From: Platt Holden (pholden@sc.rr.com)
Date: Wed Oct 16 2002 - 15:48:27 BST
Hi Matt:
> 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.
Fine with me, too. It's a high quality intellectual pattern.
>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 long as you continue to use "I" and "we" you're under the spell.
> 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.
If by Platonic tradition you mean SOM, then the nature of language
prevents anyone from overcoming it. But, you can posit a "better"
intellectual pattern that includes something that language cannot
express, like Quality. I think Pirsig accomplished this. Plotinus, Kant
and perhaps others also posited the existence of the understood but
ineffable. I don't know about Rorty.
> 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.
Please clarify. One the hand Rorty discards the mirror. In the next
breadth, he wants to "mirror correctly." Contradictory?
> 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.
Can you gives us a demonstration of discarding SOM vocabulary?
> 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.
Well, if he gave up the role of language we wouldn't have the MOQ
would we?
> 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.
I don't know about the pragmatist, but I think this accurately states the
omnipresence of Quality before, during and after anything, including
speaking.
> We are always connected to Quality, but the
> Quality we perceive will be different depending on how we speak.
To say "connected to Quality" is to be in SOM for sure. Better to say,
"We are Quality." That's about as best we can do using static patterns
of language. Our interpretation of Quality doesn't depend so much on
how we speak as on our static patterns, beginning at the inorganic level,
up through the biological (genetic), social (personal history) and
intellectual (cognitive skills). "Speaking" merely reflects the lens of
interpretation.
> 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.
We're very close to agreement here, except for Quality being
"environment," something out there.
> 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.
If this means "it's good to keep an open mind" I certainly agree. But, if I
understand you rightly, an ironist must say, "But, that's not final." :-)
Platt
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