Hey Steve, Steve said: Ironically, the direct (preconceptual)/indirect (conceptual) distinction that dmb is trying to use to push against us itself makes the so-called "out of touch with DQ" problem impossible or at least merely "secondary." If this problem is (as dmb must be saying) a problem with our concepts, it (and even the whole problem of SOM versus the MOQ) is merely a "secondary" problem.
Matt said: Now, this is an interesting insight. It seems to scan, too: even SOM-philosophers are able to have direct experience despite their inability to conceptualize it (properly, we might say). This makes philosophy a kind of therapy (much like Wittgenstein envisioned), where one tries and get people to stop fussing with bad philosophical hang-ups. Ultimately, one might say (meaning "primarily"), it doesn't matter what philosophy one holds in terms of one's ability to tune into the direct experience of one's life. But if it _does_ get in the way, well--so says the therapeutic Pirsig--here's a way of not so getting hung up. Steve said: Right. The issue as I see it is that while dmb is trying to push against us with the notion of philosophy as getting in touch with life (he objects that we are failing to adequately do that), we see philosophy as concerned with making life better. Matt: I like both of those slogans, actually, and would wish to endorse both after a fashion, but I see that you are using "for getting in touch with life" as emblematic of the view Dave seems to be pressing against us, one you wish us to avoid. "Getting in touch," you want to say, is the pseudo-problem that Pirsig correctly diagnoses in ZMM, in modern philosophical terms, the one bequeathed us when one accepts the root distinction between knowing-subject and object-known. So why would Dave _want_ to press that (you further say)? I am only further confused by Dave's responses to your attempts to unconfuse the problem we three would like to consider as our mutual post-Pirsigian-revolution problem. (I think part of it might be that Dave can't countenance the idea that the two of us actually agree with him on some points.) Once one gets rid of that pseudo-problem, however, is there a way of reconstruing the notion of "getting in touch with reality"? The trick, I think, is to see all distinctions as retail, and not global. "Getting in touch with reality" sounds global, but if you think of it as a retail problem, the question becomes: "what does 'reality' stand in for, and what is getting in between us?" Dewey, I further think, gives us a good idea of how to construe "reality" for this purpose, as his notion of reflection makes it clear that _to reflect about X_ is to interpose something between the reflector and the X (in grammatical terms, the "about"). So reflection, inquiry, philosophy--these are all things that are not the X. And "getting in touch" is getting back to just the X. (I talk about this Deweyan notion of reflection in relationship to Pirsig here, a kind of diary entry about the scales falling from my eyes; the philosophy starts at paragraph 6: http://pirsigaffliction.blogspot.com/2007/03/notes-on-experience-dewey-and-pirsig.html) So, as a way of reconstruing both notions of philosophy, I'd assimilate "for making life better" to Dewey and "for getting in touch with life" to Wittgenstein. This makes the former something like philosophy as an aid to inquiry, or simply "philosophy as problem-solving." The latter, on this model, would then be an extrapolation of Wittgenstein's dictum of knowing when to put philosophy down. For, as we've learned through history (as the Rortyan reflex goes), some problems turn out to be built like sinkholes--once you get in, you don't come out, and certainly with nothing having been learned except to avoid sinkholes. The two, then, are complementary as "making life better" is seen as a movement away from life, requiring an opposing practice to gird one's sensitivity to that fact (and this follows Dewey's model of life/reflection). (It also has the additional benefit of explaining other problems like the relationship between political idealism and political realism.) Matt p.s. To anyone who is curious about what I think about Steve and Dave's recent back-and-forth since I disappeared in the conversation, I tend to agree with Steve's approach. I get more and more confused about what Dave thinks the further it goes on, which I know Dave thinks is disingenuous of me, but I just can't wrap my head around some of the claims he thinks I'm making. Dave moves just too fast for me through what he thinks I think, that there's no time, nor real purpose for someone who has their mind made up, to try and go back over them all. Dave's right that it is my reading of Rorty that likely makes me so disagreeable to him, but I've apparently climbed into a box that Dave sees no reason for ever letting me out of in his own mind. 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
