From: Matt Kundert (pirsigaffliction@hotmail.com)
Date: Wed Oct 05 2005 - 19:53:43 BST
Hey Case,
Case said:
As for the inner and outer issue. I am of course using them as code words
for SOM. Although Pirsig shows obvious distain for SOM I believe he claims
to have illuminiated not eliminated it. I do think there are hard
distinctions between subject and objects. But I would maintain that there is
only one subject in SOM and that would be me. You may have your own SOM
where the subject is you but I think any SOM that includes a plural for
subject is way off base from the get go.
So I guess the question that remains is how much trouble have I gotten
myself into?
Matt:
Well, I don't know. I can understand the desire to say that Pirsig
illuminated, not eliminated, SOM. Usually that desire is fulfilled by
saying that Pirsig attacks reductionism, the idea that _everything_ had to
be reduced to a subject-object terminology. For instance, that's _not_ how
Bo fulfills that desire. I may be stating the obvious (but since I haven't
been following the conversation I have to), you seem to be saying something
analogous to him. That we have to start from a subject-object distinction.
For instance, this hard/soft distinction we've been using lately. The way I
take "hard distinctions" are to be distinctions that get something _right_
about reality, whereas "soft distinctions" are just used to make our way
about it. If this is the case about how you mean "hard," then that means
you think that something about reality _makes_ us use the subject/object
distinction, something about reality tells us that this is the right way to
carve it up.
I don't think this is the case judging from what else you've written. For
one, you say the value you find in the MoQ "is in the way it is able to
resolve dualism into monism and show how dualistic poles function." That
doesn't sound like somebody into "hard" distinctions as defined above. For
two, your doubts about ever finding criteria outside of behavior for
determining somebody's inner states. Anybody who holds those doubts should
also doubt our ability to ever find criteria (outside of behavior) for
determining what kinds of distinctions reality _makes_ us use. So if you
don't mean "hard" that way, how do you mean it?
Further, I think you've stated SOM right, as having only _one_ subject, the
ego, but it leaves me a little uneasy with your stating that you take S/O to
be a hard distinction and Pirsig to have "illuminated not eliminated" SOM.
I think SOM so thought of is coextensive with Cartesianism (which I think is
bad). I think your further claim that "any SOM that includes a plural for
subject is way off base" is right, too. The dialectic of modern philosophy
from Descartes to now is just that example of how Cartesianism will fall
apart with more than one subject. The flight from the solitary ego to allow
for more egos has shown (so people like me think) how the Cartesian
problematic deconstructs itself once you start allowing for other people.
And the _flight_ (which was good) began because of internal problems from
the lack of criteria and the external problem of counter-intuitiveness
("Wait, you're telling me that other people don't exist?"). So that piece
of evidence makes me think you _do_ want "hard" in the bad way outlined
above, but again, your doubts about criteria leaves me thinking you must be
taking it be something else. If you do take SOM and "hard" in the bad ways,
it makes me wonder what happened to all that great stuff about
intersubjective agreement you were writing earlier?
Matt
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