[MD] Know-how

[Steven Peterson]

Hi DMB,



> Steve:
> Whether you talk about givens or takens, you've still set up a dichotomy between reality and concepts. Aren't concepts a part of reality? When you "take" a bucket of reality, where are you taking to? This is my objection to the analogy that you didn't bother to address. If experience is the stream and if experience is reality, then the buckets in this analogy must must be something not part of reality.
>
> dmb says:
> The bucket holds water. Water flows in the river. Water is reality either way, but one is still derived from the other. We can make distinctions between them even though they are not different "substances" or whatever. Since these buckets of water are concepts, then what does your question mean? Where do we "take" the concepts? "Taken" is just another word for "derived". The "taking" is what makes them concepts in the first place. After that, we use them and test them in the stream. They have to work together. Without DQ nothing can grow and without sq nothing can last.

Steve:
I would take that last bit further and add that without DQ...mu,
without sq...mu. It is a chicken and egg thing.


> DMB said:
> Also, Steve, this thing you think is futile to distinguish. We're talking about the first cut in the MOQ, static and dynamic. The river is flowing and dynamic, the bucket is discrete and static. I think you're missing something very big here, Mr. Peterson.



> Steve replied:
> Really? You can distinguish the static and dynamic aspects of reality in practice? DQ/sq is the the first cut and a clean one as metaphysics, but we've been talking about epistemology here. We are talking about knowledge, and in doing so we are supposing a distinction between a knower (the "taker" with the buckets) and what is known (the stream).
>
>
> dmb says:
>
> What? We are supposing a distinction between knower and known?!? That is SOM and I'm not supposing any such thing. The knower and known are derived from pure experience and so they are in the conceptual buckets, not the pre-conceptual stream. Again, this is an attack on the myth of the given. It replaces SOM. I thought you understood that. You have read Lila, right?


Steve:
You still aren't distinguishing between ontology and epistemology. If
we are talking about epistemology, we are talking about a knower and
known as you were when you say below, "pure experience is never
literally pure. (Except for babies, drug users and meditators, etc..)"



> Steve said:In our moment to moment experience we cannot completely distinguish the static from the dynamic. As soon as we start talking about a person _having_ an experience whether in terms of giving or taking, the dynamic and static aspects of that experiences are conflated to the point that it is impossible to say where the dynamic part ends and the static part begins.
>




> Steve said:
>
> In the above, the buckets are the analogues (later, the static patterns). The stream is DQ, but it is not all of reality, it is only the dynamic aspect of reality. It is constantly defined and never exhausts definition, so it is undefinable. Reality is the collection of all the analogues in addition to the buckets. The buckets aren't something outside of reality that merely take from reality.
>
>
>
>
> dmb says:
>
> I agree.
> Now think about Rorty's position. If conversation within an ethnocentric context is the only constraint, then all we have are buckets.

Steve:
Wrong. Buckets ARE the only constraints on what can count as
justification, but buckets and contraints on inquiry are not
everything we have in the world. They are just our only constraints on
standards for justifying our beliefs. They are all we can appeal to as
warrant. As Pirsig put it "what guarantees the objectivity of the
world in which we live is that this world is common to us with other
thinking beings. Through the communications that we have with other
men we receive from them ready-made harmonious reasonings. We know
that these reasonings do not come from us and at the same time we
recognize in them, because of their harmony, the work of reasonable
beings like ourselves. And as these reasonings appear to fit the world
of our sensations, we think we may infer that these reasonable beings
have seen the same thing as we; thus it is that we know we haven't
been dreaming. It is this harmony, this quality if you will, that is
the sole basis for the only reality we can ever know." Pirsig says
that this sort of intersubjectivity is the only basis knowledge
claims. Rorty obviously agrees.


DMB:
The simply is no stream in this view. If you whisper "primary
empirical reality" or "unconceptualized reality" in the ear of a
Rortyist, he thinks you're talking about reviving the myth of the
given or otherwise making a claim about the subject having direct
access to the objective world of things. He'll take it as a bad faith
effort to reinstate the correspondence theory because, for Rorty,
that's all epistemology ever did and all it can ever be.

Steve:
Right. Epistemology has always been about a knower and what is known.
As the theory of knowledge, what else could it be? I don't know how we
could talk about knowledge without using these concepts, and I don't
think that you are avoiding these concepts at all either as evidenced
by the fact that when you wanted to talk about pure experience you
cited a baby, a meditator, and a drug user as knowers of primary
reality for which there is supposed to be no knower and known. I think
you need to sort out metaphysics (ontology) from epistemology. For
James, radical empiricism is metaphysics, but you keep trying to
assert it as epistemology to say that Rorty is missing something.
Radical empiricism takes you so far as to say that "knower" and
"known" are both concepts or static quality, but when you get into
epistemology we will always be using these concepts in asking what we
can know and what ought to count as justification for knowledge
claims.

Best,
Steve