Hi there
I'm sure I'm not misinterpreting what he has written but it would seem that the main problem
here is that another strawman is being created by Struan, as the position, as he describes it,
is not entirely accurate which makes it easier to knock down.
I'm using the term strawman here as being no more than an inaccurate representation of an
opponents view and not necessarily "..a position of an opponent [that] is cleverly twisted into
an insubstantial and highly simplistic caricature of its target...".
In fact it could be said that Struans definition of the strawman position is itself a strawman as
the view need not be cleverly twisted, insubstantial or highly simplistic - these are just
emotive/provocative/prejudicial terms - or is this me creating yet another strawman?
Fascinating really, a strawman being created in order to knock down a position which is
(falsely) accused of itself being a strawman.
Horse
On 21 Dec 2000, at 21:21, Struan Hellier wrote:
> 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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