There's stuff with DMB and Andre below:
Matt said:
People suit up for arguments when they have somebody to argue _against_, right?
DMB said:
Well, that's just it. I've not seen anyone who glosses over the difference. The
debate seems to be about whether or not their irreconcilable differences can be
overcome. To my mind, this question about language and experience, at least
roughly, is about whether it's possible to reconcile Rorty and James.
Matt:
I guess I wouldn't want to say there are irreconcilable differences, while also
not wanting to be forced to say they are the same thing. Glossing over
differences is one thing, and I think at a certain point it's just part of the
business of narrowing the parameters of what you are talking about. But I can
take the point that all this focus on language and logic has a rate of
diminishing returns. It's difficult, for instance, to read the entire corpus
of someone who publishes a lot without feeling that you can just pick out a
tenth of it and get the point--it's the fox/hedgehog thing. Some people just
isolate themselves because they are obsessive.
I was taught by Rorty, and Pirsig for that matter, to treat all dichotomies as
distinctions deployed for specific reasons and purposes. "Irreconcilable"
isn't a word in my philosophical vocabulary because irreconcilability (or
similar notions, like ineffability) just appears that way from specific angles,
from the distinctions your philosophical vocabulary is already cutting. So if
you encounter a problem, you look at your vocabulary and wonder about whether
you change it, drop it, live with it, etc. And because I'm not in the milieu
to know why people are charged up with irreconcilability, I have no real idea
why I should or should not take seriously the vocabulary that's producing it.
I just don't know.
It sounds, on the surface, as if metaphilosophical reflection is still
outre--because that would lead to reflection about why this is the way it is,
why we think it's irreconcilable. This would be in addition to
system-building, metaphysical vocabulary hammering to get the vocab just right,
but it sounds like everyone's already just naturally agreed on a problematic,
one I don't happen to see as such.
Andre said:
Does the 'style difference between 'profesional philosophy' and 'us amateurs'
(trying to apply the 'obvious facts' [obvious to whom I wonder]) make for this
difficulty of applying them to 'real life'?
Matt:
I think the style difference is part of it, but not the whole thing. Something
that theorists of many stripes have been struggling with, particularly since
the 60s and the take over of humanities departments by the New Left (though an
earlier struggle like this happened in the 20s and 30s when Deweyans took over
social science departments), is just how to integrate theory with life. How do
I get my theory about AIDS representation to work for people who have AIDS?
The problem encountered, I think, is that a "theory"--and by this we should
take a "philosophy" or "metaphysics"--is nothing more than a jargon created to
deal with a problem. The refinement of a theory involves talking to other
theorists. This can be helpful, but there has been more and more anxiety and
self-consciousness about getting too stuck in talking to your compatriots and
not enough applications of theory. Just look at Birmingham School of Cultural
Studies--their writings stink of it, and the anxiety is sometimes even more
annoying than the over-theorizing you still risk.
My general attitude is Arlo's--neither philosophy professors nor their
discipline is any more removed than genome specialists and their's. The trick
is that philosophy is often thought of as being for everybody _and_ any
activity that dumps out into technological development has an immediately more
accessible notion of its connection to everyday life.
I think over-theorization is a risk, but you need a lot of shit to grow pretty
flowers--nobody talks about the shitty philosophers of three hundred years ago
because nobody remembers them because they didn't make any lasting
contribution. They did, however, provide the one's who loom large with
discussion partners, without whom large ideas would likely have never appeared.
And today, there's thousands of more philosophers because of population
explosion, so it just looks like more shit.
I don't get too upset by the profession, because philosophy is the kind of
thing that _someone_ will be doing, even if Philosophy Departments go the way
of Classics Departments with little relationship to other people. There is a
serious risk in that, though I have no suggestions. I can yell from the
outside all I want, but why? I've found useful philosophers, the flowers among
the shit, so why should I worry if Professional Philosophy wastes away?
Creative intellectual activity will simply shift somewhere else.
The relationship to professional philosophy I commend to amateur's like myself
is like a flower garden--lean over the railing, spot a few bright, pretty
patches, and when you move in to get them try and avoid the dung heaps, but
with pretty flower in hand you have all you want.
Despite my long-standing criticism of the term "philosophology," Pirsig had it
right in Ch. 26 when he described the amateur's relationship to texts--take it
seriously, but not too seriously. Cheer and boo, but just remember that in the
end it is about personal development.
Matt
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