ELEPHANT TO STRUAN HELLIER AND THE PRISIGOPHILES:
I'm glad to finally get a post from Struan Hellier, much mentioned as a
noted 'Prisig Hunter'. It is possible that I might get put into that
category myself for my comments about the evolutionary levels being
themselves patterns... (I hope not). In this post however I will be
speaking up for Prisig against Struan.
I think Struan and I both approach Prisig from a broad base of Philosophical
reading. But it seems that this common base leads us to very different
estimations of Prisig's talents and insights.
Now, to the Point. The 'strawman' argument against MOQ (which Struan thinks
has itself become a strawman!) first emerges in a review of Zen and the Art
of Motorcycle Maintenance by Prof. Strawson. Strawson's wheaty argument is
essentially the same as Struan's. Indeed, there is even something in
Struan's tone which echo's Strawson's tone in that review.
STRUAN WROTE:
> 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?
ELEPHANT:
Fine. Neat summary. Do go on.
STRUAN WROTE:
> 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.
ELEPHANT:
Whoa there! Hang on a minute. Prisig never says, and indeed no Philosopher
ever says, that the philosophical veiw he is attacking is completely and
coherently held by those who espouse it - quite the reverse! The whole
point is that you can't hold on to SOM completely and coherently - that is
of course precisely why it is wrong as a description of the situation in
which we find ourselves. SOM may be fine in theory, and yet useless in
practice: that doesn't mean that nobody is fool enough to beleive the
theory, whatever the actual practice is. Pointing out that the theory
doesn't fit what we actually beleive is an entirely familiar move made in
Philosophical argument made by philosophers down the ages, and a particular
specialism of American Pragmatism, into which tradition Prisig fits very
well. So, if Struan's argument is that SOM doesn't exist because SOM isn't
how people live their lives, then this really isn't much of an argument.
Struan's supplementary point might be that no-one can be found who calls
themselves a "Subject-Object Metaphysician" in the way that, say, you used
to be able to find people who called themselves "Marxist". Well this
observation is certainly true. It is somewhat besides the point, however.
It is standard fare in the history of philosophy that from time to time
people invent terms that can then describe veiws that predate the invention
of that term. 'Empiricism', 'Rationalism', 'Pragmatism', 'Pragmaticism':
these are all examples of this kind of coinage. And this is exactly what
"subject-object metaphysics" does. In fact it does it rather neatly and
usefully, precisely because it highlights a common heritage and theme in a
large body of superficially diverse and even antithetical varieties of
metaphysics and anti-metaphysics. It might well count as a demonstration of
Prisig's genius that the views of such a large set of thinkers can be
expressed in this way, expressed, that is, more explicitly than those
thinkers expressed it themselves. Nor is Prisig's move without an exact
parrallel in the History of 20th Cent Philosophy. F.H.Bradley made the
exact same kind of distinction, inventing a new terminology to expose
essential similarities in the apparently diverse metaphysical and
anti-metaphysical systems of his day. Bradley's new philosophical
distinction was between subject-predicate metaphysics and his own
'Absolutism', which will, I think, bear substantial comparison with Prisig's
veiws on Mystical Reality, or Dynamic Quality. Indeed, Prisig can (actually
I think he does - just can't find the conveinient quote at present) make
just the same point about predicates that Bradley makes, and Bradley can do
the same for Prisig in return. Just the same objections which Struan and
Strawson now make against Prisig's conception of a Subject-Object
Metaphysics could have been made, and were made, against Bradley's
conception of a Subject-Predicate Metaphysics. But, in both cases, these
objections are facile. They are both easy and superficial, in my veiw,
because they avoid investigating the issue at hand, namely whether or not
current metaphysics is in fact based on an implicit (not explicit)
assumption which it has failed to properly formalise or acknowledge.
So, let us turn to that issue, and look at some current Philosophical
views to see whether or not Prisig's interpretive suggestion holds water.
Struan, if you want proof, 'empirically', that people do beleive in
Subject-Object Metaphysics, then you only have to read Simon Blackburn's
recentish work on Quasi-Realism about 'good' ('spreading the word'). Look
at the extraordinary lengths he is prepared to go to, to establish that
value statements are not statememts of fact. Ask yourself why he would be
bothering. What does Blackburn think is wrong with the idea that 'Good' is
a noun which describes a reality in the world? Why the plausible diversion
into the elaborately formalised philosophy of language, why the merely
quasi-reality? I really don't think it's that hard. Blackburn's
metaphysics (though he might not call it a 'metaphysics') holds that moral
agents are real (subjects), and that non-moral facts are real (objects),
while having this tremendous difficulty about acknowledging that moral
judgements are judgements of fact. What is this if not the exile of value
through a subject-object metaphysics?
Blackburn is not an isolated case, and any half serious inversigation of
the literature will tell you that. There is a general prejudice against the
reality of value, which takes the form, generally, of trying to talk about
value in terms of something else entirely. Exactly the same is true of
universals, before you bring that one up as an objection to my case. There
is assumed to be a "problem of universals", as if particulars where, in so
far as being particular is concerned, entirely unproblematic. If that's not
an objects-only Metaphysics I don't know what is. People go around trying
to explain universals in terms of particulars. Perhaps you want to come
bang-up-to-date and to the hieght of philosophical fashion and discuss
Wittgenstein's late philosophy of language. Think about the bizarre
problems Ludwig has trying to experience the because in "I am going on in
the same way because of the rule". He thinks he can experience the
instances of the rule just fine - it's just the rule that he can't
experience. Why can't I experience a rule? Well , it isn't a subject of
experience, and it isn't an object either.... lord how mysterious it must
be then! Why, we will have to invoke community practice, which after all is
a kind of object, and then everything can be alright again. Look, Struan,
far from there being no such thing as a Subject-Object Metaphysics, I think
Prisig has hit upon just about the most useful analytic tool in 20th Cent.
philosophy. It lay's the whole thing on the slab and cuts it open right
down the middle.
STRUAN WROTE:
> 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.
ELEPHANT:
Of course. But not until you acknowledge that defining laughter in terms of
overt behaviour is exactly the kind of thing we are talking about: an
attempt to turn an indefiniable (mystic?) reality into a quantifiable
object. I hear a Wittgensteinian tone of voice there too... Speaking of
tone of voice, check this out for exhibit A in the Fitzwilliam Museum of
Logicless Rants:
STRUAN WROTE:
> 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.
ELEPHANT:
OK, exhibition over. Move along now please, there is nothing to see.
Respect Police lines Miss. Give the poor man some privacy.
{snip}
STRUAN WROTE:
> 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.
ELEPHANT:
It's certainly not a very good thing to be either condescending or
inaccurate. Struan, I rather worry that you might be both. Professional
Philosophers have not rejected any form of Dualism, what you say there is
just wrong. What they have done is *denounced* any form of Dualism, and
that's just not the same thing at all. Moreover, the reason why they (and
you) are so smugly (condescendingly) confident that they have learnt from
the mistakes of Descartes et all is that they have completely closed their
ears to anyone like Prisig who ever identifies a Dualist (or, indeed, any)
metaphysics in their thinking. A very similar response (ie silence) has
been the fate of Iris Murdoch, who argued along similar lines to Prisig that
the supposed abandonment of Metaphysics in the Linguistic turn was nothing
of the kind, but instead the substitution of one metaphysics for another,
less liveable kind.
There's a character called 'violet bot' in the 'just william' stories, and
you can tell when she's really peeved because she says over and over again
in a high piched voice "I won't listen, I won't listen, I won't I won't I
won't I won't I won't I won't I won't I won't (etc)" with her hands over
ears. She generally get's her way, you know. It's really quite a succesful
tactic. And I don't mind accusing the odd professional philosopher of moral
imperfection. Because it is our moral imperfections, I would maintain, that
normally get in the way of our seeing the truth. Strawson was not ignorant.
He was knowledgeable and technically competant - that was his job. However
epistemic virtues are about more than technical competence, I suggest, and a
well paid college don is no less likely to be pig-headed than you or I.
On to more enjoyable matters....
STRUAN WROTE:
> 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....
ELEPHANT:
Ha! I've had the opportunity to express my incredulity about the 'science'
of the mind before. That modern 'science' is something I'm really very keen
to 'fly in the face of'. As to the 'fudge': well here I'm quite sympathetic
to your point. I don't see the levels as being ontologically superior to
the patterns they are the levels of: I see them as patterns like any other:
patterns and patterns within patterns. That sometimes makes me seem anti
MOQ, but I'm not, because I don't see the 'evolutionary levels' as Prisig's
cheif or most valuable MOQ insight. Actually, description of Prisig's
solution as a 'fudge' comes pretty near to making his point for him: that
what we are talking about isn't clear relationships between distinct
substances, but the messy practical inter-connections and conflicts in
people's multi-various static patterns of value (habits), some of which are
honourifically titled 'scientific'. 'Fudge' here is a term of high praise
reseved for those thinkers who have managed to address the strange business
of everyday life.
STRUAN WROTE:
> 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.
ELEPHANT:
Confused as I often am about numerous questions, even many questions
symultaneously, I still think my failure to undertstand something here might
indicate a very cold and naked emperor. If you attack a computer with an
electric cattle prod, it's a fairly safe bet that something odd will happen
to the email you are composing on it. Does that mean that the prodings and
the resultant mess that is made of your reply to Struan are one and the same
thing? By the way, do try to make you mind up: either you can talk about
the link between mind and brain (in which case they must be different), or
mind and brain are not distinct (in which case you can't talk about the
link). And if you are going to pursue the latter line of attack, perhaps
you would like to tell me how many electrons it takes to make a thought? I
think I will find it considerably easier to tell you how much thought it
takes to come up with an electron.
STRUAN WROTE:
> 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.
ELEPHANT:
Really I admire your antropological expertise. I wouldn't have the first
idea about how to objectively ascetain the prevailing mythos from the man on
the clapham omnibus - I guess you just have the knack. Personally I take
the antropological content of Prisig's work as first and foremost a useful
way into deep and complex philosophical subject matter. I don't want to
talk about Mythos anymore than I want to talk about Kultur. I want to talk
about the truth. That's what Prisig wants to do, I think, and the
anthropological stuff is a format for presenting that, which, incedentally,
is just the way Rousseau treats it (Prisig and Rousseau share an
enlightening image of the noble savage. In Rousseau's case most of the
respected academic readings on Rousseau's 'state of nature' treat it as a
useful metaphor with a philosophical point, rather than as a historical
account. That's how I'd treat Prisig too, and I'd recommend the same to
anyone who thinks Philosophical truth is more important, and more important
to Prisig, than Historical truth.)
Finally Struan, I'd like to say that I'm looking forward to your come-back.
We could have an interesting conversation, as I'm very far from treating
everything Prisig says as Gospel. It seems to me, however, that you have
taken to treating eveything he says as just the opposite of gospel, which is
equally bad. Perhaps you are one of those numerous academics who just can't
stand it when some thinker who's not in the union goes over your heads and
appeals to the people direct? The ability to do this can really work up
some hatred and envy. After all, it seems like Prisig is saying that anyone
could understand this stuff, and, as you and I know, that's a kind of
treason. I'm hoping you will forgive him for these crimes, however, and
discuss what he has to say seriously, the way you would if the head of the
department got it published in Cogito.
So, don't go quiet now, and happy christmas to All,
yours pseudonymously
Puzzled Elephant
p.s. I think this is my first substantial post in which I have not
mentioned Plato... whoops!
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