John, This is what I was getting at in regard to the kinds of points I was trying to make to Matt and the type of starting point from which I was trying to convey as a point of view for James meaning of radical empiricism.
If one believes that truth statements are predicated on agreement then rhetoric is indeed the trump card. but If one believs that truth statements are predicated on meaning in experience then empricism trumps rhetoric, since Socrates, for the most part practices the destruction of the rhetorical notion. hence the utility of distinguishing the difference btween preconceptual predication and conceptual predication. -Ron ----- Original Message ---- From: John Carl <[email protected]> To: [email protected] Sent: Mon, March 15, 2010 9:02:51 PM Subject: Re: [MD] continental and analytic philosophy So Matt said a bunch of interesting stuff, but what I mainly picked upon was this, 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. Its a fascinating subject to me, alluded to earlier, this idea of the philosophical value of pandering to one's audience. You might say, "well duh, cuz you do it all the time John" and you'd have a point... But the main reason it rings a bell is something I read recently, I think it was in Neal Postman's Amusing Ourselves to Death, about Socrates knowing he was using a style of argumentation that his audience was not expected to appreciate. It's like he was making a meta-point about the value of non-sophistry, and winning the argument with the rhetorical flourish of poison, which made such an impression upon poor Plato, that he wrote more about his hero than other people bothered to write about THEIR heroes, and voila, western civilization gets some roots. John Scratching his head 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 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
