DMB/Matt This is going well now, I think you are closing in on your differences, please keep going.
Myself, I want to talk about experience and action and transforming reality like Dewey, and language, values and interpretation like Rorty, we need both sets of descriptions but we need a way to help them live together. I think Rorty rejects too much of Dewey, obscuring the fact that our interpretations are also tested in active and more than conversational life, yet Rorty also adds to pragmatism a better grasp of the workings of language, which is perhapsmore dynamic in Rorty than Dewey as Matt suggests. Regards David M ----- Original Message ----- From: "david buchanan" <[EMAIL PROTECTED]> To: <[EMAIL PROTECTED]> Sent: Monday, November 26, 2007 7:21 AM Subject: Re: [MD] subject/object: pragmatism Matt and all: Wish I had time to respond to everything here, sorry for the editing, but you know.... Matt said: My Rortyan contention with radical empiricism is that if one becomes a radical empiricist, then the end point is that there is eventually very little to say about epistemology as distinct from the sociology of knowledge. Cartesian epistemology was an area of inquiry that was distinct from the practices of accumulating knowledge, and if radical empiricism is what we call the demolition of that problematic, we are left to focus on the various practices of the various areas of inquiry, which is what Dewey did move on to after a fashion. The connection between radical empiricism and Rorty's slogan of "changing the subject" is that radical empiricism closes one subject to move to another. dmb says: We must have very different ideas about radical empiricism because I'm confused by all three of your sentences about it. Its end point is to make epistemology indistinct the sociology of knowledge? I don't see the relevance of the particular cartesian problematic mentioned. And the connection between Rorty's slogan and radical empiricism is definately lost on me. Matt said: Part of why I want to make this connection between radical empiricism, psychological nominalism, and Rorty's slogan is because I think you are playing on an ambiguity when you say, as you often have, that "a Rortyized version [of Pirsig's philosophy] takes the metaphysics and the quality out of the metaphysics of quality." I would halt Ian from saying that I or Rorty would agree to this formulation because one of the things I've constantly tried to do is point out the ambiguity of the word "metaphysics" in Pirsig's usage as compared to Rorty's usage. Rorty's enemy is the appearance/reality distinctive version of metaphysics, which you agree is not the version Pirsig is using. The version Pirsig uses is something wide like, "a general framework of understanding," and in this sense there's nothing to theoretically object to, as it is just like Sellars' definition of philosophy as "seeing how things, in the widest possible sense, hang together, in the widest possible sense," a definition that Rorty adheres to. What Pirsig calls his "Metaphysics of Quality," I would transmute to "Philosophy of Quality," and I don't think anything in particular is lost. dmb says: Yes, I understand that you have no objection to metaphysics when it only means a coherent picture or framework, and I think we agree that the MOQ is the kind that does NOT assert thee Reality behind appearance or seek knowledge of it. (Although I don't see how this is related to rorty's slogan or psychological nominalism.) But I still want to say the same thing about your version of the MOQ. I mean, you seem to dismiss all the main features of the framework and seem to have disagreements with all the central terms so that even in a non-Platonic sense the metaphysics amputated. And then there's Quality, thee central term... Matt said: What requires more ink is the "Quality" bit, because both you and I ascribe different importance to its usage in Pirsig's philosophy. ...part of this hangs on why we use "pure" at all in our use of "experience." You think it is very important that we do, I don't. dmb says: As I already explained, "pure experience" is William James's term. I use that term among many others and have no particular attachment to the word "pure". In Dewey's terms, pure experience is "had" and reflective experience is "known". This would be dynamic and static in Pirsig's terms. These terms, obviously, are employed to mark a distinction between two kinds of experience and that's what I think is important. The distinction is what matters. The terms used to make that distinction are of secondary importance at best. Matt said: ...you would insist that Pirsig's philosophy is not only incomplete, but disastrously impaired if a third is not added: the bit about pure experience, the pre-intellectual cutting edge of experience. ...You think there is dangerous amputation happening. I'm just not sure why we need to say that "Dynamic Quality is the lived, flux of pure experience" as opposed to "Dynamic Quality is the lived, flux of experience." Pure experience has to contrast with something, and I'm not sure what it is. ...Purity just seems out of place when talking about static patterns. I think it creates a needless pathos, one that the masochistic/ascetic might go in for, but not one for a pragmatist. dmb says: In light of what I just said about the distinction between two kinds of experience, pure experience is simply "had" while subsequent reflection is cognitively "known". You know, the low quality experience that gets you off the stove is "had" while the talk about heat and stoves and injured selves is "known" experience. Other pairs of terms that make the same contrast are undivided and divided, pre-intellectual and intellectual, pre-cognitive and cognitive, pre-linguistic and linguistic, pre-conceptual and conceptual, undifferentiated and differentiated, undefined and defined, flowing and stable, dynamic and static. Since these labels for experience are all descriptive and are all similar in that description, I would imagine that further explanation would insult your intelligence. But then, I've made lists like this before. I mean, this contrast is richly depicted here, no? Its crystal clear, no? If not, please explain. Matt said: I would agree to a Deweyan construal of Pirsig's DQ/static patterns distinction. From a metaphysical standpoint, DQ is the flow of lived experience and static patterns are the train of past experiences with which we interpret new experience. When an anomaly occurs, we seek to accommodate it as best we can, but sometimes it calls for an entire reappraisal of the train. From an epistemological standpoint, the Dynamic point of view is the one in which we live life as it happens. The static point of view is a special case in which we look at the way in which we have been living life. In the former we are looking forward, out past the head of the train, in the latter we are looking behind ourselves at the train of experiences that shape how we are living life. The first is non-reflective, instinctual living of life, the second reflection on our instincts (which is no less instinctual, since it requires a special set of instincts to guide the process--hence the apparent problem of "boot-strapping" and the search for a final resting place, a foundation to avoid infinite regress). ...But in none of these construals do I see an important need to use "pure," "direct," or "pre-intellectual." Insisting on them looks either suspicious or insular. dmb says: I think there are many subtle problems with your take on Pirsig's DQ/sq distinction. Wish I had the time to untangle a few because this reduces the MOQ to trivialities and it breaks my heart. Matt said: ...Rorty doesn't seal off the non-linguistic, he is just being careful not to treat the non-linguistic the way philosophers since Plato have been treating it. That, I would suggest, is what produces the strangeness you feel. Rocks, lakes, beauty, all of these things count. Rorty is just trying to move us away from a representationalist account of language, and part of that problematic, so he argues, is the idea that there are some things we inherently cannot express through language, some things that cannot be "presented in the form of a sentence." Language isn't, in this sense, in the expression or presentation business. dmb says: Yes, I'm sure that has something to do with the strangeness I feel. And it seems strange that Rorty's treatment of a Platonic problematic should have any relevance to a discussion of the MOQ. I mean, if Pirsig isn't doing Platonic metaphysics then Rorty's concerns are just a confusing distraction, a matter of making objections to assertions nobody made. Look at it this way, the difference between "had" and "known" can be expressed in terms of ineffability, but this is functional not absolute. Its not that "had" experience can't be talked about for divine reasons. In fact I'm talking about it right now and we do all the time around here. And the subsequent experience in which we reflect only makes sense with reference to the "had" experience. They are interconnected phases within the continuity of experience and both are going on all the time. The point is simply to make that same contrast between kinds of experience. All the various terms for "had" simply indicate experience prior to any conceptualizations about it. Since language is conceptualization and "had" experience is prior to and contrasted with cognition, it is functionally ineffable. And this, my friend, is what keeps me from buying into statement like "all awareness is a linguistic affair". I'm saying there is a kind of experience that is NOT a linguistic affair. Matt said A good encapsulation of why I don't like your formulations of the problem is because when you say, "moves the emphasis from direct everyday experience to conversation," I want to know when conversation is not something I do directly everyday. This is the problem with saying that static patterns are indirect, or impure, with saying that reflection is indirect. If we collapse the experience/reality distinction, then reflection is as direct as any other experience to reality... Direct and indirect seem out of point, if for no other reason than once you collapse the Cartesian problematic, you are always directly experiencing whatever it is you are experiencing because there is no longer a distance between knower and known. dmb says: Again, you're barking up the wrong tree. The distinction between "had" and "known" is not being asserted within a Cartesian framework. Quite the contrary. In each case, (Pirsig, James, Mead and Dewey, etc.) that basic distinction is made in oppostion to it and as an alternative to it. Radical empiricism says that we are constrained by experience in two ways, we can't ignore it or go beyond it. There is no reality beyond experience and everything experienced is real. From this standpoint, "had" experience and "known" experience are equally real, although "known" experience is usually truer in the cognitive sense. And this, my friend, is why rorty's pragmatism bothers me. Its anti-epistemological attitude combined with the emphasis on language puts the "known" over the "had" in the same way that Platonism always did. I guess this is why the idea of radical empiricism leading to the sociology of knowledge makes no sense to me. The study of knowledge is fine, but I'm talking about felt qualities that pervade throughout the process of experience as its first "had" and right on through to the "known" experience. The radical empiricists want to say there are experiences that get lost in the abstractions of philosophy and we have to recover them if we want a coherent picture of reality. Matt said: The choice between the idiom of experience and the idiom of language, I would continue to argue, is insignificant at the level of destroying Cartesianism. You might agree, but continue that we don't just want to destroy Cartesianism, we want to do other things, too. I would certainly agree, but point out that not only does Rorty not preclude the use of other idioms, does not preclude the doing of other things,... dmb says: I don't feel at all compelled to choose an idiom. Pirsig is a radical empiricist and radical empiricism is all about experience. Why wouldn't I talk about experience, in terms of experience? Your concerns about certain terms (pure) and certain metaphors (occular) and certain idioms (experience) about my vocabulary (?) are aimed at making a point, I'm sure. But they only strike me as pointless prohibitions. I wish you'd find a less repressive and more direct way to make those points. And isn't that stuff all aimed at a position that no pragmatist of any kind would hold. Those prohibitions are meant as breaks on SOM based talk, no? And if that's true, throwing at me in the midst of discussing radical empiricism and the MOQ makes no sense. Aren't we way past destroying Cartesianism by now? _________________________________________________________________ You keep typing, we keep giving. Download Messenger and join the i’m Initiative now. http://im.live.com/messenger/im/home/?source=TAGLM Moq_Discuss mailing list Listinfo, Unsubscribing etc. http://lists.moqtalk.org/listinfo.cgi/moq_discuss-moqtalk.org Archives: http://lists.moqtalk.org/pipermail/moq_discuss-moqtalk.org/ http://moq.org.uk/pipermail/moq_discuss_archive/ Moq_Discuss mailing list Listinfo, Unsubscribing etc. http://lists.moqtalk.org/listinfo.cgi/moq_discuss-moqtalk.org Archives: http://lists.moqtalk.org/pipermail/moq_discuss-moqtalk.org/ http://moq.org.uk/pipermail/moq_discuss_archive/
