DMB:
Mead is saying that our "linguistic structures ..are not 'free floating'
constructions" but rather that they are "ultimately rooted in the ..universe in
which we are embedded". These structures grow out of the universe as an
emergent property, one that can't be reduced to the structures from which they
spring. And here Mead is parallel to Pirsig in asserting that there are levels
of reality and that these levels exist together in an evolutionary relationship
- and that we are all those levels at once.
[Ron]
I fear I shall stain my petticoat with tears, brilliant.
" Any philosophic explanation of quality is going to be both
false and true precisely because it is a philosophic explanation. The
process of philosophic explanation is an analytic process, a process
of breaking something down into words, into subjects and predicates.
What 1 mean (and everybody else means) by the word quality cannot be
broken down into subjects and predicates. This is not because quality
is so mysterious but because quality is so simple, immediate and
direct.
The easiest intellectual analogue of pure quality that people in
our environment can understand is that "quality is the response of an
organism to its environment."
Quality is the continuing stimulus which our environment
puts upon us to create thee world in which we live. All of it. Every
last bit of it.
Now, to take that which has caused us to create the world and
include it within the world we have created is clearly impossible.
That is why quality cannot be defined. If we do define it we are
defining something less than quality itself.
To be sure, all that has just been said can never be more than
an intellectual analogue either. I have written it to suggest rather
than define the nature of quality. Like all other intellectual
analogues of quality it is both true and false at the same time."
-Robert Pirsig
Bozeman, Montana
April 2, 1961
Thanks DMB!
-----Original Message-----
From: [EMAIL PROTECTED] [mailto:[EMAIL PROTECTED] On Behalf Of david buchanan
Sent: Wednesday, October 31, 2007 12:46 PM
To: [EMAIL PROTECTED]
Subject: Re: [MD] subject/object: pragmatism
Matt said:
DMB, I was using "pigeon-hole" in the same sense as you were using the term
"distinction," as in when you said to Ian that, of course we can make
distinctions after dualisms, don't be crazy. Here's a distinction: when Johnny
raises his hand in class, I ignore him because when he has that stupid grin on
his face, all he wants to do is crack a fart joke. Here's a dualism: kids who
smile with their hands raised should be ignored. The second is stupid, but
_from experience_, why shouldn't we ignore Johnny? What I'm talking about are
ad hoc distinctions we create as tools, learned from experience, to deal with
our experience. I'm not talking about Platonic pigeon-holes.
dmb says:
What are you saying here? Is Johnny and his fart joke an analogy for James and
his doctrine of pure experience? As I see it, talking about this doctrine is a
way of talking about the MOQ's central concept; Quality. I thought we had just
identified this as THEE point of contention and were just about to focus the
debate on that in a specific way but here it seems you want to dismiss that as
a childish distraction. That could very well be a valid point but you'd have to
explain some things before I can see it as such. I don't mind
meta-philosophical generalizations or the efforts to defend Rorty's general
reputation, but I still don't understand why you reject the doctrine of pure
experience. And I'm only interested in Rorty to the extent that he gives you
reasons for that rejection. As you know, this is my oldest and most persistent
complaint about your take on the MOQ. As I used to say, it takes the Quality
out of the MOQ.
Matt said:
You brought up your problems with Rorty and how he supposedly rejects radical
empiricism (which, under certain specifications, I deny) and the notion of
"pure experience," so I thought I might return briefly to the subject. The
reason I've gotten in the habit of regarding Rorty as much of a radical
empiricist as James or Dewey is because I take the thesis to be the collapse of
the metaphysical/epistemological divide between subject/object, knower/known.
The question then becomes, "What of pure experience? What role does it play?"
...Pure experience aside, I think most of our haggling still consists over this
notion of the "linguistic turn." .. Your stance looks to me like a
pro-experience-talk position, and you then paint me as being
pro-language/anti-experience. With regards to radical empiricism, this isn't
quite right. As I see it, once we become radical empiricists, it _doesn't
matter_ whether we talk about what we experience or we talk about what we talk
about. It simply doesn't matter.
dmb says:
Okay, it seems we agree that radical empiricism collapses the subject-object
divide. We also agree that the world is known through language. And I think we
agree that an important question then has to be asked: What role does pure
experience play? In effect, this question asks what role does Quality play in
Pirsig's Metaphysics of Quality. Are we agreed as to the content of the topic,
at least? That's certainly what I'm talking about and it seems to me that we
have very different answers to that question. As I said last time, pure
experience is that cutting edge of experience as in the train analogy or the
immediate response to a low quality situation as in the hot stove example. It
seems central and essential to me. I'd say that both classical pragmatism and
the MOQ would both be empty and incoherent without it and you seem to be saying
it just doesn't matter, that it is as trivial and distracting as a childish
fart joke. I don't get that. I mean, WHY do you think its okay to ignore it?
HOW do you justify the claim that it doesn't matter? See, I'm asking you to be
very specific because its not clear what path you've taken to reach such
conclusions. To put it in very basic terms, we have Dewey saying that there is
a big difference between having and experience and knowing you had an
experience but, for reasons that are very fuzzy to me, you and/or Rorty seem to
be saying simply that there is no difference between had and known. As I see
it, the classical pragmatists (Pirsig, James, Dewey and now I would add Mead to
the list as well) are all in agreement as to the central role played by pure
experience. They all take it to be the original impulse that guides all
subsequent development. As I understand it, rejecting pure experience is a
rejection of the MOQ and pragmatism in general. Rejecting that means that your
position can't rightly be called pragmatism and this is what Rorty's critics
are saying when they call him a neo-pragmatist, a linguistic idealist or a
mamby pamby positivist. They're all saying that his view is to be distinguished
from classical pragmatism.
Ideally, to get right at the heart of our debate you would do something like
present Rorty's reaction to that specific doctrine, present some quotes from
him where he discusses that feature of classical pragmatism in more specific
terms. I need to see the argument that gets him to the conclusion that it just
doesn't matter. It could very well be that you're directly addressing this
issue when you distinguish between the early and late versions of Rorty or when
you describe his aims and goals in meta-philosophical terms. But I don't see
how. That mode of discussion doesn't work for me. As I see it, switching to
that mode is really just a way of changing the subject to something other than
pure experience. Just yesterday I read a piece about Mead by Sandra Rosenthal
(Mead: Behavior and the Percieved world). In the first paragraph she explains
that SOM spawned all sorts of debates; realism versus idealism or objectivism
versus subjectivism, etc. Like Hildebrand, she says that the contemporary
version of this debate "is to be found, in more updated garb, in the
realist-anti-realist debate" (Classical American Pragmatism, page 59). Her
central thesis in this piece is that Mead, unlike guys like Rorty, "undercuts
the either/ors of these various alternatives" (CAP, page 60). Here's the second
paragraph in its entirety...
"Mead's position is in agreement with the claims of contemporary postmodernists
such as Rorty and Derrida that our awareness cannot mirror an independent
reality and that our awareness is symbolic in nature; nonetheless, it
categorically rejects their claims that as a result we are denied any access to
a 'hard' independent reality and are instead confined to self-contained
conversation or the play of differance. Conversely, although agreeing with
those who posit an independent reality that enters into our perception, Mead
denies that this reality can in any way provide us with a picture of itself
independent of our interactions with it. He avoids the pitfalls of either
extreme by turning to human behavior in its primordial, prereflective active
engagement with and openness onto a think natural universe as the holistic
context within which the percieved world arises."
This single paragraph fairly well summarizes THEE point I've been trying to
make for at least a year. I imagine you already see what I mean but for the
sake of clarity and for the sake of any MOQers who are following this debate
I'll ask you to notice that Rorty and Mead agree insofar as they both reject
the reflection paradigm. It seems that we have no disagreements on this point
either. But I'll also ask you to notice the Rortarian position categorically
rejected by Mead. He rejects the view that we are "confined to self-contained
conversation" as a result of rejecting the mirror paradigm, as a result of
rejecting SOM. And please notice that Mead avoids that conclusion by turning to
our "primordial, prereflective active engagement" with the world. This
prereflective activity is Mead's version of Quality or pure experience and it
is also exactly what distinguishes his view from Rorty's. Mead is saying that
our "linguistic structures ..are not 'free floating' constructions" but rather
that they are "ultimately rooted in the ..universe in which we are embedded".
These structures grow out of the universe as an emergent property, one that
can't be reduced to the structures from which they spring. And here Mead is
parallel to Pirsig in asserting that there are levels of reality and that these
levels exist together in an evolutionary relationship - and that we are all
those levels at once. Anyway, it seems to me that Rorty becomes an anti-realist
precisely because there is no anchor in pure experience or anything like it.
This is what leads his critics to charge him with a kind of idealism, where
linguistic structures are "free-floating" so that they can only ever be
compared to other "free-floating" structures, thus he rejects Objectivity in
favor of intersubjective agreement or Solidarity.
So I'm hoping that this debate will move forward with a reply from you that
specifically explains 1) How Rorty escapes this charge or 2) Why Rorty rejects
pure experience or 3) How the realism/anti-realism debate ISN'T just an
extension of the debates spawned by SOM or 4) What you think of the role played
by pure experience or Quality.
As you can see, I'm more convinced than ever that this issue makes or breaks
the MOQ in particular and classical pragmatism in general. Without something
like a doctrine of pure experience, James, Dewey, Mead and Pirsig are just
dime-a-dozen postmodernists and not very good ones at that.
And now its time for me to read some of the first assigned Rorty readings for
tommorrow's class.
Thanks,
dmb
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