dmb said to Matt:
I read this all the way through this bad boy but I don't get it. It's not at
all clear WHAT the bad questions are or WHY they're so bad. (I've learned that
elsewhere.) Isn't it all just a little too meta and not enough meat? Or was it
your point to not have point, a performance of Rortyism at it's finest?
Matt replied:
I was thinking about this response again, and it occurs to me how silly it is.
For one, the title clearly indicated what I was going to talk about: "are there
bad questions?" not "what are the bad questions?" And secondly, why is asking
the former question once in a while bad? In fact, since what you disagree
about most in Rorty seems not to be any of his negative conclusions, which you
by and large agree with, but the _way_ he goes about them ,wouldn't all of your
disagreements with him be "meta" with no "meat," too? And since this is the
level at which you disagree with Rorty, isn't it a good idea to actually
discuss it.
dmb says:
Silly? I'm saying that your piece was empty and pointless. There is something
about this meta-philosophical style that skates over the surface of things,
that is devoid of substance or a point of view. And isn't rather undeniable and
obvious that your title, by posing the question, promises an answer to that
question? Can you imagine a book titled "Are there bad roads?" that does not
say where and what a bad road is?
Matt said:
The what and why are usually what I talk about (usually with Rorty as my
proxy), so I thought I'd do something different. Steve has been handlying the
what and why very well in contradistinction to your (mysterious) position, so I
thought I'd ask a different question, a question about the position the Steve
and I by and large seem to share, a question about the vocabulary we use to
engage in philosophy just in case people were wondering about it.
dmb says:
Well, that's just it. I do not recall any good explanations of the what and the
why. That's what I meant when I said your piece was all meta and no meat. And
from my point of view, Steve has handled the substance of the issue quite badly
and his position is wildly incoherent. I seriously doubt if anyone here
understands what you mean by "vocabulary". I sincerely wonder if you know what
it means. To examine the validity of your vocabulary, don't you need to specify
the particulars? Don't we need to define the point and purpose, the work we're
trying to get it to do before we can say anything about its validity and
appropriateness? In the abstract, in the absence of a concrete context, such a
discussion is simply meaningless. And that's what I'm saying about the way you
do philosophy. It's full of emptiness.
I'm not shouting, by way. I'm too bored to shout.
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