Hi Dave, Matt said: I pull out the above in your last post, Dave, to help pin down why I think you're intending to say something to me. The obliqueness of your recent posts, however, would seem to obscure that intention by virtue of the obscurity of their intended point, the "lesson" you've been intending to teach. It seems like an algebra lesson for a calculus student, and the calculus student is as yet unclear what they missed in the algebra. Indeed, your general penchant for "see" clauses creates an arresting, demonstrative-like quality to your writing that presses and hounds a reader like a finger in the chest. But I continue to confess my dismay that I'm not sure what new thing I am supposed to be seeing. I confess that I may be that unideal reader, whose intelligence is not flattered by, as you put it, being "smart enough to understand everything" you say.
Be that as it may, I stand upright and unfazed in the face of the finger, and remain simply curious as to its purport. It couldn't possibly be in contradistinction to something I said, could it? DMB said: I really don't understand why you feel pressed or hounded. You haven't given me much to go on. You extracted one short sentence from a pretty long post and on that slim basis tell me that you are offended. How do you figure my intention to say something to you is obscure? You started this thread and my posts are addressed to you by name. Yes, of course my intention is to say something to you about the issue you raised. There is nothing obscure about that. In fact, writing a monologue or essay, rather than having a dialogue, is one of your favorite sports. My last couple of posts have come to you in what I thought was your favorite shape. I think you know perfectly well that they were aimed at you and your points on your topic in your style. If that offends you, then what doesn't offend you? Jeez. Matt: Like I told you, it's your style that creates the appearance of pressure and hounding. Your posts, particularly in the last year or so of your posting to the MD, are littered with these "see's," and I think this kind of use of them does create a rhetorical performance like the one I described, particularly when used on a peer. (That, of course, assumes that one is communicating with someone one considers a peer: if it isn't, it creates a different rhetorical performance: condescension.) Whether or not you intend that or not, I think we need to take responsibility for our rhetorical quirks (like Ian said about my runaway "you's" recently, and one might say about any of my other rhetorical patterns, which people have never had qualms about raising concerns about, and I've attempted to own and modify as I assess what I do and do not want to create the impression of in my writing). And because I consider it a runaway quirk on your part, I have chosen not to feel hounded, so you've mis-read me on that score. Instead of being made to feel as if I need to understand all of the things to be considered to be at your level of intelligence, I'm quite calmly asking for clarification on all of it, for it all remains obscure. After all, in these last few posts you have just addressed "Matt" and nothing at all he's said specifically recently. If he doesn't get it, is it all his fault? Likewise on thinking I took offense: I'm not offended by the rhetorical finger pressing against my chest, I'm more bemused, and my tone (I think) reflected that in playfulness, and this because I can't figure why you are speaking so demonstratively with the points you are making. For, as I intimated a post or two ago, it seemed like we were in agreement from my point of view. But still the finger pokes at me with its lesson, and still I can't figure what I'm supposed to be learning. Like I said before, your explicit intention to say something to me seems clear: but what obscures whether this is really the case, whether the lesson is really for me or not, is the obscurity of _how_ this is a lesson for me, and what the lesson is. What is it that I've fallen down on? I can't see what that is, for I can't see that I've said anything that goes against these most recent lessons. And sometimes when we speak to particular people in audiences, some of the things we say are not for _them_, but for the audience. So I did want to consider the idea that perhaps the lesson wasn't for me at all, though you have cleared up that portion of my confusion. I thought it was a good idea that I not just assume that everything you say about me. It does sound, now, that you were intending a little mockery, but this seems at the very least retrospectively justified, given my own playfulness now. However, while my point in the last two posts has been a very honest "I'm not sure at all what your point is," and given the misreading of offense you've just recorded, I take it that it is a very important step in our relationship that I not jump to any conclusions given a still increasing history of our mis-understandings of each other. I would appreciate it if you returned the favor (of which you have done much more, recently, and I appreciate). I don't want to trade moments of grandstanding anymore, even if this performance of mine is just one more in our illustrious series. Perhaps you remember my polite request a few days ago: "Now that you mention it again, I wasn't quite sure what you were meaning to convey to me by writing about the ideal reader. Was it to say that you understand now what I had meant about amateur philosophers beginning by introspecting about their own standards? Was it a signal of agreement?" Were we not talking past each other for most of this conversation? Did we not even agree on that? You did reply to that in a post sent after I had sent my somewhat snarky confession of confusion (a confusion which is genuine), saying, "I don't understand your notion well enough to agree or disagree. Your view hinges on a point that seems irrelevant to me." But it doesn't hinge on the Pirsigian formula of "we don't have static patterns, we are static patterns," which confuses me even more. This irrelevancy came up after we started talking past each other. I thought it became clear (at the point you said "oh" a couple days ago) that you had mistakenly thought I was holding a position I never had an intention of holding. And while I still see the formula as relevant, the point that we agreed on was that amateur philosophers don't have to start with external standards. Our _explanation_ of why this is so does differ (though whether we really disagree even there remains opaque to me, as I also mentioned in the winding down). But we started talking about amateur philosophers and what they should do, and that doesn't require us to agree on explanations as to why. I wasn't asking whether you were agreeing to points you had just said you didn't understand (which you've repeated) and I confessed to being unable to do anything more about. I was asking about agreement on amateur philosophers, our original conversation topic, and the thing you've been delivering lessons on these past couple posts. So: to think I still need lessons on a good view of amateur philosophy is to claim that you don't believe me when I say that we are on the same overall page when it comes to amateur philosophers. Right? I said, "I don't want to suggest that one should start with standards"; you say, "Oh, I thought you were saying that" (that was Sept. 19th); and then you give more lessons implying that I need the lesson that we don't need to start with standards. If that is _not_ the lesson that was being offered, then, as I tried starting with instead of assuming you were saying that you didn't think I was sincere, what are you saying to me? Matt 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
