DMB said:
I don't think a philosopher NEEDS to use those terms. These
complaints are not about philosophers in general. They are about you
and Steve and myself. I'm talking about our conversations in this
discussion forum. And I'm simply saying that your anti-Platonic tactics
are exceedingly unhelpful in this particular context. Why? Because
these tactics forestall discussion of the MOQ, particularly its central
term. ... And I'm honestly NOT saying that any of them are
indispensable, not even when we're conversing in this particular
context. I'm just saying it's silly to be afraid of them of prohibit their
use in this particular context. Here, it only makes good sense to use
Pirsig's terms or James's terms, especially where they are the same.
Matt:
Okay. And as I said, this particular context is dialogue with
not-Pirsig-themselves-Pirsigians, which means my anti-Platonic
awareness is not tout court out of place, though I take it you think it
leads me astray a lot. We disagree about that, but I don't think it is
my "tactics" that are a problem generally. I don't "prohibit their use,"
I'm just very self-conscious about their use. We already agree that
they are not indispensable, so I take it that it's not tactics but
substantive philosophical points that you perceive at the bottom.
Think about it this way: you think that between you and I, in that
particular context, I impede discussion between us about Pirsig's
philosophy because I'm so anti-Platonically suspicious. However,
part of the reason I'm suspicious of you (though not Pirsig) is
because you wield the exact terms in question ("pure," "direct,"
"pre-intellectual") as your weapons against Rorty. You want to
explain their _substantive_ differences with reference to those terms.
If it were the case that we were all anti-Platonic buddies, then it is
superficially the case that those terms should not be weapons against
Rorty the anti-Platonist. Granted that superficiality, you want to argue
that underneath of that Rorty has a soft spot in his positive program
(his descriptions of reality, what Pirsig calls "doing metaphysics") that
these terms poke at. Because I don't immediately see such a soft
spot, I grow post facto re-suspicious of those terms in your hands,
and so begin conversations wanting reassurance. As a justification
for my re-suspicion, I have offered descriptions of why there is no
soft spot underneath his positive program by offering descriptions of
the parallel between the radical-empiricism-positive-program and
the "linguistic"-positive-program (what's offered, e.g., at the end of
"Quine, Sellars, etc.").
To put it another way, I don't understand how "pure" et al can be
used as weapons against Rorty if they actually are anti-Platonized.
I'm not sure what they refer to that Rorty could not refer to (i.e. has
banned reference to). To say "nonlinguistic knowledge," in this
context as an answer, is I think a red herring, but I do not have the
expository powers to produce a full-scale understanding of what
James and/or Pirsig would mean by "knowledge" on the one side
against a full-scale understanding of what Rorty means by
"knowledge" on the other (I would do better at Rorty). However, I
do think one would be necessary, and at present I haven't read a
satisfactory one (though a few unsatisfactory ones, like Hilary
Putnam).
DMB said:
If fact, we could rephrase my complaint: HOW he says it should not
get in the way of WHAT he means. I think there is a lack of clarity
on what Pirsig is saying precisely because there are substantive
differences between Rorty and Pirsig. And it seems that you really
don't see any important differences.
Matt:
Uh, I think that's a bit much. But again, we agree: "how he says it
should not get in the way of what he means." I've tried to abide by
that interpretive principle (though, again, we disagree on my
success). I haven't thought about what I'd say about substantive
differences between Rorty and Pirsig in a while, as I've been more
concerned with defending similarities (which Rick Budd once said
was lacking in my earlier efforts to bring out dissimilarities), but
what I generally think is that when you try to articulate what those
substantive differences are, they don't sound right. It might partly
be because I don't understand Pirsig well enough, but the main
conscious source is because I don't think you understand Rorty well
enough. As we both agree given the interpretive principle above,
that would be a problem for formulating substantive differences.
Maybe some particular, substantive difference is what's obscuring
clarity. But to me what that difference is is not yet at all clear.
DMB said:
You think I'm unfairly using Rorty as a punching bag but there are
more than a few pragmatists that are loyal to neither of them.
Matt:
No, I don't think you're unfairly using Rorty, I think you're _wrongly_
using Rorty. Whoever the "Rorty" is that you describe looks like a
strawman filled with the popular, professional animus that academic
philosophers have largely created. He was a popular target for a
long while (perhaps he still is), but it was rare in my experience for
the targeting to have been done well. My advice was to choose a
different enemy because I think your fight with Rorty looks like
shadowboxing.
DMB said:
Again, I'm only saying that it makes little sense to ban Pirsig's central
terms in this particular context. I'm not insisting that you must use
them so much as defending my right to use.
Matt:
This must be my fault. I apologize, for I did not think I was
attacking your right, but simply asking for the pattern of claims that
makes "direct," "pure," or "pre-intellectual" what they distinctively
are in order to assess whether they are incompatible with the
pattern of claims that I should want to make without those terms.
DMB said:
Unless their terms are taken as anti-Platonic and post-metaphysical
answers, their ideas can't be properly understood. I honestly don't
see how either one of them make any sense unless they're taken as
anti-metaphysical and as very, very empirical. Rorty is
anti-metaphysical and very, very linguistic. That's the difference we
should be talking about.
Matt:
Well, how about this for starters: I recognize no distinction between
"empirical" and "linguistic" as you use it here to catch a difference
between Rorty and Pirsig/James. I don't understand how Rorty is
not empirical in the same way as they, partly because I do not
understand how language is not empirical.
As an example of an ambiguity in apprehension of Rorty that leads
to the thought that he isn't empirical, take the passage from
Seigfried you quote: "Therefore, in answer to what Rorty calls 'a
bedrock metaphilosophical issue'; namely, whether one can 'ever
appeal to nonlinguistic knowledge in philosophical argument,' the
answer is an unambiguous 'yes' and 'no'." Without fully
apprehending the whole of her case, it does strike me that part of
the distinct emphasis in what Rorty's point about this is is on
"knowledge," not "nonlinguistic." Rorty has tried to offer an
alternative manner in understanding how the nonlinguistic impacts
knowledge-claims, the relationship between the linguistic and the
non-. One needn't follow him, but I don't see how, if one properly
understands the model Rorty was offering (in say, "Inquiry as
Recontextualization" and "Non-Reductive Physicalism"), Rorty
wouldn't fall on the side of pragmatists who "argue for warranted
assertions" rather than the "nihilism and relativism" side that
Seigfried appears to place him (unless I was reading those
passages you quoted wrongly).
If I were asked whether one can "ever appeal to nonlinguistic
knowledge in philosophical argument," I would have to answer in
an unambiguous "yes" and "no," because one thing I'd have to
first do is disambiguate the precise meaning of the appeal in
question in order that HOW Rorty says it should not get in the
way of WHAT Rorty means.
Matt
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