Hi Dave, Dave said: I disagree with the suggestion that I need a more "sensitive" understanding before I should be allowed to dislike Richard Rorty. I'd certainly be open to any specific corrections, but I don't think you've ever articulated any such thing, none that I find intelligible anyway.
Matt: Well, certainly we can dislike whomever for whatever, but I guess I just wish a more sensitive understanding of Rorty's position than you've given in writing before disliking him on the stage of philosophical disagreement. I specifically mean the understanding you've articulated in your essay in the moq.org Essay Forum, which is the most extended critical treatment you've given him (that I'm aware of). At the time it was written, you cordially sent me a copy. And at that time, I made a few marginal comments in Word in the academic style of constructive pressure for greater excellence. Rather than aggressively pursue a counter-attack, which has only ever been your mode of conversation, I tried to highlight, as a dialogic partner, the pieces I thought were the weaker parts of your argument and what questions or considerations might make those pieces better. As an example, when you announced that the essay of Rorty's that you would be investigating as a foil for James was "Text and Lumps," I wrote: "This is a strange choice (though I understand selections of convenience) and I would suggest that 'Texts and Lumps' doesn’t give a very subtle summation of Rorty’s thoughts about truth, nor give you a really good backdrop with which to attack him on this score. In ORT, 'Solidarity or Objectivity?' and the introduction to the book provide better, more nuanced summaries that might give you better meat to digest, something that looks less flimsy to fight against." "Specific corrections" don't help, Dave, because we seem to have very different understandings of when we are saying something "correct" about Rorty: I have on many occasions over these many years tried a direct approach of "correcting" elements of your understanding of Rorty that just seem false, but you always spin away by explaining why you aren't. C'est la vie, but that only leaves me with the ability to suggest other things of Rorty you might read yourself in the hopes that they might help you better articulate your dislike. Because as it stands, in my (apparently unintelligible) estimation, your dislike is based on a less-than-good understanding. Here are two more examples from your paper. During your conclusion, you say two things I commented upon. Your penultimate paragraph begins: "As I read it, Rorty’s central thesis in 'Texts and Lumps' is predicated on the existence of an epistemic gap between us and reality. The Radical Empiricism of James and Pirsig, by contrast is like Dewey’s empiricism. 'No transcendental gaps are posited; we are of nature, live with nature' (Hildebrand 2003, 60). This has the magical effect of making some of the most serious problems of traditional epistemology disappear. It doesn’t give answers to old riddles. It simply dissolves the questions. 'This obviates the need to argue for "access" to reality by insisting that this access is something we find we already possess' (Hildebrand 2003, 154). Hildebrand was referring to Dewey in both of these statements but my contention is that it applies equally well to our radical empiricists. They are not saying that they’ve found a way to cross the gap between subjective experience and the objective world. Nor are they saying that it is an impossible gap. They’re saying there is no gap." I commented: "I think you need to do more work in explicating why you think Rorty has this predication and is not in the business of dissolving, especially given that Rorty describes his whole attitude to the philosophical establishement (i.e. Platonism, SOM) as one of dissolving, making the old problems disappear rather than giving new answers. For the only reason why it looks as if the gap is impossible, I would suggest, is because of the stance taken up periodically by all of these philosophers when they are criticizing the tradition: parasitical criticism. They take the terms their enemy uses and attempt to show how they lead nowhere. This doesn’t lead you out of the fly-bottle, but it often is useful in convincing your traditional opponents what problems they have to surmount—and how hard that will be." The middle of your final paragraph reads: "I think the whole idea of truth as agreement among one’s cultural peers is a dangerous view. Mentioning Nazis at this point is likely to give the impression that I’m a little too desperate for drama, but fascism is ethnocentrism gone wild. At best, truth by agreement would all but eliminate the marginal cranks, the hopeless dreamers and others who disagree with their cultural peers. In my opinion, the finest examples of humanity come from these ranks and any version of truth that excludes them has to be wrong. Those are the people most worth telling stories about, after all." I commented: "I would suggest reading Rorty’s 'The Priority of Democracy to Philosophy,' 'Solidarity or Objectivity?' (both found in ORT) and/or the first part of Contingency, Irony, and Solidarity for some fleshing out of how Rorty handles such objections. Because, as it stands, it is patently false to say that Rorty doesn’t exalt the breaker of cultural coherence given his talk about the 'strong poet' (in which he would include everyone from Socrates, Milton, Newton, and Mill)." And--I might add--we now have irrefutable evidence that Rorty includes the mystic in his understanding of "strong poet" (though I have long suggested it). So, not only is it a specific correction to say that you are wrong to imply that Rorty doesn't agree with you that "the hopeless dreamers" are among the "finest examples of humanity," but further, it is an additionally specific correction to say that you are wrong in suggesting that I have never offered "specific corrections," for if I'm not mistaken, I sent these comments sometime around March 2007. (And if I somehow mistakenly never sent it, I'd be glad to now.) Why is it so hard for us to converse, Dave? Is it all my fault? Matt p.s. For those who want another sampling of the cordial attitude I've tried to maintain in my public attitude to Dave, see my ode to him: http://pirsigaffliction.blogspot.com/2006/10/dewey-pirsig-rorty-or-how-i-convinced.html I beginning to think it may as well have to a Grecian urn, or just some jar on a hill. p.p.s. Dave said, "Well, I don't know why you're hanging all this Platonic baggage on radical empiricism." To which I say, "I'll stop when you stop implying it." How is it implied, one might ask? By using the rhetoric of "pure experience" and "direct experience." As far as I can tell, if one really thought radical empiricism isn't hanging onto Platonic baggage, one would find it much easier to agree with me on the limited points I make about the rhetorical composition of conceptual positions (and not think, in one of Dave's funnier moments of deliberate misrepresentation for a laugh, that I was trying to "understand Pirsig's mysticism in terms of what the Pope thinks"). 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
