Martin Striz (striz@ezwv.com)
Fri, 17 Apr 1998 08:07:58 +0100
Donald wrote:
> Martin, I don't buy the one vs. manny.
> In Platonism, what really exist are Ideas, and "bodys" are just
>like shadows on the wall. But the Ideas arn't different for every
>individual self. The Ideas are absolute -- objective, as you say. The
>Idea (or Form) of Good or Justice is universal; people who dissagree
>over them, just don't know them -- they are ignorent of The Truth.
> Or another one: In Hegel's Idealism, knowledge is communal. It's
>crutched in the moral discourse, the dialectic, the dialogue. As he puts
>it: "Knowledge is a group movement, not an individual being at rest."
>So, here again we have an "Idealism" in which there is not a different
>apple for everybody who walks by (so to speak).
That's fine but I was talking about neither Plato's forms nor Hegel's
Idealism nor Taoism. I don't think the SOM perspective was fully
ingrained during Plato's time, it was merely beginning. Descartes may
have helped it with his "I think therefore I am" statement. And Kant
may have finalized it and fully ingrained it into Western thought.
Let me say it again: there is one object (the apple) and many subjects
(observers). Subjectivism (relativism) vs. objectivism is a dichotomy
that can be DERIVED from this s-o split if you think of it in terms of
one and many. Then it's easy to see how an ontologically object-based
world leads to an epistemically objective world and an ontologically
subject-based world leads to an epistemically subjetive world. The
ontological s-o dichotomy is responsible for other dichotomies in
epistemological, ethical, social, cultural, psychological, and many
other ways. (objective/subjective epistemology, relativist/absolutist
ethics, Eastern thought/Western thought societies or cultures,
romantic/classic psychology, etc., etc., etc., etc.)
Perhaps the best thing SOMists can learn from the MOQ is that the world
is objects, subjects, or both DEPENDING ON HOW WE LOOK AT IT, but that
this split is not a good one to make no matter how we cut it. The whole
point is not to argue over the objectivity/subjectivity of the world in
the first place. The whole point is to leave it alone.
(This argument has pulled the appeal of philosphy down very far.
Philosophy is supposed to be a LOVE of wisdom, both GOODNESS and truth.
But goodness, and thus love, was deamed superfluous. And philosophy is
a bunch of crap to most people these days.)
The world is both Dynamic and Static. This is where we ought to start
approaching undivided reality from.
I think we have answered the first question sufficiently. I have not
taken the MOQ position just so I could keep arguing over objectivity and
subjectivity. I, like Pirsig, simply left it behind.
Next question.
Cheers,
Martin
"My skeleton floats on the wall before me,
something doesn't seem right here,
my mind's eye is missing from my body,
I know it's there, but I can't see where"
-- Crash Test Dummies
Martin Striz
striz@ezwv.com
http://webpages.marshall.edu/~striz2
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