From: MATTHEW PAUL KUNDERT (mpkundert@students.wisc.edu)
Date: Fri Jan 30 2004 - 23:00:43 GMT
Paul,
Paul said:
You are talking about subjective and objective in an epistemological sense. In that sense I think the MOQ agrees - the difference is between high and low quality intellectual patterns. In an ontological sense, the MOQ draws a line between inorganic-biological and social-intellectual patterns without awarding the title of Reality exclusively to either side of the line.
Matt:
Your post on the difference between epistemological subjectivity/objectivity and ontological subjectivity/objectivity punches up a problem I have with Pirsig that I want to take up more fully in the future. Ever since I perused Anthony's dissertation, I've had the feeling that Pirsig conflates epistemology and ontology in his discussion of the contrast between subject and object. I don't have many fully formed thoughts yet, but I'll say this: I don't think we really need to talk about an ontological sense of the contrast between subject and object. I think when Pirsig dissolves the epistemological problem into an ontological contrast between inorganic-biological patterns and social-intellectual patterns he's basically doing the same thing as pragmatists when they say its easier to get intersubjective commensuration about rocks then it is about texts.
Paul said:
Correct me if I'm wrong but, because you don't do metaphysics, in neo-pragmatism ontology is collapsed into epistemology and reduced to the continuum of more or less useful knowledge? The MOQ grounds both ontology and epistemology in value. I think this is why we sometimes talk past each other a little.
Matt:
I'm not really sure what the above says, and I think that has a lot to do with why we sometimes talk past each other. The conversations that we are generally engaged in (roughly, metaphysical for you, antimetaphysical for me) don't use the same language, so we have to translate back and forth. In the pragmatist conversation, we have neither ontology or epistemology and there's not grounding for either. I have no idea what grounding epistemology and ontology in value is supposed to mean if it doesn't mean something pragmatic (which is how I typically translate such things). So saying that, for pragmatists, ontology collapses into epistemology seems a little strange to us. If you take what I said before in this post, it would appear to be more like the other way around.
But I will say this in an effort to bridge the gap between our conversations: pragmatists take epistemology to be attempting to answer the question, "How do we know what we have is knowledge?" Pragmatists think that question pointless, which is why its dissolved into more and less useful knowledge. This continuum isn't epistemological in our terminology. I can see how it might be in yours if you take epistemology to be something like, "Talk about knowledge." The same goes for ontology. I've always taken ontology to be moreorless synonymous with metaphysics, them both being the attempt to answer the question, "What is real?" When you cease attempting to answer that question, you cease having an ontology, though you continue to have rocks and texts and differences between them. I can see how pragmatists might continue to have an ontology in your terminology if ontology is something like, "Talk about the differences between things (like rocks and ideas)."
Matt
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