[MD] The anti-SOM Revolution

[David Morey]

Hi folks

I have almost exclusively emailed about pre-conceptual experience so this is
exactly wrong.
Some say DQ, I have been saying DQ and pre-conceptual SQ and conceptual SQ.

Of course we can reason about what we do not experience or have never
experienced,
I give dinosaurs as a pretty reasonable example, problem for the
creationists and
idealists out there of course. I do not suggest that we can say anything
about what
causes patterns, patterns that we experience. But we can sure name them and
give
them concepts. Now without any thoughts about objects or materials or
substances
we can call a certain pattern we experience 'our toys', we can throw them
out of
our pram and out of our sight, and mummy can give them back to us later. Is
it
reasonable to assert that our toy patterns keep existing whilst they are out
of our
sight and adopt the idea of realism. Seems to me we can adopt realism as a
good idea and not adopt any SOM dualisms about subjects and objects, rather
we are adopting realism about SQ, that patterns come and go from our
experience,
and keep existing, I am pretty confident that DMB is going to read this
email and
suffer all his usual prejudices and failure to follow my reasoning as usual
even
though I have never met him. Now I have no views about him being some sort
of material or substance or subject or object because that is SOM, but
clearly
making sense of my experience and the coming and going of evidence for the
on-going
reality of DMB is perfectly reasonable and realistic, DMB can't seem to do
this
thinking without slipping into SOM (he imagines I said patterns are objects
yet again)
but I find it no problem. Two cheers for non-SOM realism! Yes realism was
part of the
reason that the metaphysical substances are proposed by Descartes, yes I
reject the
metaphysical substances of SOM, not so very hard to see that I am suggesting
we
can nonetheless adopt realism in the MOQ, I think you get into a mess unless
you
do, you are likely to come over all idealistic, yet idealism is a form of
SOM thinking,
only if there is something separate to reject can you think idealism has any
meaning.
Realism without dualism means that you do not have to imagine that there is
some
realm you cannot experience, you can experience anything real, but quite
obviously
we cannot experience everything, we are finite and limited (well maybe DMB
doesn't
think he is), there are experience I have had they you have not and the
other way
round, we can discuss these but no more, we know we have limits, and we know
that people had experienced before we were born, and there were times before
any
human beings, these gaps are obvious and we cannot recognise them.  If the
dead
cat smells terrible it has been dead for some time, and it fell out the tree
when we
were not there. Realism is nothing to do with SOM, SOM is a bad way to
understand
realism, but MOQ can embrace realism in a non-SOM way, easy peasy. Non-SOM
realism, try it you might like it. I know it is harder to understand than
SOM type
idealism, but it gives us an MOQ with less SOM than an idealistic
non-realist
MOQ, that sounds like SOM style postmodernism too. If we recognise other
people with separate experiences from ourselves in MOQ then we have to
adopt realism, otherwise you are making MOQ solipsistic.

David M

-----Original Message----- 
From: david buchanan
Sent: Saturday, May 04, 2013 9:31 PM
To: moq_discuss at moqtalk.org
Subject: [MD] The anti-SOM Revolution


In the thread titled "Putting SOM back into the MOQ by excluding SQ, let's
not do that say some of us,"...

Arlo said to Ron:

I'm beginning to think that until people can show they understand the term
"SOM", posts where they use this term should be flagged.  "SOM" refers to
pre-experiential existence; whether you call that which precedes experience
'objects' or 'patterns' does not matter, it is the PRE-EXPERIENTIAL
assumption that defines SOM, not the use of the word 'object'. We "sink back
to SOM" when we talk about pre-experiential existence. THAT is SOM. THAT is
why the MOQ is different, radically different, when it proposes that ALL
static quality ("patterns") are POST-experiential. In "SOM", 'we' experience
'static quality'. In the MOQ, 'static quality' emerges FROM experience.
These are two radically different views, and THIS is where the "Copernican"
revolution of the MOQ is found.



dmb says:
I think that's exactly right. Apparently, there are quite a few participants
who use the term "SOM" without understanding what it means or why it's a
problem. Since the MOQ is a solution to that problem, it's going to be very
difficult to understand the MOQ unless you have a good handle on the meaning
of SOM.

It's like that old riddle about the sound of unheard trees in the forest. In
order to determine if a tree can exist independently of the mind, we need to
be able to conceive of an unconceived tree. We have to image the sound of
the unheard, the sight of the unseen. Yet as soon as we try to think about
this tree, we have already moved over to the conceptual. So we have failed.
To believe that trees exist outside of the mind, is to say they exist
independently of our perceptions and conceptions, BUT these "objective"
trees-in-themselves, by definition, are impossible to know. Our subjective
ideas about trees are supposed to be true if and only if those ideas
correspond to the "real" trees that exist prior to anyone's experience OF
them. This is incoherent. Truth is what corresponds to realities that can
never be thought, to entities that can never seen or heard? How would that
work? One can reject SOM on the basis of this incoherence alone. Rejecting
SOM is not the same as embracing the MOQ. That rejection is a necessary
first step in getting to the MOQ position - but it's not enough all by
itself.

The two Davids, Marsha, Krimel and lots of other people fall down on this
first, necessary step. They don't fail to grasp this rejection in exactly
the same ways, but in each case they are misusing a very key term. It's not
exactly clear what they have in mind when they use the term "SOM", but it's
quite clear that they don't have the right idea in mind. Morey, for example,
shows this with his contradictory phrase "pre-conceptual pattens", with
which he has attempted to construe static patterns as if they were the
pre-existing independent realities which we may or may not then perceive and
conceptualize. This mistake doesn't take the MOQ on board at all. There is
no real conceptual shift away from SOM but rather It's just a matter of
re-naming the objective realities of SOM. The "objects" of SOM are just
called "static patterns" instead but the problematic metaphysical
assumptions remain unchanged. Marsha's mistake is quite strange. Somehow,
she has concluded that static patterns are false, are illusions, phantoms,
ghosts. Somehow she has misconstrued the rejection of SOM's independent,
pre-existing objects as a rejection of the MOQ's static patterns. Where
Morey says patterns are objects and they're real, Marsha says patterns are
objects and they're not real. These are opposite position yet they both
follow from an inability to properly identify the meaning of SOM and the
problem it presents. And of course the solution won't make any sense to them
unless the problem is understood first.

"Now you can do all this reasoning," Morey insisted, "only if you can
experience pre-conceptual patterns and through culture and concepts make
sense of these. If, as Dan claims, there are no patterns to make conceptual
sense of, there is nothing but flux to make sense of," he said. As I already
pointed out, he is not only asking an ancient question, he is also giving us
an ancient answer. We can't make sense of direct experience as such (DQ)
because it's an undefinable, unpatterned flux, he figures. How could the
flux of experience be ordered and defined if there aren't definable orders
already there waiting to become conceptualized, thus he coins the
contradictory phrase, "pre-conceptual patterns". In the MOQ static patterns
ARE concepts but he converts them into the pre-existing things, as the
objects of conception, like Kant's "things–in–themselves" or like scientific
objects.

Basically, Morey wants to find a determinate reality behind our concepts. He
doesn't see how concepts can make sense of an empirical flux, he then
considers this to be a problem that he's going to solve for us, and his
solution is to construe static patterns as pre-existing things that we
experience and then conceptualize. So, let's take a look at the concept of
"indeterminacy" in relation to philosophy in general and in relation to the
MOQ in particular. Marsha has been misusing this term on the MOQ - with
tragic results.

Generally, the term "indeterminate" just means "uncertain" or "unspecified"
but in philosophy it's used to describe certain epistemological positions
(certain views on the nature of knowledge and truth). The most obvious thing
to say about these "indeterminate" positions is that they oppose the
positions which claim that truth and knowledge can be specifically
determined. The prime example would be SOM, wherein there is an objective
reality that determines what's true. "If subjects and objects are held to be
the ultimate reality," Pirsig says, "then we're permitted only one
construction of things - that which corresponds to the 'objective' world."
Like Plato's Forms or Kant's things-in-themselves, the objective realities
of science serve to "determine" truth in a very exclusive way. There is only
one way to be right because Truth is "determined" by the ultimate reality
beyond appearances. Because these real objects of knowledge determine what's
true, "we're permitted only one construction of things". This is the
position that Pirsig rejects. This is SOM and its correspondence theory of
truth, wherein our concepts are supposed to represent realities as they
really are independently of us. Truth is a correspondence between our mental
images and the real structure of reality. This is what our radical
empiricists are rejecting, shooting down and replacing with something else.
Their answer is quite different. That's why they call it a Copernican
revolution. The MOQ turns this on its head. The Sun is no longer in orbit
and yet it shines just as brightly.

As James explains it, the radical empiricist rejects SOM because it asserts
"an artificial conception of the relations between knower and known,"
insofar as it treats the subject and its object "as absolutely discontinuous
entities". Subjects and objects are taken to be two completely different
kinds of things, taken to be the way reality itself is structured. So James
asks us to re-think the relations between knower and known in a totally new
way and he says everything you need to make this relation intelligible can
be found in experience. The relationship between knower and known is not
between the subjective mind and a mind-independent objective reality but
between one feature of experience and another feature of experience. Subject
and objects are both just concepts and both are derived from "the very bosom
of finite experience". Experience, even though it is not the subject's
experience OF some determinate reality, fully supplies everything "required
to make the relation intelligible."

If a tree falls in the forest, you better get out of the way or you'll be
crushed. If a stove is heated in the kitchen, you better not use it for a
chair or you'll get burned. But we're using concepts like "tree" and "stove"
to refer to actual experiences, not some metaphysical entity that exists
independently of experience. The crushing and burning are not metaphysical
abstractions but particular and concrete experiences and in fact we act or
react even before we're able to name the "things" involved. On a practical
level, the idea of a "thing" totally works. Pragmatically speaking, falling
"trees" will kill you regardless of how you conceptualize it. That's really
what people can't give up, the common sense belief that reality does not
bend to our whims and wishes, the there are real resistances, obstacles and
dangers. This is what keeps us from just believing whatever seems most
pleasant. Without this reality check, nothing can be right or wrong. And
this is true in the MOQ too, but the radical empiricist leans on empirical
reality as such, on experience per se, rather than the metaphysical entities
posited by philosophers. The MOQ is a kind of realism, but reality is
synonymous with the flux of experience, not some pre-existing ontological
structure, not the meeting of minds and physical substances, or anything
like that. In the MOQ, experience IS reality, the primary empirical reality
and it is referred to as a "flux" as "dynamic," because it is the
"predecessor of structure". Our "structured reality" is conceptual and
static but we do not need to suppose that the structure of our thought
mirrors the pre-existing structure of reality. We add this structure, which
is otherwise known in the MOQ as the ghosts of rationality, as the invention
of many marvelous analogies, as static patterns of quality, as concepts
derived from reality. In the MOQ, truth and knowledge do not exist in
relation to a realm beyond our experiences are they are not supposed to
correspond to any fixed and eternal reality. Instead, truth and knowledge
are human constructions derived from experience and they are expected to
grow and evolve just as we do.

Pirsig's "ghost" story is not intended to undermine his own conception of
intellectual static patterns, of course. His aim is to undermine the "law of
gravity" insofar as it is conceived as an eternal feature of the one only
objective reality. When it is taken like that, then there is only one
exclusive truth about gravity and Newton was the guy who discovered what was
always there. Instead, Pirsig says the law was not discovered but invented.
It was invented to explain things like falling apples but the apples don't
care one way or the other. They fell from trees long before Newton was born
and when Newton's law of gravity is replaced by a better idea, falling
apples will still just do what they do.