Martin Striz (striz1@MARSHALL.EDU)
Sat, 29 Nov 1997 08:49:49 +0100
<<<<<<<<<<<<<<Bodvar wrote>>>>>>>>>>>>>>>
Anyway the gist of what Mike said is that the borderline between the
subjective in the sense of inner, mental as contrasted with outer objective
is not drawn at the same place as immaterial/material (or
spiritual/corporeal if this old- fashioned expression is still used).
<<<<<<<<<<<<<<<<<<>>>>>>>>>>>>>>>>>>>>>
Yes, pretty much what Mike said was that we always brought up the idea of
subject-object metaphysics and blamed it for all sorts of disjunctions
(romantic-classic, material-immaterial, Eastern-Western, and so on). His
complaint was that these disjunctions don't necessarily follow from SOM.
That if you have a subject half, it doesn't mean everything is a thought in
the mind, because minds aren't the only things in the subject half, they are
just one part of it. Angels would be immaterial but objective, while the
value of a hammer would be material but subjective. Although, that certainly
wasn't the biggest of his complaints. :-) His major one was that if we
can't justify the objectivity of Quality, it can easily be eliminated with a
swipe of Occam's Razor. Because if Quality is subjective, then we are
complicating the issue by saying it is not in the mind. His argument was
that Quality IS subjective, a position I have not been able to sway him
from.
At first I told him that Pirsig performed experiments where he had his
students rank essays in order of best to worst and that they tended to
agree. Mike said that it was one small class, the students probably had
similar interests if they chose to take that class and made similar value
judgements, and being college students they probably had similar
backgrounds. I tried to point out that even if there were discrepancies
between the students, which essays they chose were not important, it's what
they looked out for. As Pirsig said in "Lila" during his confrontation with
Rigel at breakfast, people disagree about the temporal objects and the
Quality they have, but they are in total agreement about Quality. Now,
there's just one problem with that. I can't demonstrate it to Mike. :-)
<<<<<<<<<<<<<<Bodvar wrote>>>>>>>>>>>>>>>
It carries a certain weight at first glance, but if one asks what the
difference between a number and a thought is, there follows a big silence.
Naturally because it soon dawns upon a consistent thinker that s-he is at
the very core of the problem that Pirsig set out to remedy.
<<<<<<<<<<<<<<<<<<>>>>>>>>>>>>>>>>>>>>>
I don't understand what your solution is.
Martin
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