From: Matt the Enraged Endorphin (mpkundert@students.wisc.edu)
Date: Tue Oct 15 2002 - 21:38:51 BST
Platt,
PLATT:
I guess we're all "infected" with SOM since we use SOM language to
communicate with one another. Our language is riddled with SOM since
it's fundamental premise is "I" and "You" (self-other). To accuse Pirsig
of being caught up in SOM is to accuse him of using the English
language. For Pirsig, SOM and its handmaiden science are high-quality
intellectual patterns. So I think you concern that Pirsig is "under an
SOM spell" is a strawman.
MATT:
I don't want to call our language SOM. That it happens to be structured
the way it is is fine with me for the moment. What I am talking about when
I say "SOM" is a whole nest of Greek dualisms that include the inner-outer,
appearance-reality, and subject-object distinctions. I am also suggesting
that we --can-- get out of the "spell of SOM," so defined, by the route of
the pragmatist. So, I don't think my concern about Pirsig is a strawman.
If you would like to continue that line of argument I would reference you
to the MOQ Forum essay "Strawdog bites Strawman" by David L. Thomas (which
is 3WD, is it not?). Many other philosophers are concerned by what Pirsig
termed SOM including Hume, Nietzsche, James, Dewey, Wittgenstein,
Heidegger, Foucault, Derrida, Habermas, and Rorty, to name but a minor few.
I don't want to comment on how successful any of these particular
philosophers were in overcoming the enemy they uncovered, but I think it is
worth considering that anyone of these figures, including Pirsig and Rorty,
hasn't overcome the Platonic tradition as they set out to do.
Rorty suggests in Philosophy and the Mirror of Nature that we discard the
mirror metaphor that says that "we" stand over here and "reality" stands
over there and that we must try and correspond correctly, mirror correctly,
reality using this third entity, language. I'm suggesting that Pirsig may
not have discarded the mirror metaphor. And if one follows Pirsig in not
discarding the mirror metaphor, then one is still using a SOM vocabulary
which makes one still susceptible to all the criticisms philosophers have
made against SOM, including those leveled by Pirsig.
PLATT:
Again, you can only say anything by making SOM distinctions. That's
why writing a metaphysics is a degenerate activity (but fun
nevertheless). Quality is what exists before you say anything. Quality is
reality before you make an appearance-reality distinction.
MATT:
Not all distinctions are, or should be classified, as SOM distinctions.
Only a certain set of distinctions are the ones Pirsig is talking about,
the ones that seperate us from the world around us, the ones that make us
passive observers. In trying to "activize" us, Pirsig lumped everything
into Reality, without giving up the role of language as trying to match
what Reality is giving us. Thus, we're still passive observers, this time
of values, too.
If Quality is simply the environment around us, reality around us, then
that is suitably pragmatized. But to say that "Quality is what exists
before you say anything," is to beg the question in your favor and assume
an SOM stance. Because the pragmatist is going to say that, in addition to
Quality being what exists before you say anything, Quality is also what
exists during the speaking and after you say something. The reason this is
is because the pragmatist line is that us speaking does not somehow distort
our connection with Quality. We are always connected to Quality, but the
Quality we perceive will be different depending on how we speak. This
makes Quality different for different people. Its still Quality, our
environment, but it will be different depending on the static patterns
we've been born with. The conception of a "static filter" is another SOM
signifier. The pragmatist wants to replace the static filter with static
patterns. We directly experience the static pattern and which static
patterns we experience determines which other static patterns we
experience. Dynamic Quality is the effort in changing our static patterns,
so that we may experience new and better patterns.
When you go on to discuss the need for certainty, you are right insofar as
at some point we need to stop going 'round and 'round in circles and decide
things. This "certainty" that we need is what Rorty calls final
vocabularies. The words in our final vocabularies are the ones that we use
to justify our actions, beliefs, and lives. Our stance towards our final
vocabularies, however, is something different. "Metaphysicans" believe
that their final vocabulary is the real thing, or that, at some point, a
correct, true final vocabulary will be reached so that they may use that.
"Ironists," in contrast, are in continual doubt about the words in their
final vocabulary and constantly seek to improve them, all the while knowing
that whatever vocabulary they use, none of them are any closer to reality
than the others. One vocabulary may be better than another, however. And,
while the ironist is in continual doubt about her final vocabulary, this
doesn't mean that she can't justify her actions and beliefs. She is simply
in a state evolution as a human being, so that at some further point in the
future, she may look back at her past actions with her new vocabulary and
admit that she acted poorly.
Matt
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