Matt said:
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.
dmb says:
I don't know what you mean. The "context is dialogue with
not-Pirsig-themselves-Pirsigians"? And more importantly, why does the "context"
have to be anything more complicated that you talking to me?
Matt said:
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.
dmb says:
That's right.
Matt continued:
...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.
dmb says:
That's right. The terms in question refer to the MOQ's central meaning and
Rortyism has no equivalent concepts. The terms in question represent a very
substantial difference between the two thinkers.
Matt said:
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.
dmb says:
No, it simply doesn't follow. They can both be anti-Platonists or
post-Metaphysical while also having substantial differences on other matters. I
mean, Platonism and anti-Platonism is not what separates them. The terms in
question are epistemological or empirical. That's where Pirsig and Rorty
differ.
Matt said:
..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, 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 says:
I think you're being unfair. You're basically saying that I don't know enough
to formulate the differences. That's a bit insulting and it's not very true
either. Be a sport, eh?
Matt said:
...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 says:
You'd have to be a lot more specific if you want me to believe that. And again,
it simply doesn't follow. Yes, Rorty has lots of enemies in academia. I've seen
all kinds of pragmatists take aim at him and it hardly matters whether they're
defending Pierce, James or Dewey. But mostly I'm just interested in your
particular version of Rortyism and its relation to the MOQ. That probably makes
you kinda squeamish, but it's not about what's popular in academia. I bring the
pros just so you can't say I'm confused or making stuff up and I think it's
downright silly for you to dismiss them. As far as I'm concerned it's just
about your view of the MOQ.
So anyway, if you think Seigfried - or me or anyone else - has attacked a straw
man, I'd sincerely like to know what the genuine article is and how it differs
from the straw version.
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.
dmb says:
Well, I never said language in not empirical and I don't thing any part of
their difference would hinge on that anyway. The question centers around
Rorty's rejection of epistemology and his linguistic reasons for doing so. The
distinction is between an having an Empiricism and not having an Empiricism.
It's not subtle.
Matt said:
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 th
e "nihilism and relativism" side that Seigfried appears to place him.
dmb says:
I honestly have no idea what you mean.
Seigfried's point is simply that Rorty's answer to the post-Metaphysical
question of truth is "conversation" and she thinks that position amounts to
relativism. A lot of scholars say that about him and so do I. "What ties Dewey,
Foucault, James and Nietzsche together", Rorty thinks, is "the sense that there
is nothing deep down inside us except what we have put there ourselves, no
criterion that we have not created in the course of creating a practice, no
standard of rationality that is not an appeal to such a criteria, no rigorous
argumentation that is not obedience to our own conventions." I think that's a
pretty clear expression of relativism and I think he's wrong to characterize
James this way. James held to a kind of perspectivism wherein truth only has
meaning in relation to particular situations and our purposes within them, but
he also insisted on experience as the crucial factor in truth making. I also
take Rorty's statement as an articulation of the slogan that say
s it's language all the way down. If you think that's a straw man, please
explain.
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