From: Platt Holden (pholden@sc.rr.com)
Date: Wed Oct 16 2002 - 21:48:24 BST
Hi Matt:
> I think we're having some definition issues. You want to say that SOM is
> our language. I do not. I really don't think Pirsig does either because,
> otherwise, we can't really get rid of it, now can we? And I thought that
> was why Pirsig was writing....
Pirsig wasn't writing to get rid of SOM. As he says in Chap. 8, "This
may sound as if the purpose of the Metaphysics of Quality is to trash all
subject-object thought, but that's not true." Of course, he couldn't even if
he wanted to. What he wants to get rid of is the idea that morals are
subjective and therefore not real. He does this by putting morals into a
separate category from subjects and objects and even has morals
creating objects.
> I'm talking about the reality-appearance, inner-outer, and subject-object
> distinctions. I want to call them SOM. You do not.
Sorry for the misunderstanding. I indeed do want to call the distinctions of
subject-object, inner-outer, mind-matter, nonsubstance-substance SOM.
But the reality-appearance distinction gets a little tricky because in the
MOQ, reality is the same as experience, and experience appears to be
very close to what you may mean by "appearance." Perhaps this is
causing some difficulty in our respective positions.
>I think part of Pirsig's
> project was to shrug off these Platonic dualisms. I am saying that
> sometimes it looks like he's failed and not crawled out from underneath
> them.
Well, if he failed it's because, as I say, he can't escape from them. As
noted above, he didn't intend to shrug them off.
> Oh, in clarification, the statement "Rorty suggests ... 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," is what Rorty's trying to
> discard in its entirety. The "we must try..." is not what he suggests we
> do "on the other hand," but a continuation of the mirror metaphor he wants
> to get rid of.
Got it. Thanks for the clarification. No mirrors. No correspondence
theory of truth.
> PLATT: "Can you gives us a demonstration of discarding SOM vocabulary?"
>
> Well, I can, but according to your definition it won't succeed because
> anything we say is SOM (which I find, in itself, presupposing the question
> of escaping the mirror metaphor). However, I will give an example of how
> Rorty suggests we get out from under the Platonic dualisms. This is from a
> post a short while back:
>
> Rorty's pragmatism and antiessentialism hopes to alter this conception of
> language [that we need to mirror reality]. He suggests we conceive of
> language as a tool to deal with our causal pressures, just as a monkey
> might use a stick to fish for ants to deal with his. He suggests that we
> become post-Darwinian, that we view cultural evolution as continuous with
> biological evolution. That the only difference between humans and the rest
> of the animal kingdom is that we use a highly complex language to deal with
> our causal pressures and other animals (so we know of) do not.
I don't especially appreciate his comparison of us to monkeys, but
that's just me. Otherwise, I don't see anything revolutionary in what he
says here. He's not the first to object to the correspondence theory of
truth.
> Rorty develops his Davidsonian picture of language like so:
>
> "...Davidson tries to undermine the notion of languages as entities [read:
> mediums between us and reality] by developing the notion of what he calls
> "a passing theory" about the noises and inscriptions presently being
> produced by a fellow human. Think of such a theory as part of a larger
> "passing theory" about this person's total behavior--a set of guesses about
> what she will do under what conditions. Such a theory is "passing" because
> it must constantly be corrected to allow for mumbles, stumbles,
> malapropisms, metaphors, tics, seizures, psychotic symptoms, egregious
> stupidity, strokes of genius, and the like. To make things easier, imagine
> that I am forming such a theory about the current behavior of a native of
> an exotic culture into which I have unexpectedly parachuted. This strange
> person, who presumably finds me equally strange, will simultaneously be
> busy forming a theory about my behavior. If we ever succeed in
> communicating easily and happily, it will be because her guesses about what
> I am going to do next, including what noises I am going to make next, and
> my own expectations about what I shall do or say under certain
> circumstances, come more or less to coincide, and because the converse is
> also true. She and I are coping with each other as we might cope with
> mangoes or boa constrictors--we are trying not to be taken by surprise. To
> say that we come to speak the same language is to say, as Davidson puts it,
> that "we tend to converge on passing theories." Davidson's point is that
> all "two people need, if they are to understand one another through speech,
> is the ability to converge on passing theories from utterance to
> utterance."" (from Contingency, Irony, and Solidarity)
Sorry, Matt. This goes completely over my head. Not to change the
subject, but do Rorty or Davidson say anything about values or morals?
> This is one example of how Rorty wants to help us get out from under the
> spectare of Platonic dualisms. Under this conception, I think you're
> perfectly right to say "We are Quality" and "this accurately states the
> omnipresence of Quality." This is exactly the point. The pragmatist way
> of looking at things is holistic. It accepts these because there is no
> difference between the inner and outer in any metaphysical sense. That we
> use these in everyday language to distinguish ourselves from the mountain
> lion charging at us is a useful tool. What I'm suggesting is that Pirsig's
> use of the inner-outer distinction is tipping us off to the use of an
> appearance-reality distinction that is metaphysical (if not his own usage
> of inner-outer).
Oh, we're so close. Yes, the SOM distinctions are indeed a useful tool
in a world where metaphysically there is no difference between inner
and outer, experience and reality. Again, I think we're stumbling over the
"appearance-reality" business.
> So when you say, "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," I am going to claim you are speaking from under Platonic
> dualisms. Your interpretation of the intellectual level as "cognitive
> skill" and language as being this unfortunate lens we have to use is a fair
> description of a mystic using the mirror metaphor. The pragmatist would
> come back an offer an un-Platonic interpretation like this:
>
> "Our interpretation of Quality [does] depend on how we speak as much as on
> our static patterns, beginning at the inorganic level, up through the
> biological (genetic), social (personal history), and intellectual
> (language). "Speaking" refers to some of the tools with which we cope with
> reality."
>
> This is why I find taking the linguistic turn so important. We begin to
> interpret the intellectual level as language, rather than some left over
> from "mind" like cognitive skill. "Mind" as something man has and animals
> do not is something that pragmatists suggest we get rid of because its
> caused more problems than its dissolved.
Isn't the capacity for language something man has and animals do not?
By cognitive skill I'm referring to language use among other skills and
agree that the intellectual level is largely made up of patterns of
language including mathematics and symbolic logic.We use these
patterns to foster high Quality experiences and to open ourselves to
Dynamic Quality. As I've said before, thinking is relating experience into
patterns of meaning so we can act to enhance life. But as always,
experience (Quality) comes first.
When you say "tools with which we cope with reality" aren't you
bringing back the mirror that you want to discard?
One thing we can positively agree on: Let's get rid of "mind" in the mind-
matter dualism. Let's get rid of "matter" too while we're at it. Do you
have you another "first cut" suggestion besides subject-object or static-
Dynamic?
Platt
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