, knower and known, subject and object, etc.. Those kinds of
> intellectual distinctions or differentiations are derived from the
> whole situation, and this whole situation is what James calls pure
> experience or the immediate flux of life.

OK, Dewey and James may have started on a new metaphysical 
system where "the whole situation" and/or the "immediate flux" may be 
likened to DQ and what spawns the subject/object distinction , but in 
ZAMM the SOM history was told and in the proto-moq it was called 
INTELLECT and  in LILA made into highest static quality level and 
thus the necessary "subsuming act" was performed.

You'll notice that this is the SOL interpretation, i.e the way Phaedrus 
would have completed the MOQ had he lived. And had you been 
honest you would have to admit that it is the only viable interpretation.

> As James puts it, in the moment of pure experience "its phases
> interpenetrate and no points, either of distinction or of identity can
> be caught. Pure experience in this state is but another name for
> feeling or sensation [aesthetic value]. But the flux of it no sooner
> comes than it tends to fill itself with emphases, and these salient
> parts become identified and fixed and abstracted; so that experience
> now flows as if shot through with adjectives and nouns and
> prepositions and conjunctions [static patterns].

I have nothing against good old James' presentation of "DQ", but his 
contention that what "solidifies" is concepts or abstracts is deeply 
wrong and Pirsig took a fatal turn by embracing that. As you correctly 
say above S/O is the "thought/thing, knower/known, subject and 
object" even if you had added "concepts/what is conceptualized, 
abstracts/what is abstracted " it too would have been correct. Check 
your facts!      

You conclusion again.  
 
> If SOM and the intellectual level are identical, then how would it be
> possible for all four of these philosophers to reject it for
> intellectual reasons? 

Look ar the top. The intellectual level as SOM was rejected for Quality 
reasons!

> Doesn't prove that Bo's position is untenable? I think so. SOL is RIP
> and Bo is a no go, bro. 

Maybe Andre will swallow this, but not the true philosophers of this  
site. The SOL is gaining on your ... whatever it's called 


Bodvar