Magnus Berg (qmgb@bull.se)
Wed, 18 Feb 1998 18:49:23 +0100
Hi again Donny
Donald T Palmgren wrote:
>
> Pretend all of you that you are the head of a university
> philosophy department (a fate I wouldn't wish upon my worst enamy), and
> the dean comes in and says, "I'm real sorry Professor Knows-a-lot, but
> we've got these terible budget problems and I'm going to have to get rid
> of the entier philosophy program."
> And you say, "But Dean Tightwad, we need to study philosophy!"
> And Dean Tightwad says, "Well, perhaps you can help me. See I was
> a bussiness major, and I've never really understood what you do here."
> Now, how are you going to respond? This guy wants to know,
> bottom-line, what's the pay-off, and your job depends upon your answer.
> What are you going to say?
The day my interest in philosophy is dependent on budget, I hope I have
the sense to quit. Another thing, budget is social SPoV. Science,
including philosophy, is intellectual SPoV. So, according to MoQ, it
is immoral for budget to inhibit science. Of course I realize that much
of science today is dependent on budget, it is nevertheless immoral.
A disturbing thing here is the emotional detachment that are very
common among philosophers. They live with the illusion that all
different philosophies can be "objectively" compared and ordered.
That is not the case. It would mean that "objective" would be a
definition made in some kind of meta philosophy. I'm not really
sure, but if that is what Kant did with his a priori idea, then
his philosophy is resting on itself, just as much as any other.
Philosophers don't dare to get emotionally involved because then,
their so called "objectiveness" gets polluted by their personal
likes and dislikes, what we call value. And value is something
that is totally forbidden in all "objective" science.
That's why philosophers say that "Philosophy is the study of its
own history". They're trapped in the church of reason and can't
get out.
No pun intended, but sometimes I'm beginning to doubt if you
really read ZMM and Lila. All I said above is there, but much
clearer than my ramblings. But if you're also trapped in the
church of reason, I can understand your reasoning. There's no
way to fit the MoQ within the church of reason.
> >
> > I substitute subject with knower, mind, subjective, insubstantial etc.
> > I substitute object with known, matter, objective, body, substantial etc.
> >
> > I sense that you might not, please elaborate.
>
> Certainly. Pirsig makes the same equation you do without thinking
> about it, and that's what I'm trying to show (else my discussion of Kant
> will seem meaningless -- well, understanding Kant is a worthy goal in
> itself, but it woun't seem especially connected to MoQ).
> The differance is, as I said earlier, an idea is not a body --
> it's not spacially extended. But it is a Gegenstand (an object).
> Put this tool in your philosophical toolbox:
> *** Whenever you have a dichotomistic distionction (everything
> is either A or B) iterate it -- that is, apply it to itself and see where
> it falls. ***
> So: MBd is clearly a thought or system of thought. It is not
> spacially extended, MBd has no body. It's an element of Mind.
> But what about SOM (knower-known)? It's obviously not a knowing
> consciousness; it's something (namely an idea) we know/are aware of. SOM
> is an object -- a Gegenstand (literally "stands onver against"
> consciounsness).
> So I hope now that it's clear that SOM and MBd are different.
> Pirsig missed that little point.
I don't get what that was intended to prove exactly. The toolbox tool you
gave us is by our vocabulary a philosopholical tool, not a philosophical.
But that's not the point. The point, which I was trying to make last week,
is that Pirsig did *not* miss that difference. What he did, was to wrap 'em
all up in the same bag and call all of them SOM. I can imagine that there
are more of these tools around. But I doubt if any of them are able to
grasp the MoQ. It would be like trying to explain the taste of chocolate
with numbers, a good old example.
> If subjective and Mind are the same, and objective and Body are
> the same, then I'd agree. But what I was trying to get at through all that
> cloud watching is: they are not. Pirsig was held captive by a picture and
> we all fall into the same "hypnossis" as he when we read him.
> But "objective" means "brute fact." Objective-subjective are types
> of truth not types of things. So, I don't say Pirsig wants to make
> Quality a (known)object or a Body. I'm saying he wants to give it the
> truth status of a brute fact. He himself says that this is how it all got
> started -- How do you assign grades in a rhetoric class? Is it
> subjective? Dosn't he clearly react against that? Dosn't he out-right say
> he wants Quality to be absolute?
No again, he said that it was neither subjective nor objective. He avoided
both horns of his faculty's dilemma by saying that subjective and objective
are both derived from Quality, *NOT* that Quality was objective!
The church of reason says that if a truth is not objective, it is subjective.
That's what SOM is all about. All philosophies in the SOM bag defines one
and only one truth based on a certain mix of objectivity and subjectivity.
You should really read some of Doug's posts about many truths, they're
brilliant.
And about the "brute fact" part. History, relativity and most of all,
quantum mechanics should be enough to show that there's no such truth
as a "brute fact" truth. Pirsig snapped *out* of that hypnosis, not into
another.
I think this is the time for a:
Many truths to you Donny,
(And that's a good :) thing)
Magnus
-- "I'm so full of what is right, I can't see what is good" N. Peart - Rush-- post message - mailto:lilasqd@hkg.com unsubscribe/queries - mailto:diana@asiantravel.com homepage - http://www.geocities.com/Athens/Forum/4670
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