DMB said: Yes, of course you're allowed to have an opinion. And I'm allowed to challenge that opinion, right?
Matt: Yeah, but as usual, it's the _way_ you do it that seems weird and silly. You say, "I really don't see how your claim could be true," and this because you haven't seen anything about it in the journals. "Could" is a problem of imagination, or a problem of demonstration. In the latter sense, it not being in the journals demonstrates that it isn't true. That's silly. In the former sense, you can't figure out the idea and how it could be true, and since I'm not willing to help at this point by explaining myself further, it sems perfectly reasonable to say that you don't know what I've not unpacked well enough for you. My claim is opaque, and since no clarity is coming from me, you move on. It's perfectly fine to say, "Matt, you're full of shit," but your reasons often seem unreasonable. This is the part of our argument where you say, "Huh, it's unreasonable to ask for reasons and arguments? Geez, whose unreasonable now?" But still, I don't have any new reasons aside from one's I've written in the past (like my "Ode to DMB"), and I don't have energy/time to re-enter the nitty-gritty of the playing field to develop new strategies of persuasion. I've been removed from what little I knew about the debate for over a year now, and really, longer than that. I can't keep up because I'm working on different problems now. Nor was I ever "up" on contemporary debates, for that matter. I have no idea what people take seriously these days, what the current fashions or trends are. I find Ralph Ellison and Emerson a lot more interesting and useful for me than what's going on in the Journal of Philosophy or Review of Metaphysics, or whatever journals are hot these days. It's perfectly legitimate to discount my opinion because I'm not up to speed--that's every individual's call. Professional philosophy is just not my bag. About other people who "hold my opinion"--God, it would be pretty sweet if I was original about this. But I've stolen everything. I should clarify what "this claim about experience and language" is, since even the way you stage it seems odd, or at least could be misleading. The claim is that the philosophical term "experience" functions in the same role in, say, James and Dewey (but also Continentals like Bergson) as the philosophical term "language" functions in, say, Rorty, Sellars, and Quine (but also Continentals like Derrida and Foucault). Pretty broad and sweeping, but I don't think that original, and could be shown with the requisite work (so I think). Aside from Rorty, who I think I've stolen the idea from, try Ian Hacking's Why Does Language Matter to Philosophy? It's pretty much the potted story I tell in that one post. And that's all I can think of off the top of my head. I truly doubt my originality, but I'm not in the thick of a debate and don't have my finger on the pulse of materials. If I had to say, people started talking less and less about the linguistic turn through the 80s and 90s partly because people stopped seeing the move as significant (which is part of my argument). They kept talking about semantics and philosophy of language, but without the metaphilosophical claims about how language was going to replace experience. It's getting play nowadays because people want to talk, I suspect, about something other than semantics and philosophy of language, which means they have to pick the metaphilosophical battles that were just simply ignored as professors of philosophy for 30 years neither wanted to stop saying they were "analytic" with a special method, nor wanted to go back to the realism vs. idealism debate and "experience" as a philosophical term (which they still vaguely remembered unfondly from their youth). As these guys die and retire, the new generation are finally picking up the baton of James and Dewey that got ignored when "linguistic turn" philosophers convinced everyone that they could avoid silly metaphysical problems (like of the External World or of Other Minds) better by talking about language and logic. In the fury of new subdisciplines, the real fight James and Dewey were fighting got lost, and realism vs. idealism was simply transposed into realism vs. antirealism. Now, my hope is that this "heated conversation" you're talking about is at least in part metaphilosophical, about what it is philosophers do when they do philosophy, because it is at that level, I think, that James and Dewey had the most to say, and it is at that level that the debate between realism and idealism slowly fades for a more useful philosophy. Because the way you talk, it makes it sound like we are just re-doing the "bad metaphysical" debates from the turn of the century, with Fans of the Experience-Term now the realists and Fans of the Language-Term the idealists Experience-Termers once were (opposed to Fans of the Reality-Term that opposed them 100 years ago, a club that has died off). My interest in philosophical debates is nearly only metaphilosophical--that's the part that probably makes you weirded out, because it looks like I've evacuated "metaphysics." But in the notion of "metaphysics" typically employed by people turning back the clock of the linguistic turn, I don't see much disagreeable since the term has been defined so largely (like, "how shit hangs together in the widest possible sense"). In that sense of metaphysics, I have a metaphysics. I still don't like talking about it much, but mainly because my attachment to terms in the hang-together realm isn't that great--I pick out whatever helps me at the time. Something occured to me though: how could there be a heated conversation about the reality of an experience-language gulf (the commonsense distinction I've never denied, mind you) if no one is posing the other side (e.g., there is no gulf)? People suit up for arguments when they have somebody to argue _against_, right? Matt > From: [email protected] > To: [email protected] > Date: Wed, 10 Mar 2010 11:50:49 -0700 > Subject: Re: [MD] continental and analytic philosophy > > > dmb said to Matt: > To gloss over the difference between language and experience is a bit > ham-handed. ... Given the heated conversations that are going on in the > journals about this difference between experience and language, I really > don't see how your claim could be true. > > Matt replied: > > Because philosophers disagree...? I didn't say I wasn't simplifying or hamily > summing up my opinion. Am I not allowed my opinion, or to summarize my > opinion without offering a dissertation on the subject? ...If you want to > "see" how my "claim could be true," read Richard Rorty. You and everyone > else is well-aware that I'm just stealing his stuff. If you want to reject > Rorty because most people in "the journals" reject him, that's fine, but.... > > > > dmb says: > > Yes, of course you're allowed to have an opinion. And I'm allowed to > challenge that opinion, right? > > But I sincerely wonder if anyone shares your opinion. If there is any work > out there that makes this claim about experience and language, I'd definitely > like to know about it. Do you have a name or a title or anything like that? > Part of the reason I'm so skeptical is simply that I've never seen such a > thing. All the sources I've seen say the difference is not just real, but > that it is seemingly irreconcilable. As far as I know, you're the only one > who makes a claim to the contrary. If I'm wrong about that and you can show > me that, I'd be grateful. > > > > _________________________________________________________________ > Hotmail: Free, trusted and rich email service. > http://clk.atdmt.com/GBL/go/201469228/direct/01/ > 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/md/archives.html _________________________________________________________________ Hotmail: Powerful Free email with security by Microsoft. http://clk.atdmt.com/GBL/go/201469230/direct/01/ 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/md/archives.html
