Hey Dave, I'm really sorry I'm not addressing your points, Dave. I think maybe the main problem is that, well, you sound a lot like me these days. This has been happening for some time. The more time goes on, the more we talk, the less and less I see differences and the less and less I get excited in these conversations. I think our differences have more to do with ego and practical conversational difficulties then any major theoretical difference at all. Maybe just a difference in what we like to read and the kind of life activities we enjoy.
I don't understand what you think our differences are. You seem very sure you're pegging a difference and the only way I can construe a difference is if I do the little annoying Platonic dance. Now, as I see it, the proper response is, "No, that's not what I'm saying, so we're more in agreement here." But, aside from the burgling anger you've never been good at controlling, you seem to see an important difference. When you enunciate it, though, _I_ get confused, because it's all stuff I can more or less agree with. So I fasten on things like the metaphor of illness. And I say things like, "I suggest moving away from this metaphor," not "you are totally fucked if you use this metaphor" as it seems like from your responses to it. But when I try enunciating whatever minor, leftover differences we may have in theory/philosophy, you don't like what I say, either, but--in all honesty--your reactions are a bit more hyperbolic then mine. I understand you're trying to suss out whatever difference there is between us, so you have to make hay out of something, but I don't think we communicate very well to each other about our problems. You see me as avoiding your points, but most of your points are things I agree with, except that they are aimed at me--it makes just as little sense to me to see you using your weapons against me as it makes sense to you to see me using mine against you. I think you still have it in your head that I'm a very good foil for enunciating problems of SOM, or what have you. I think what we've found out, over these long years, is that neither one of us have been very good foils for each other because, well, we are far too much on the same side. At least, I don't think you're using me very well as your foil. And I don't think I can use you much as a foil at all. I've been spurred on to some very interesting thoughts and lines of argument in engagement with you over the years, but I'm willing to say, as you want me to, that they nowhere touch what you actually think and that they were aimed at a ghost or at an enemy we have in common: so be it, I'm not good at understanding you, but I cherish those spurs nevertheless. Now, I'm more likely to find it just easier to point at things you say as, "Yeah, that guy's got it right." Except on Rorty: you still get Rorty wrong, so it is convenient to state Rorty's actual position in counterposition to the one you state. I'm sorry we agree on too much, so much so that I don't find a lot worth debating about. That's usually a good thing. DMB said: I shouldn't have used the word "annoying" at all because I hoped you would respond to my actual answer here, which was deleted. I probably shouldn't mention how annoying that is too. As you may recall, I said your charges of Platonism were unwarranted and tried to explain how illness and health are not even metaphorical, let alone Platonic. The difference between sick and well is concrete. Likewise, the difference between real fruit and plastic fruit or the difference between a fake Rolex and the genuine article. None of these distinctions requires an appearance/reality distinction or any kind of essentialism. And in this context, where all the philosophers under discussion were involved in addressing the problem of Platonism, such charges seem to have no merit at all. That's WHY I find it annoying, because it seems completely irrelevant to our conversation. Matt: No, I didn't fasten on "annoying" as a way of dodging what you said. I fastened on to it because it was the only thing left to talk about. Let me say more explicitly then my silence on your explanations which I cut: like with Pirsig and James and Dewey, I agree with large swaths of Heidegger. What I consider a less than expedient philosophical strategy is to enunciate one's philosophy with illness/health metaphors, as people like Pirsig and Heidegger are wont to do. What more is there left to say? You deny that what you are saying _is_ Platonic, so I back off, shrug my shoulders and say, "Well, I still think there's better metaphors to use." You say it isn't a metaphor, but, from my perspective, that's like saying Pirsig was wrong to say it's all analogy. I don't think I'm being dodgey--that's just the sense of metaphor I'm using, the same one Pirsig and you use. DMB said: I don't know about the means/ends continuum but its interesting that you would mention Dewey in this context. I recently looked at his ideas concerning cultural change as they're presented in the last chapter of ART OF EXPERIENCE, titled "Art and Civilization". I found that he essentially agrees with Pirsig's code of art there. He says, "Art is more moral than moralities". Heidegger is comparable to a certain extent as well. (An essay about this should be posted on Ant's site soonish.) Anyway, the idea is basically that cultural changes occur because of imaginative visions and this doesn't necessarily involve the fine arts. This kind of artist can and has included philosophers and political leaders as well as poets and prophets. Once in a while, when an imaginative vision meshes with the wider culture in a certain way, big things happen. It is in this sense that I mean the problems are metaphysical. Matt: That was also Rorty's sense of "strong poet" which he used in Contingency, Irony, and Solidarity. In this sense of metaphysical, I repeat my thought that it is a specialized conversation, in the sense that not everybody has these kinds of conversations. The sense of complexity that I sometimes don't sense in your attempts to cut a difference between the two of us (though let me hasten to add that I don't doubt that you actually believe this is complex) is the complexity involved in, say, disseminating the visions of people like Dewey and Heidegger. Yes, we are all speaking the same language, but maybe you are a lot better in convincing people to be Heideggerians than I am. The sense of complexity I'm referring to is the same kind of idea Dewey had in differentiating between direct and indirect/reflective experience (on expanded thoughts on this, see my "Notes on Experience, Dewey, and Pirsig" http://pirsigaffliction.blogspot.com/2007/03/notes-on-experience-dewey-and-pirsig.html). It is the kind of thing I was talking about recently in a post entitled, "The Philosophical and the Commensensical" (http://lists.moqtalk.org/pipermail/moq_discuss-moqtalk.org/2008-April/023699.html). In your sense of "metaphysical," the work Rorty was doing was metaphysical culture-healing. It is why Putnam once said that Rorty hopes to be a doctor to the modern soul. I can agree a bit with those characterizations, I just don't like the idea that philosophers have a _special_ insight into our cultural problems (like I would say that doctors _do_ have special insight into my bodily problems). DMB said: I'm confused. You just disagree and agree in a qualified sense. And the qualifications are concerned with the egos of philosophers and the reductionist nature of the word "are"? And do you sincerely think I'm saying everybody has to become a philosopher? What were you saying about quality conversations the other day? How they require a certain generosity? Well, I think you're being mighty stingy here my friend. It looks like you're just making stuff up and then basing the disagreement on that. I mean, that was obviously a pithy summary of a longer, fuller explanation but you're sort of pretending its an isolated claim. I believe the word for this is "disingenuous". Matt: Well, I don't know about "disingenuous." But I will agree that we have difficulty in having conversations without it devolving into accusations of something or other. I'm sorry you feel I'm treating you disingenuously. I'm really not trying to, I'm only trying to address the points I see as relevant (a relevancy you've made very clear you disagree with) based on the idea that we largely agree on a lot (which, given things you're saying, I'm stipulating we do--I have difficulty convincing you of that, but then again, you just said it a post or two ago, so maybe you've seen it to, but then all the fighting continues and the ruckus and hey-nonny-nonny and....I get tired because I lose track of what we're fighting about). Matt said: We are reacting to larger cultural patterns, and philosophy can (and should) add its opinion, its angle, to the larger cultural conversation, but there isn't a one to one equation here. DMB said: Yes, but who said otherwise? Matt: Well, okay, you didn't, but if I just wrote "Yes, but who said otherwise?" in all the appropriate spots in your posts (which would be most places) and got all uppity, the conversation wouldn't move forward at all. You could just say, "Okay, I agree with that." DMB said: In my opinion, the most interesting and intractable problems have to be approached from several angles at once. The borders between these fields make a certain amount of sense in terms of institutional organization and such, but they're not made of stone. Matt: Okay, I agree with that. DMB said: Here's a question for you. As I understand it, Rorty dismisses certain parts of Dewey. You said some things here about that. Do you think it would be fair to say that he's selecting out those points that would take him beyond the first phase, the anti-Platonism. Isn't that where he would suspect Dewey of slipping back into "metaphysics" in the Platonic sense? I mean, would it be fair to say Rorty's treatment of Dewey fits with the debate as I've sketched it? And that's why he's forever talking about what we should give up and what we should no longer ask. He puts most of the emphasis on the negative side, on hunting down the ghost in every corner and crushing it? And any attempts to go beyond this extermination are nothing more than the trickery of that same naughty ghost? Other than my flippant tone, isn't that about right? Matt: First, I think "dismisses" is the wrong word. Second, and to your actual question, no, I don't think what you said is about right, though it is a strong view held by many, particularly those who see themselves as resurrecting a nascent field called "metaphysics." To expand briefly: 1) I say "see themselves" because I don't think there is a "nascent field" that goes by the name of metaphysics. The reason I don't is because I agree with Pirsig's general definition of "metaphysics," and agreeing with that means "metaphysics" isn't something you could possibly not do--it is basically the general activity of reflection, and specifically reflecting on, and digging around for, the root assumptions of our culture. I don't think that is anything that could be stopped, nor do I think it has ever really stopped, exactly. So 2) I object when philosophers, mainly those with this kind of self-image (but not always), accuse Rorty of neglecting what we are calling "metaphysics" (and Rorty calls "philosophy"). You want to fit Rorty in a narrative in which he's only an anti-Platonist with no positive suggestions. It doesn't work, because as you've come to see by reading Heidegger in conjunction with Pirsig, poets are the key to change. Poets who spin new metaphors, which are otherwise these root assumptions. This is entirely what Rorty stole from Heidegger and Dewey, too. And Rorty has made positive suggestions, then, too, when we regard "positive suggestions" as changes in metaphors, shifts in assumptions. So, no, you don't have Rorty right. By the standards you've just laid out, at least as far as I can tell, Rorty is doing the same basic thing as Pirsig. There are certainly differences between the two, but this ain't one of them. Matt _________________________________________________________________ Make every e-mail and IM count. Join the i’m Initiative from Microsoft. http://im.live.com/Messenger/IM/Join/Default.aspx?source=EML_WL_ MakeCount 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/
