[MD] knowledge

[david buchanan]

dmb said to Steve:

I think you're trying to understand these issues from within SOM. I mean, the distinction between what there is (ontology) and how we can know it (epistemology) assumes a distinction between reality and experience that the radical empiricist has rejected already.


Steve replied:

... I do think that epistemology always takes a dististinction between knower and known for granted. Epistemology does not need to be SOM in taking the subject-object ontological distinction as fundamental and given by reality, but I think it is always "SOE" (subject-object epistemology) in taking the subject-object distinction as a useful one for the purpose of talking about how we may be justified in believing what we believe. I think saying SOE is redundant since epistemology always includes SO. ... if we are doing epistemology, I can't see how we are not using the concepts of knower and known. ...


dmb says:

Maybe you think this is just a game of "gotcha" but I'm telling you that you will never understand the MOQ until you drop this definition of epistemology. Again, to say that epistemology ALWAYS includes subject and objects is like saying astronomy ALWAYS includes the search for crystalline spheres. Again, you and Rorty are defining the question in terms of the failed answer. See, the difference is that Rorty defines epistemology in terms of SOM and then refuses to do epistemology. Pirsig and James reject SOM, not epistemology. Big difference. Please allow me to present my evidence again, since you deleted from your reply as is your habit. You scoundrel, you.

"A casual reader may think James is careless in the way in which he shifts from 'experience' to 'reality' but this is NOT a sign of loose terminology or confusion. It reflects James's doctrine of 'pure experience' where the traditional distinctions between 'experience' and 'reality' are broken down." (Burkhardt's emphasis, p. xxvi)

"The story of modern epistemology, which can be written in terms of a refinement of questions concerning what is 'in' the mind and what is 'outside', is the story of implausible answers to a poorly formulated query. The dichotomy which is taken as so obvious between consciousness or mind and what is 'outside' of our minds is completely specious. There is only a continuous reality or experience which we TAKE in different ways." (Burkhardt's emphasis, xxvii)

"The very existence of subject and object themselves is deduced from the Quality event. The Quality event is the cause of subjects and objects, which are then mistakenly presumed to be the cause of Quality!" (ZAMM 239) 

"Now it comes! Because Quality is the GENERATOR of the mythos. That's it. That's what he meant when he said, 'Quality is the continuing stimulus which causes us to create the world in which we live. All of it. Every last bit of it'. Religion isn't invented by man. Men are invented by religion. Men invent RESPONSES to Quality, and among these are responses is an understanding of what they themselves are."  


Steve replied:


I take the above to be irrelevent here because it is about ontology rather than epistemology.


dmb says:

Oh, please. We can hardly talk about one without talking about the other. And the Burkhardt quotes (that you deleted) explain why that is especially true for the radical empiricist, who rejects ontological dualism in order to reformulate epistemology as something that is NOT about the relations between those rejected ontological categories. To break down these distinctions is thee central idea in radical empiricism.



Steve said:
As I've said before, I think radical empiricism is useful for making this attack on subject-object ontology, but is not useful for epistemology--answering the question, as you put it, "how we can know it." I think we can drop the "it" by saying something like "how we can be justified in our beliefs" (a formulation that avoids correspondence notions of truth) but never the "we" when talking about epistemology.


dmb says:

It attacks the subject-object ontology precisely because such a dualism creates an artificial concept of what knowledge is. That is the picture in which the correspondence theory makes sense, in which there is a gap between the subject's experience and the objective reality he wants to know about. This is what radical empiricism rejects as an artificial conception of the relation between knower and known which all sorts of theories had to be invented to overcome. Those were epistemological theories, of course, and radical empiricism is overturning all that. With the rejection of SOM, everything changes. Words like "truth", "reality", "experience" and "epistemology" can no longer be understood in terms of SOM or if they are, you'll be totally confused as to the meaning of radical empiricism and the MOQ. And it certainly doesn't help that you're trying to get at this through the eyes of Rortyism because he does understand those words in terms of SOM. 

Oh, and I think it's quite all right to use terms like "it", "we", "I" and other normal words when discussing these things. It might be possible to express that ideas without using any such terms but it would probably result in some very strange sentences. Using such terms does not entail any ontological commitments, especially when you use them to talk about the rejection of certain commitments. 


dmb said:

... Instead of having a knower and a thing to be known, the central distinction is between two kinds of knowing, between two kinds of experience, namely dynamic and static. There is the stream of experience and then there are the conceptual buckets we TAKE from it. Subjects and objects are in the buckets. Conversation, intersubjective agreement and all our vocabularies are in the buckets too. Even the MOQ, as a system of ideas, can only be so many buckets from the stream.


Steve replied:

You still haven't gotten around the "we" that is doing the taking even though "we"'s ontological status is demoted in this image of knowing as merely "in the buckets." My point is still, if "we" weren't part of this imagine of knowing at all, we couldn't be said to be talking about knowledge.


dmb says:

Well, the idea is that we "knowers" are not ontologically distinct from what can be "known". What's known is experience. How can "we" be ontologically distinct from our own experience? Again, for the radical empiricist reality is not the cause of our experience, it IS our experience. The distinction between pure experience and conceptual experience is the distinction between Dynamic Quality and static quality. That defines the limits of reality. The idea of an external physical environment is just that, an idea. Yes, it's a very good idea most of the time. It has great pragmatic value and that's why SOM can be counted as one of the paintings in our pluralistic gallery of truth. It agrees with experience and it works, but there is a downside and when you think it is the very structure of reality rather than just a good idea and you want to develop a theory of truth with that as your basic assumption, then you've got serious problems.
 

Steve said:

What I think is gained for epistemology in dropping the subject-object ontological picture is the idea that we don't HAVE to do epistemology, i.e. take the knower/known relationship for granted. When we find problems with our epistemological ideas (some Platypi), we can go back and question the hypothesis of the believer that lies behind all our epistemological ideas which was accepted only for the sake of argument to see how far it goes. This is where Matt's comment that "I think we have...reason to think that Pirsig goes back and forth [between epistemology and ontology] as the occasion demands."



dmb says:

Not sure what you're saying here but it's pretty clear that ontology and epistemology go together and are interrelated, for example the way the correspondence theory is about getting the subject's beliefs to correspond with the objective reality. Naturally, if you reject the idea that the former is a different kind of thing than the latter, then there is no epistemic gap between them and the question of knowledge or truth MUST be framed differently. The meaning of the "truth" will no longer be conceived in terms of "objective" truth or "eternal" truth or any kind of "Truth" with a capital "T". Instead, "truth" has a practical, empirical, operational, functional, instrumental meaning and it is tested and justified only in those terms. It no longer has anything to do with representing reality or mirroring reality. Now it's about working in reality. It adds to reality. It's something we make for a purpose and is considered good and true to the extent that it serves that purpose. This doesn't mean we're off the hook with respect to coherence, logic, evidence or any else like that, of course, because that's very much part of what it means for an idea to "work". I mean, intellectual truths are just as operational as truths we use for motorcycle maintenance even though the tools aren't as heavy.


Usually, ontology is going to come first. That's where the ground is, so to speak, for epistemology. Or, if you start with epistemology the questions quickly turn to the conditions that make experience possible and that brings you right back to ontology again. But James and Pirsig don't get on that merry-go-round. Dynamic Quality is not a thing or a substance. Pirsig says it is an event. He calls it the primary empirical reality and the cutting edge of experience, right? Likewise, James begins with a "world" of pure experience, which is not yet mind nor matter. For these guys, undifferentiated (pre-conceptual) experience is as close as you get to a ground, as close as you get to an ontology. For these guys, ontological categories are always going to be secondary and conceptual. This picture makes it harder to reify our conceptual understandings, and I think that is all that ontologies have ever been; reifications. We invent these abstractions and then mistake them for ontological or existential realities. I think the radical empiricism also goes against what Pirsig calls the metaphysics of substance. Substance, especially the physical kind, is one of those gods that most still worship but these guys know it's a ghost. 



 		 	   		  
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