To: Struan
From: Rog
Re: Subject Object Duality
Struan,
Pirsig is a mystic. He rejects the fundamental duality of subject and
object, mind and matter. He suggests that the most empirical way to evaluate
reality is as a stream of dynamic and flowing pure experience (dynamic
quality) and the wake of static abstractions (static quality) derived from
this experience.
Mind/matter/subject/object/today/yesterday/internal/external are all just
divisions and patterned combinations derived from such experiences. But you
know this.
To mystics, most of Western philosophy and science is rampant with problems
inherent to the dualistic worldview. Picking up any book on philosophy
reveals entire chapters on such dualistic pseudoproblems as free will,
perception, ethics and the mind body problem. There are entire schools or
disciplines taking different subject/object sides or attempting bridges on
these issues. There are realists, idealists, epistemological dualists,
phenomenologists, subjectivists, objectivists, intuitionists,
prescriptivists, emotivists, interactionists, agnostic interactionists,
reductive materialists, epiphenomenalists (sp?), parallelists and
panpsychologists.
Entire fields of western philosophy can be dissolved as meaningless once we
recognize that they are all based on a common pattern of unacknowledged
assumptions. The MOQ does point out this assumption and explores what
metaphysics looks like when this duality is questioned. Whether the MOQ
succeeds any better than its competitors is of course a different question.
Other mystic-oriented philosophers have similarly criticized Western
philosophy and offered their remedies, and the MOQ overlaps greatly with many
of these..
Does Pirsig oversimplify? Yes. But he has to if he is going to capture
common characteristics of so many Western styles. Does he oversimplify to
the point of making a strawman caricature of western philosophy? No, not in
my opinion, though I am certainly not an expert. I have only taken one
philosophy class in my life (Intro to Philosophy 101 -- but I DID GET AN A
!), but I can (and have) read many of the different schools of philosophy and
I find these exact same dualistic assumptions. They are absolutely rampant.
I also find them littered throughout most scientific writing.
Your continued denial of these commonly shared characteristics of Western
philosophy seems odd to me, but as members of this forum will attest, I am
sometimes wrong....
OH!!! And in keeping with the nature of how many in this forum have tended
to argue with you over the years (ie rudely), let me add that if you don't
agree with me, that your parents were space monkeys. ;^) I guess that
pretty much proves my point...no?
Nice having you back though!
Rog
PS -- Hey Elephant, I TOTALLY agree with you on the nature of patterns. 100%.
PPS -- Struan, laughter doesn't "not exist" in SOM, it is divided into
internal sensations of laughter and external perceptions of laughter. To
the best of my knowledge, the various schools of SOM have done a bang-up job
of sorting the various pieces of Humpty Dumpty reality into their various
dualistic buckets. What they don't do well is put our friend back together
again.
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