Donald T Palmgren (lonewolf@utkux.utcc.utk.edu)
Sat, 12 Sep 1998 05:51:38 +0100
Hey, all.
It looks like I still need to clear up some gunk. Bodvar wrote:
_________________________
Then Intellect panics: "Me,"thinking itself"
(Jonathan), not the container of everything (Donny) .. what is this
nonsense?!"
_________________________
Bo, since i've never said thet the intellect is the container of
everything I'm asuming that you are now in the habit of attaching my name
to things either to get my attention or just because it's a good name and
you like typing it. :)
You and I agree that "SOM" means, basically, the ontological
seperatness of the knower and what it knows. Right?
Now, I for one hold that there is no ontological seperation. I
feel that knower and known, "subject" and "object" are really like two
sides of the same coin: obviously connected, obviously molded
(simultaniously) from the same material, and mutually dependent upon
one-another for their existance -- just as you can't have a front w/o a
back, you can't have a knowing w/o a known and you can't have a known w/o
a knowing it.
That's where I'm at. Apparently you have some grand problems w/
this. "But, Donny, If the world isn't 'out there,'" I am hearing, "then
you mean to say it's 'in here' -- it's all in our heads!" No. It's no
more 'in here' than it's 'out there.'
Let's start right from the top. This is a definition of Idealism,
found in Dwight Van de Vate's *A Reading of Hegel's Phenominology of
Spirit*:
_________________________
"Self-consciousness must not mearly relinuish itself, alienate
itself, merge itself w/ the substance of the world, for this would be
merely a one-sided movement of the imagination. (Perhaps we might say: an
'idealism,' in the sense normally given to that term by Anglo-American
philosophers.) Not only must the subject know itself as an object, but the
object itself, the ethical substance, must come to the knowledge of itself
as a knowing subject."
_________________________
Now at what point do I lose you? The S=O and the O=S. The 'in
here' *is* 'out there,' and the 'out there' is also the 'in here.'
Subject and object arise together from the "Quality event" -- they come
about simultaniously, difusely, and as a pair (just like top and bottom).
Considering it from the objects point of view:
What is an "object?" What's a "thing?" Kant got off to a great
start by shifting the question to, "What are objects used for?" (not
individual objects, but the concept "objectness" or "thing-hood").
The answer: "Objects" are really explanations. It's something we
use to give continuity to our ever-changing sense-perceptions. I look at
the motercycle this way... and now I look at it that way... and I percieve
two different sets of sense-impressions. But I sythesize these by
applying the concept "motercycle" to these perceptipns. I don't have "new
stuff" everytime I turn my head a little -- it's the same object viewed
from a bit of a diferent angle, so no problem.
*** A thing is just those properties which in the ideal long run
we agree it has. ***
But the reason it's not "just in your head" or "pure subjectivity"
is because of this agreement. A thing is characterized by mutual
agreement, by how we (not "we, each and every one of us," but "we, all of
us together") agree to talk about it. This agreement is a process.
A process is something extended through time -- it's "concrete." And
(to be recognizable) there must be some kind of system at work. This
system can be characterized -- in fact is best characterized -- as a MORAL
system. "Moral" because it's essence is one of bringing about agreement
between two or more opposing positions in some "proper" or "best" manner.
At bottom, what the motercycle is, is a moral explanation. You
can now see the refrence of Hegel's term "ethical substance" -- that which
is both ethical and substantial in it's essential nature.
Now consider the other hand, the point of view of the subject:
What is the self? What is person-hood... or "minded-ness?"
This is coppied from a post I sent out in early May:
__________________________
We want to start out asking how is a person possible? What
natural facts about the world make it inteligable that we should have the
concept 'person?' (*We* presumably means "each and every one of us")
Well, to "have" a concept means to use it. Wittgenstien stated that
concepts are like tools -- we do things w/ words and meanings.
That's the path that keeps looping back into SOM; the reason being
that "we, each and every one of us." An alternative to the tool analogy
is to point out that we also do things w/ courts, parlaments, licensing
authorities, systems of weights and measures, and codes of etiquette.
These are PUBLIC tools. We use them -- but not we, each and every one of
us, but we, all of us together. (This distinction is called the
'distributive' vs. the 'collective we' -- "We die alone," vs. "We are the
LS.") 'Person' is used firstly for public purposes and only secondly for
individual ends.
'Person' is a noun-concept. Any noun-concept automatically
divides the world into two things: those things it correctly applies to
and those things it does not. We use 'person' to divide the world into
persons and (mere) things. 'Person' is the clear supperior of the two.
(Ken, stick w/ me before you pull a human-centric charge on me, okay?)
'Person' is supperior logically, legaly and moraly. Logically: only
persons can correct one-another's reasoning (my cat can't call me
'illogical' or 'unreasonable'). Legaly: only persons have legal rights and
obligations. Morally: only persons have a moral psychology (Moral
psychology -- the question of what do you have to have in order to be a
moral entity. IE. A person cursing and kicking his car because it woun't
start is making an error in moral psychology). (NOTE: In MoQ we expand
"morality" so there are different moralitys at different levels, but here
I'm refering to the strict/narrow sense: moral=social ethic.)
The person/thing distinction is the most fundamental of all social
institutions -- society exists only in its members. It depends absolutly
on the ability of its members (us) to recognize one-another and tell the
difference between persons and things. This ability is the most early
ability imposed upon children. (The point of the boy raised by wolves
isn't that he can't tell birds from non-birds, for God's sake; it's that
he can't tell persons from non-persons.) And this is the ability most
strictly enforced in adults. Let's call this training the "socializing
process."
Persons are products! Acording to most people's (natural)
thinking 'person' should correspond to certain natural facts -- something
"out there." And so the S-O metaphysitian singles out a property --
self-consciousness, sentience or what-have-you. In natural thinking, the
socializing process doesn't create self-concious persons; it modifies
them. Wolf-boy hasn't been properly modified, but he is a person. There
"are" persons in the sense that there "are" mountains and there "are"
galactic nebuli -- namely, they "are" whether we recognize them or not
(we, each of us).
But persons are not "natural facts," but social facts! Persons
arise in the self-conscious opposition of the natural facts -- the
physical body w/ its creature urges. We get to be persons by
training/controlling our bodies -- synching the natural rhythms to the
social rythms. (One does not fart in public or urinate on the ketchen
floor.) What doesn't have this self-control cannot be allowed to correct
me, insult me, or sue me in a court of law. A child may talk to his Teddy
bear, but an adult who seriously takes his Teddy to be a person will not
long be allowed to manage his own affairs. And if one does not grant
personhood to thoes who dererve it then one will soon be stricken of one's
personhood one's self. This receprocity is repeated in the more concrete
roles we play: mother-child, hero-villian, customer-server... A trusted
adviser requires someone who trusts his advice. I may claim that I have a
beautiful singing voice, but if people scramble for the doors when I open
my mouth to sing... We exist by mutualy agreeing what one-another is
trying to be. Where agreement fails the persons (logically and morally)
must re-identify one-another or else actions have no meaning. That is, I
can't know what you're doing unless I know what one is supposed to be
doing in your situation. (This is basic to Aristotle, BTW.)
A thing is just those properties which we can (idealy and
objectivly) agree in the long run that it has. A thing is characterized
by mutual agreement and how we talk *about* it. A person is characterized
by how we agree to talk *to* him -- which determins how we expect him to
talk back. Thus, the most important thing is to be able to tell whether X
merely is a body, or whether X *has* a body. And, of course, it's not a
clear-cut A/not-A. There are a host of "marginally functional persons" --
the psychotic, the retarded, a felon, a senile person or a young child.
These people have a body but the same way persons have bodies. They cannot
reliably restrain themselves.
One is a person by not being a thing. Person = member of society.
There is a reason that 'persons' come up in the social patterns of value
-- that's where they are found and that's what they are. If you want to
stick the person/the self/the mind up on the intellectual level then
you've goofed up the system and are going to have lots of mind-body
questions.
This view of personhood is not new. It's the way the Greeks
viewed things (The purpose of the polis [city-state] is the creation of
individuals). That view culminates in Aristotle. It is revived later in
Hegel and then comes down through Hiedgger and Goffman. So w/ all this
intellectual momentum behind it you might wonder why we don't all naturaly
think this way. Answer: psychology. Psychology is our dominating
discorse. It prevades (and defines) the modern world. It begins w/ Freud
who had a physiological focus -- physiology means the body and that means
the individual body. So we naturaly think of the self or personality or
mind as something privately "in here" (like C-fibers in the brain) But
the truth is that the person exists primarily in public space. (Not the
distributive we, but the continuous we.) So once you settle the mind into
the social level then the problems of solipsism and mind-matter interface
disappear like smoke.
Goffmanian sociology w/ its inter-personal (rather than
inner-personal definition of the self) spells a death toll for psychology.
Goffman's *Frame Analysis* is a great book and easy to read, but it went
over in the sociology community like a led zeplin because if you approch
it SOM in your head, w/ the traditional Cartisan mind or Freuadian ego,
then it doesn't make any sense. If you read it thinking person=member of
society (social/moral person) then it's dynomite!
_____________________
Forgive that lengthy blast from the past, but I wanted you to se
where i'm comming from when I say:
*** The Self is an *apologia* -- a story of preduring alighnment
to the prevading moral values. ***
We can see (from the Gofmanian point of view) that a "person," a
subject, is also a process of moral agreement -- also extended over time.
What really exists is neither things out there nor selves in here
-- not the stuff being experienced, nor the subject doing the experiencing
-- but experience itself... the moral process which concretly gives
rise to these things... in two words, the "Quality event."
So which do you like better Bo: Donny is secretly a supporter of
SOM; me openly attacking the MoQ (which you'd rather have "any day"); or
this position stated above as my own, real, true position. I mean, I
suppose i could alway pretend to be a SOM advocate and attack the MoQ, if
that would make you happy? ;-)
(You know, I still didn't get around to that question about the
lybrary of Alexandria... Maybe next time, eh?)
TTFN (ta-ta for now)
Donny
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