Donald T Palmgren (lonewolf@utkux.utcc.utk.edu)
Wed, 27 May 1998 17:07:15 +0100
Hi gang.
I wanted to offer a summery of my thoughts on "SOM" as we bring
the topic to a close.
First of all, when you're asked to explain the term, "SOM," the
reflex action is to plop down an answer by just showing how Pirsig uses
the term (after all, meaning is in use). This was the subject of my
first, and lowest quality (or at least, least Dynamic) post in which I
identified 3 basic ways (as I can find them) Pirsig uses the terms
"subject" and "object" in his books.
But this approch is that of trying to answer, "What does RM
Pirsig mean by 'SOM?'" That's clearly a matter of literary explication
and not truly philosophical, because no matter what we might decide, if
you look at it this way, then RM Pirsig and nobody else has the ultimate
last word on what SOM is/refers to. Why not just write the man and ask
him?
Doing real philosophy means thinking about questions as such
rather than just trying to answer them. A question -- a REAL question,
is something that puts thought in motion; once so, the goal is to keep
it going and not stop it by ploping down a handy (logocentric) answer.
This gives us two basic methods (really they are the same): to transform
that question into other related and intresting questions (From "What's
S-O?" to "What is The Self?"), and to ask questions about the initial
question in an effort to make more sense out of it.
Given the question "What is SOM?" a natural move is to ask,
"What's metaphysics?" We are asked to identify a certain genus (S-O)
out of the philum (metaphysics) in the kingdom (philosophy)and perhaps
even conjur up a few examples of SOM species (like Cartisan Dualism, or
Teravada Buddhism, or whatever). So we can start out by asking either
or both, "What's metaphysics?" and "What's philosophy?"
These I approched in my second post. Basically, I feel that
philosophy and metaphysics are literary activities that take place in
books -- different from Eastern religion/"philosophies" which are
psychological activities dealing w/ actual transformations of
consciousness. There is an on-the-surface simmilarity between, say, Zen
Buddhism and any Western philosophy that seeks to close the S-O
dichotomy... but one of these is approching S-O thinking/consciousness
and the other is dealing only w/ philosophy (a sholarly, intellectual
and basically achademic activity). What this is approching is the
pay-off question. By asking what metaphysics and philosophy are, we are
asking, What's the pay-off? Once you begin a metaphysical inquary, how
do you know when to stop? These questions are important because they
bere on how we measure the success of, in this case, ZMM and LILA.
Philosophy is a leasurly, middle-class, peace-time activity of
intellectual restlessness -- fundamentaly un-serious! (Nobody is
supposed to get shot and killed in a philosophy class.) And to be a
philosopher, you've got to be literate; you've got to 'know the
literature.' It's against that "kingdom" (the pay-off of which should
be clearly dubious) that we begin, w/ our analytic knife, to carve-out
SOM.
I could go on to describe how equily dubious the "philum" of
metaphysics is. Many great philosophers have argued that the pursuit of
metaphysics is a 'fiasco of words' that never really leads anywhere.
(After all, once you've got a metaphysical system, what to you DO w/ the
thing? You write books about it for other metaphysitions to read so that
they can write there own books.) But I think that the Positivists and
other opponants of metaphysics missunderstand. They think that the goal
of metaphysics is to ANSWER the question, "What really exists?" and thus
offer a correct picture of the world (like science does), but the goal
is to look at the question -- to ask what we mean by "exists" and, thus,
what would COUNT AS a correct picture of the world (Correct in what
way?).
Now back-traking, I tryed to address the other side of the
question, "What's a SOM?" by looking at the subject object distinction.
The words generally carry the meanning of I-This, or Me/Not-Me. So a
natural move is to ask, "What is the Self?" or (as I put it) "What is
personhood?" I want to emphasize that "self" and "person" are social
patterns -- Spov's -- because once you see that, the classic old
Cartisan standerd problems of "the Mind" dissappear. In short: The Mind
is not a thing, but is a set of (social/moral) capacities; the chief
among which is the ability to recognize other minded beings -- to tell a
person from a (mere) thing. Society couldn't exist w/o SOC (sub-ob.
consctiousness -- which is this very ability), but society doesn't
require metaphysics or even philosophy, philosophy books or colleges.
MoQ actualy has nothing to do w/ SOC, or else we'd have to judge
it a total failure, because nobody's ever reached Nirvana by reading
LILA. MoQ is a metaphysical system; one that's contraposed to "SOM," a
type of metaphysical system. Is the MoQ the only system that stands
outside SOM? I don't think so.
SOM indicates a system built on the EXCLUSIVITY of S and O (the
knowewr and the known (consciously or otherwise). But "Idealism" is
spicifically defined as a system recognizing the IDENTITY of S and O.
This gets a bad reaction because several people in the LS take this to
mean MoQ=Idealism. NO! What I'm saying is MoQ is a TYPE OF Idealism; I'm
not saying that all Idealist systems are the same. Obviously Zen is
different from Kantian Formalism which is different from Hinduism which
is different from MoQ, etc. They all have the similarity that they say S
and O are actually the same thing. What this thing turns out to be,
however, (the Tao, Kant's "Moral Self," Braman or Anatman ["no-self"],
Hegel's "Spirit"
or Pirsig's Quality) varies tremendosly from one system to another. Of
corse Pirsig's idea is not the same as everyone elses... but it fit's a
general type.
Bo objected because Idealisms say that what really exists is
"Mind." That's one way to put it, but when you look at how each system
defines/describes this "mind" you find that that word cannot be taken
very strictly. In almost none of these systems is there anything
resemboling what we normaly mean by "mind" w/ all of our psychological
and Cartesan baggage. I've said before, for example, that "mind" is a
really bad translation of Hegel's *geist*. And most of these want to go
beyond words anyway and talk about "The Undiferentiated," "The Void," or
"The Tao which cannot be named."
Now this is a standerd way to look at Idealism, but I hope by
now that you're all awfully suspicious. You can see that in my
traditional grouping, I've included a lot of things in "Idealism" (a
sub-set of metaphysics) that arn't even metaphysical sysetems -- are
not philosophical activities. Taoism, Zen, Vedanta Hinduism... these
aren't scholarly, literary activities. They're not opposed to SOM (an
explaination about the world); they're opposed to SOC (an actual
psychological experience of the world).
You could be an illeterate Buddha. Could you be an illiterate
philosopher? Could you REALLY!? A successfull one?
What's the difference between a book about reality and the
reality of a book?
So that's a road map of my thoughts, and possably one conscise
enough for Diana to archive in html. I'm trying to show how you can
start w/ a good question (like "What's a SOM?") and transform it and
move around w/ it in order to (a) make more sense out of what's being
asked and (b) transform it into other philosophocally interesting
questions, and once you have a *better* question, you can then go on
from there.
The goal is to think dynamically insted of logocentrically -- to
"think life."
TTFN (ta-ta for now)
Donny
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