[MD] Schroedinger's paradox

[Krimel]

[dmb said to John McConnell]
The problem is predicated on the assumptions of subject-object metaphysics
and the correspondence theory of truth that goes so neatly with those
assumptions. The MOQ rejects those assumptions and it rejects the
correspondence theory of truth. In fact, anyone who subscribes to
pragmatism, which is a theory of truth, is by definition rejecting the
correspondence theory of truth and the metaphysical assumptions that go with
it.

[Krimel jumped in:}
James does not reject the assumption that concepts must conform to
perception. He states quite clearly that concepts arise from and are subject
to percepts. ... James doesn't reject the assumptions of correspondence
theory. He  adds to them that ideas must hang together. They must cohere.
Truth is a network of ideas resonating in harmony. Truth must ring true.
...We might disagree about what gives rise to our sense data, but to the
extent that two or more find mutual harmony in their shared accounts,
objectivity emerges.

[dmb says:]
I'm pretty sure that you're mixing up some things here, Krimel. The idea
that "concepts must conform to perception" is NOT the correspondence theory
and it's not exactly James's view either. 

On the pragmatist's account, ideas are true to the extent that they agree
with experience. He wants to put it that way because "conformity to
perception" wouldn't be wrong, exactly, but it would be too narrow. Unlike
traditional forms of empiricism, the pragmatist's conception of empirical
experience includes perceptions but is not limited to them. Any kind of
experience counts as empirical reality. And so it is with Pirsig too. As you
may recall, Pirsig's complaint about the positivists (old-school empiricism)
was the they we not empirical enough, that they excluded all kinds of
experience and they did so for metaphysical reasons.

[Krimel]
So you are saying that ideas (concepts) are true to the extent that they
conform to experience (percepts) but this is a denial of a correspondence
theory of truth. It sounds more like a quibble over what it is concepts must
correspond to. As signifiers concepts stand for or point to what is
signified. This is the sign relation. But Saussure in his formulation of
semiotics is careful to note that what is signified is not an object in the
world but an internal perceptual state. While James and others may modify,
restate or otherwise embellish a correspondence theory of truth I don't
think anyone completely dismisses it and your exaggeration of James'
modifications does service to neither Pirsig nor his disciple James.

[dmb]
In the philosophological business, there is a relatively subtle but
important difference between phenomenalism and phenomenology. In both cases,
they stick to the "subjective" side. They suspend or bracket out the
objective and focus on the phenomenal realities but the phenomenalist
retains the narrower conception of experience, i.e. sensory experience,
whereas the phenomenologist has a broader conception of experience and so
includes experiences beyond the five senses. Feelings, moods, attitudes, and
all that fuzzy stuff that old school empiricism would dismiss as unimportant
or irrelevant. They say that if phenomenology had taken off in America,
James would be considered the father of American phenomenology. His
Varieties of Religious Experience, for example, is phenomenological.
Religious experience, mystical experience, epiphanies and the like, for
example, do not come through the senses and yet they can be profoundly
life-altering. That's how the phenomenology is broader
  than phenomenalism. The phenomenalist is unlikely to say much about
objective reality but he does retain the narrow conception of experience
and that's what distinguishes him from the phenomenologist. These days,
"phenomenology" has come to mean any carefully constructed first-person
account so that you'll see stuff like "the phenomenology of going to the
movies", the "phenomenology of sailing", and this can certainly include
what's seen and heard but such accounts will always go beyond the senses and
they try to capture "what it's like" to have this or that experience. They
try to capture the experiential qualities of a given experience. 

[Krimel]
Nietzsche's argument for the Dionysian is a call for an embraces of the
sensual. Husserl points to the Crisis in the European Sciences as a stemming
from the abandonment of emotion via the mathematization of nature. Much of
the philosophy of the last century flowing through Husserl, Heidegger,
Merleau-Ponty, Polanyi and Kuhn was about recapturing and reincorporating
the affective and embodied aspects of life. But thanks for the primer. 
Husserlian phenomenology begins with the phenomenological reduction. As you
say, the bracketing or setting aside of all assumptions and preconceptions.
It is a theoretical return to the preconceptual. In this reduction Husserl
hopes to recapture the apodictic experience of man's original insights. For
example the sort of self-evidence Socrates illustrates by showing the slave
boy the Pythagorean theorem.  
Emotion is required for meaning to be made and yet especially in the highly
digitized form of written communication, emotion is filtered out, it is lost
in the transduction of the analog signified into digital conceptual chunks.
The written word is lyric deprived of melody. When we speak we sing. This is
why Heidegger says poetry is a purer form of meaning making than philosophy
or science.

[dmb]
But the difference between the pragmatic theory of truth and the
correspondence theory of truth is not so subtle. That's where subject-object
metaphysics (and the pragmatist's rejection of it) comes in. That's the
basic assumption underlying the correspondence theory of truth, wherein the
subject has the true idea if that idea corresponds with objective reality. 

[Krimel]
Objective reality is purely a matter of what we can say or transmit about
experience that produces a similar resonance in another. I am weary of
quoting Bohr on this point. This can only succeed to the extent that we can
encode and decode our experiences with any degree of overlap. Again the
issue of correspondence is central, whichever signifiers you chose to use.

[dmb]
This is a metaphysics of substance, wherein subjects and objects are
conceived as distinct entities or as distinct ontological categories, as two
distinctly different kinds of stuff, and the trick is for the former to gain
knowledge about the latter. This the basic assumption that not only
underwrites the positivist's (the most extreme example), but the major stars
of philosophy too; Descartes, Hume, Kant, and just about any kind of
scientific materialism. In fact, this is one of the main reasons that James
moved from psychology to philosophy.
[snip]
You're not going to see this very well in James's "Principles of
Psychology". His work as a psychologist raised a lot of questions about the
Cartesian self and subject-object metaphysics and the answers don't get
developed and articulated until he leaves that science behind and moves on
to philosophy. I suspect your impression of James comes from that earlier
phase of his life. 

[Krimel]
My account of James' ideas about concepts and percepts comes from one of his
last works "Some Problems in Philosophy" it is the only work that Pirsig
"quotes" specifically. (I put quotes in quotes because Pirsig misquotes it.)
It is interesting to note however, that in his Principles of Psychology and
his discussions of the self, he frequently speaks directly to the work of
Brentano and his major work "Psychology from and Empirical Standpoint."
Brentano's ideas devolved into introspection in psychology and phenomenology
in philosophy. Husserl was a student of Brentano's. James admittedly and
specifically employs introspection as a method but recognizes its
limitations. You must also recognize that James' personal notions of truth
are so open ended as to include psychic powers, gods, mysticism and whatever
clutters blows through. 
A mind without filters smothers in kipple.