Greetings,
I have just been reading the 'problems with the moq' on MF with interest,
having found myself 'drinking white rum in a Portuguese bar' with an
afternoon to fill. I blame Bob Dylan myself. There is a lot left out, but I
thought I should focus upon my old favourite, especially in the light of
Diana's view that denying SOM simply demonstrates ignorance. When one starts
from the premise that a very highly regarded Oxford metaphysician, for
example, is ignorant about his own subject, one simply exposes either one's
own ignorance or at least one's simplistic grasp of the critique.
DIANA:
"Those that say there's no such thing as the SOM are just demonstrating
their own ignorance. Anyway it was answered when it was topic of the month
and I've yet to see anyone challenge that. I think the only problem is that
Pirsig didn't explain it enough. If you've already read Descartes then it's
obvious, but not everyone has."
Let us, then, be clear about what constitutes the strawman argument, as it
has, ironically, been reduced to a strawman itself. The argument is not that
there is no subject-object dichotomy and it is even less that there is no
truth or value whatsoever in isolating this one particular aspect of human
psychology in order to throw light upon something else. Rather, the strawman
argument is that a position of an opponent is cleverly twisted into an
insubstantial and highly simplistic caricature of its target, in order that
it be shown to be flawed, thus giving credence to a second position. It is
this symbiotic, contingent relationship which is so damaging to the moq. The
subtlety of the strawman constructor is that he or she can, because of the
partial truth inherent in their position, pretend that it is obviously true
to the undiscerning, or lazy, reader, thus stifling dissent. And that nobody
should challenge the 'answer' to the strawman critique on a forum infested
with Pirsigophiles is hardly surprising really, now is it? But let me
redress the balance for a few moments.
When Diana presents the Cambridge Dictionary of Philosophy:
"A subject-object dichotomy is acknowledged in most Western traditions, but
emphasised especially in Continental philosophy, beginning with Kant, and
carrying through idealist thought in Fichte, Schelling, Hegel and
Schopenhauer. It is also prominent in internationalist philosophy, in the
empirical psychology of Bretano, the object theory of Meinong, Ernst Mally,
and Twardowski, and the transcendental phenomenology of Husserl."
she places the dichotomy in proper perspective. But, just one sentence
later, the 'dichotomy' has become an exclusive 'metaphysics' with no
indication as to why. Suffice to say that this paragraph constitutes scant
evidence for SOM, which is, should it need pointing out, supposed to be a
metaphysics not one type of psychological phenomena.
But enough! Who cares what the dictionary says? Let us look at what Pirsig
writes when he tells us about SOM, then we can see if he has invented it to
prop up his own theory. At its deepest level SOM is seen to be the position
that:
"All the universe is composed of subjects and objects and anything that
can't be classified as a subject or object isn't real" (pg121).
and that:
SOM initially slices everything up into subjects and objects (pg131).
Just to make sure that I am being fair, can we agree that this is the
fundamental difference between the MOQ and SOM? That SOM makes its first cut
of undifferentiated experience between subjects and objects, while the MOQ
cuts undifferentiated experience into dynamic and static quality, the result
being that SOM only recognises subjects and objects thus excluding much that
the MOQ recognises as real?
If that is the case, (and Pirsig has re-iterated that this is the case many
times) then I have proved empirically that nobody I have questioned on this
matter subscribes to SOM and you can try the same experiment that I
conducted with my philosophy students yourself if you so wish. I would
predict that were everybody in the world to be asked this question, not one
person could be shown to follow SOM and that this simple question is
therefore sufficient to expose the strawman completely.
Question: "What is laughter?"
Now, if Pirsig is correct, our whole being, upbringing and metaphysical
understanding (whether we are aware of it or not) will inexorably lead us to
say that it is either a subject, or an object, or unreal. Of course, I am
not claiming that we would all use those words, but clearly these would be
the underlying concepts.
The most common answer in practice (try it) is that laughter is 'what people
do when they find something funny' and a perfectly good answer that is as
far as it goes. Now, press on with the questioning.
Question: "Let us take your own laughter as it is what you know best. Is it
an object?"
Answer: "No, of course not."
Question: "Then is it a subject?"
Answer: "How can it be?" or "Now you are being silly" or simply a blank look
at how stupid the question is.
Question: "Is it real?"
Answer: "Of course."
Now if this SOM is so deeply ingrained in our 'mythos' as a set of 'ideas
that we picked up at a very young age and never bothered to question and
that are fundamental to practically everything we do,' (Diana) then our
questionee could not possibly come up with an answer which clearly indicates
that laughter is neither subject, nor object, nor unreal. In doing so he/she
has, from Pirsig's point of view, rejected a truth so ingrained and
self-evident that such a moment would be one of huge revelation and
considerable confusion. That not one of my students even batted an eyelid at
this conclusion speaks volumes about their own metaphysics! There are
hundreds of other examples that I could have used and they all serve to show
that this simplistic blanket accusation of SOM is so spectacularly and
preposterously false that insisting upon it goes beyond ignorance into
bloody-mindedness.
So what are we left with of SOM? Just a vague sense of everything that is
disliked, a mythical 'mythos' (if you will forgive the expression) ascribed
to almost everyone, and to be hunted down and conquered, but, at every turn
is seen to be as insubstantial as a castle in the sand. We have a catch-all
'rage against the machine' metaphysics which is all things to all men,
capable of almost any interpretation and the domain of the intellectual
misfit who is not sure why they don't fit. The observation that we as
subjects relate to other things as objects is accurate and good, but let us
not pervert that truth into nonsense, please.
That being said, many have raised the perfectly reasonable objection that
the moq does not need SOM as an adversary. It is said that the moq stands on
its own two feet. Most often this is summed up using Pirsig's phrase, 'by
the harmony it produces.' I disagree with this view, believing that it
produces no harmony whatsoever and only appears to solve platypuses (and it
is platypuses not platypi - Pirsig got that wrong too, but, as usual, nobody
bothers to check for themselves) because those platypuses are constructions
dependant upon the strawman. Once an insubstantial and brittle opposing
argument has been set up, it is easy to show how another answer is more
harmonious, but this is illusion. Hence the strawman critique is the most
potent critique of them all as it dissolves the seeming harmony and shows
nothing to have been accomplished. If SOM is not the unspoken 'mythos' of
our culture (and the example above shows conclusively that it isn't) and if
professional philosophers (or even those who take a cursory interest in
philosophy) rejected any form of dualism long ago, then who exactly are
these problems being 'solved' for? The 'man in the street'? How
disgracefully condescending - and inaccurate.
Let us take just pick out example of harmony for closer analysis. I choose
mind v matter simply because this seems to be the most fundamental to others
on this site.
First the strawman:
A SOM 'has to make [the] fatal division' of 'regarding matter and mind as
eternally separate and eternally unalike' 'because it gives top position in
its structure to subjects and objects. Everything has got to be object or
subject, substance or non-substance....'
Well we have seen that this is nonsense, but instead of harping on about it,
I shall move on to the 'solution'.
The standard response quoted by people on this forum (to the credit of some
it is seen as a fudge) is that 'mind is contained in static inorganic
patterns while matter is contained within static intellectual patterns.'
This does not even address the question of how they interact, it merely
tells us where they are, and the problem has always been one of interaction.
In itself, this is clearly a fudge, but Pirsig does, also, tell us how they
interact according to the MOQ and hence does offer a solution:
'There is no direct scientific connection between mind and matter.' Instead
they are linked through social and biological patterns.
Call that a solution??? There IS a direct scientific connection between mind
and matter and to say their isn't flies in the face of modern science.
Dennett's 'Consciousness Explained' is probably the best semi-technical
discussion of this, but almost any coherent materialist account will suffice
to establish the point. As an example, when a patient undergoing brain
surgery has his brain prodded in a specific places this produces visual
flashes, memories or hand raisings etc. I wonder if Pirsig (or anyone else)
can explain to me exactly how that mind/brain interaction is mediated
through society as he claims. The brute fact is that this is excellent
empirical evidence of a direct link between mind and brain - no, that is
misleading. Mind and brain are one and the same so the 'link' is
superfluous, coming, as it does, from confusion about the question.
Incidentally, if you actually bother to question 'the man in the street'
about this, and I have, he will not be surprised by it, for the prevailing
'mythos' supports this 'link' emphatically. It, equally emphatically, does
not support the notion that mind and brain are two eternally separate and
unalike 'things' as the most rudimentary questioning will establish. Perhaps
someone else here can be persuaded to test out this 'mythos' theory in an
empirical fashion, rather than merely pontificating.
So what has Pirsig done here? He has created a strawman position based upon
discredited dualism and false understandings of the way we think about
subjects and objects, then he has posited a solution contrary to
(inharmonious with) modern science. It looks harmonious on the surface, but
only if the reader is prepared to accept a caricature of a problem and
remain in ignorance of empirical and philosophical fact and theory.
The strawman critique, in a nutshell, is that if you don't understand the
question you can't possibly come up with a sensible answer, and it underpins
every other critique. No progress whatsoever will ever be made in academic
circles if this is not recognised and I see no sign that it will be
recognised given that if it were, the whole edifice would collapse. To write
this argument off as 'ignorant' is, frankly, blinkered in the extreme.
Looks like the jazz club over the road is just about to open, so I'm off. As
an aside, it is interesting how some followers of a philosophy which
emphasises that a dualistic either/or approach is flawed, can conclude that
a person can only be either classical or romantic. How sad that some can't
develop one side of their 'self' without compromising the other.
Philosophising for the afternoon and jazzing for the evening; what a
harmonious combination, as I am sure Platt, with his profound insight into
the minds of jazz musicians, will understand immediately.
Struan Hellier
<mailto:struan@clara.co.uk>
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