(Note: I don't think I say anything interesting below, just
me shrugging and "not getting it," apologizing and confessing
that I don't understand it or see it, and generally doing all
the things that stifles conversation because I'm at a lack for
words and don't know how to continue the conversation.)
Ron said:
Aristotle used unity and plurality, Socrates the cave, but if
they all "mean" the same distinction, and they take the place,
then perhaps it is the same but within varying cultural
contexts. Then the utility would vary.
Maybe you look to a universiality of unity when it's more of a
plural of consistancy in meaning.
Matt:
Maybe, though I'm not sure where that hypothesis is born
out in the kinds of things I say. I'm not sure how you'd
check it against my text.
It sounds like you're suggesting that I have a standard
against which I check everything regardless of time period
and the other person's standard. Like, it doesn't matter
what Aristotle _thought_ he was doing, this is what he
_was_ doing, and this is why it sucks. There's a point
here: we have to balance between caring about _our own_
purposes (with respect to which other philosophers rise and
fall on a scale, what Pirsig called cheering and booing) and
caring about _other philosophers'_ purposes (with respect
to which we can misjudge what these other people thought
they were doing). I'm not sure I've ever ignored that
distinction, and I'm not sure I'm doing it with James--I
_think_ I get what James thought he was doing in Essays on
Radical Empiricism, and I'm not sure I much care for it.
Dave thinks it is a prerequisite that I consider the possibility
that I might be wrong about what I think James was doing
in those essays. I think he's right, but I'm not sure how
Dave ever got the idea that I'd foreclosed on my own
fallibility.
Ron said:
But also I must respect the long held tradition of the sort
of ideas that are typically asssociated with the term [Plato's
eidos, or "forms"] in the context of what I think you are
trying to convey. But is that what we are really talking
about? or do we mean to get closer to the utility of the
distiction or the place holder for this distinction.
Matt:
I have to imagine it is a balance (like the one above),
because when we talk about the utility of a distinction, we
are talking not just about it's systematic utility in a
constellation of distinctions (i.e. how the distinction coheres
with the rest of the system), but also with it's rhetorical
utility (i.e. it's utility as a deployed instrument in "the
conversation of philosophy," which means conversation with
other people). I can understand the distinction between
systematic utility and rhetorical utility--I was just telling
somebody a month or two ago how Ralph Ellison's
Platonic-like adherence to a kind of idealism isn't
bad--systematically speaking--because it is deployed in
contradistinction to a reductionist materialism. Neither
Ellison, nor Kenneth Burke, nor Emerson, cared much about
Platonism _except_ (so I would argue) as it gave them
weapons to disarm the still rising tide of reductionist
materialism (in Ellison's case, scientific Marxism).
What Ellison, Burke, and Emerson all had on their side was
that they weren't professional philosophers. James was,
and partly because of this he presents us with a more
complicated challenge in exposition. The picture of James
I offer (in the guise of the formula "James' 'radical
empiricism' functions the same as Sellars' 'psychological
nominalism'") is a picture of radical empiricism that is
deployed _only_ to defeat recalcitrant Platonism, which is
just how I interpret psychological nominalism. Any efforts
to turn the slogan "all awareness is a linguistic affair" into
a thesis that suggests, for example, a linguistic solipsism,
I resist because A) I don't think Sellars meant it that way
and B) I certainly don't deploy his insights that way. Call
Sellars a needless repeat of what James had said
earlier--that is often what Rorty implies about later 20th
Century philosophy in comparison to Dewey, that Dewey
is waiting for them at the end of the road they're traveling
(e.g., in "Method, Social Science, and Social Hope" in
Consequences of Pragmatism, he says Dewey is waiting for
Foucault and Deleuze). But when people, in contrast to
the picture I paint, suggest that something else is going
on, that James and Sellars/Rorty cannot be so favorably
compared, I have to take seriously that something else is
going on. And as it is stated, I often cannot see the silver
lining of these something elses. I could be wrong, but one's
own fallibility doesn't itself help in the seeing of what it is
you're wrong about.
To summarize the above: I think we can and should
distinguish between internal coherence (systematic utility)
and conversational effectiveness (rhetorical
utility)--however, in any determination of what a
philosopher should choose to pick up and use as a tool of
his own, I don't think one should ignore the history. You
balance it and make your choices, but thinking the two
kinds of things don't go together when _others_ are
judging your philosophy for utility, I think, would be a
mistake.
Ron had said:
You may have a point if you take this distinction as some
sort of metaphysical split..but it doesent. It is a useful
practicle distinction in experience.
Matt said:
...after we distinguish purposes, the only ones I see left
are ones created by taking on the Platonic problematic (like
the unrepresentability of pure experience). These we might
call "metaphysical purposes," and the only way to fix them
are with "metaphysical splits." I don't see the need for
taking on the problematic, see those purposes as "false
needs" (in Marcuse's sense), and so don't see the utility of
the distinction.
Ron then replied:
Well, since the whole understanding of the term
"metaphysics" is a misnomer, and generally has the same
meaning then as philosophy or world view, that taking on
that problematic in a metaphysical manner no longer takes
on the same sort of consequences. Therefore the utility is
one purely of the pragmatic, the concept of "true" and
truth statements.
Matt:
I added what caused me to say what I did because I think
you're cutting me at cross-purposes. I have constantly
tried to make sure people understand when I'm talking about
"bad metaphysics" (Platonism) and "harmless metaphysics"
(systems, worldviews, philosophy, etc.). _You_ first
distinguished between a "metaphysical split" and a "practical
distinction"--I took your lead, then, in aligning "metaphysical
split" with Platonism, and the utility of metaphysical splits to
be relative to "metaphysical purposes." My first answer, in
other words, is still the answer to your second
response--pragmatic utility is all I'm every talking about, but
I do _not_ understand every purpose to be one that needs
fulfillment--Platonic purposes are "false needs," in this sense.
This does nothing to further the question or answer the
question of whether or not James had a few Platonic
purposes left over in his queue of philosophical things to
do. It simply clarifies what I was saying.
Ron said:
Although the analytic traditon of the dialectic style is a
tradgedy to our understanding of truth, it does not mean
the endeavor of what it means to make a truth statement
and how they are formed should suffer. Elenchus was to
induce aporia not a "truth" conclusion.
Error and confusion have consequences in experience yet
you seem to want to insinst on argueing it from a forum of
certain types of popular assumption.
I think this is what Dave bases his critique on.
Matt:
Heh, so now I'm the one who denigrates the analytic
tradition?
Look, I never said that people do not make errors or are
not confused. Dave thinks I'm saying this, but I'm talking
about the way we present ourselves to others in order to
pursue that which we are pursuing--different purposes might
require different rhetorical presentations. For the wisdom
you think the dialectical style mangled, I'm suggesting that
the "rhetoric of error" is a bad style of presentation. People
are fully free to think I'm wrong about this, or commiting a
basic error or confusion of concepts. But what you
somewhat derisively refer to as "types of popular assumption"
is what Aristotle called "knowing one's audience"--it's the
first rule of rhetoric (which Pirsig said is king over all), that
one isn't speaking to eternity but to other people. To _not_
consider "popular assumption" in some manner would be as
equal a mistake as thinking that's the only thing one should
consider (which I've also never suggested).
Or maybe--Dave thinks that I talk about style because he
thinks that's my answer to his attempt to get me to consider
the fact that I might be wrong. He therefore thinks I'm
evasive and irrational because he thinks I'm making an
_argument_, i.e. that his style is the wrong one, and that's
why he's wrong about James.
Hunh.
I guess I should clarify--I do not remain unpersuaded by
Dave because he's using the wrong style. I have difficulty
_understanding_ Dave because of his style, it is true, but only
that only among other things that impede us, and I've never
thought that that was an argument, a reason for thinking
he's wrong about James. I just can't think of anything else
to say when Dave accuses me of thinking that I couldn't
possibly be wrong about James. I talk about style when I
get to the end of a conversational chain--I've said all I can
think of to say to articulate what I think, and the pressure
Dave typically pursues after that point is of a style that, I
think, simply muddies the area at issue between us (actually,
the style and attitude is there the whole time, but it's the
only thing left after I think I've answered the other
philosophical issues the best I can).
Matt
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