Matt said to Ron:
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.
dmb says:
But Matt, you put yourself in the Rorty box and lately you've wrapped DQ in
Rorty's slogan about truth being a compliment we pay to sentences. Your own
words put you in that box and I've been saying you ought to get out. Except for
your general declarations about how "obscure" my meaning has been, I haven't
seen any response to the substance of these explanations. You don't even bother
to say what it is that you don't understand. And since these explanations are
dished up in my direct style while also being well supported by a variety of
scholarly voices, your claims about their obscurity are hardly plausible.
Sorry, but it really seems like a fake excuse to avoid what I'm saying. If you
were genuinely perplexed, you'd be asking about the substance in particular
ways, not issuing a blanket dismissal.
Matt said to Ron:
...I want to refrain, as much as I can, such external diagnostics of a
position, which is what Dave's chosen epithets for what I do to DQ are (that I
make it "trivial, inert, and meaningless"). Those are conclusions to a train
of thought that remains obscure to me. ..What Dave has lacked, and what I wish
I could see, is the _internal_ diagnostic of my position. The most I get is
the feeling that because I don't use the same vocabulary to do philosophy as
Pirsig or James or Dewey or whoever, I'm thereby getting them wrong.
dmb says:
I have lacked the "internal diagnostic" of your position and you want to
refrain from "external diagnostics"? You'd have to explain how that vocabulary
works because I honestly have no idea what you're talking about.
But let me restate the substance of the matter. Yes, I'm saying that you are
misreading of the MOQ's central term and its central distinction along with it.
I'll remind you that this line of reasoning began with our discussion of the
various metaphors for DQ and I suggested that a proper understanding of DQ
would result in a harmonious fit between all the various images and analogies.
This is one of the ways in which your reading doesn't work. Since I've also
used a range of scholarly voices and their various terms for DQ, your
suggestion that it's just a matter of differing vocabulary is quite
implausible.
I explained how David Scott, by way of William James, says the same thing about
the relation between static concepts and dynamic reality. Scott says that,
"James’ ‘pure experience’ [DQ] is like the Zen Buddhist sense of a natural
pre-conceptualising, pre-discriminatory setting, which Zen traditionally calls
one’s ‘original face’ and which Suzuki calls ‘no-mind’ . I showed how we can
talk about this same stuff in Dewey's terms too. We can say that Pirsig's
"primary empirical reality" is the same as Dewey's "infinitely complex
situational whole" or that Pirsig's "endless landscape of awareness" is the
same as Granger's "unanalyzed totality of experience" and Northrop's
"undifferentiated aesthetic continuum". All these various ways of referring to
Dynamic Quality are not just arbitrary labels, of course, they are DESCRIPTIVE
terms. They tell you what DQ is NOT. (And it's NOT like a compliment paid to
sentences in any respect.) Like I said, my purpose is not to dazzle you with my
awesome philosophical vocabulary but to shine light on Pirsig's central term.
We can get at the meaning poetically, by harmonizing the meaning of Pirsig's
figurative speech, by reading the metaphors and analogies so that they all fit
together. Or we can get at the meaning by harmonizing the technical terms from
a half dozen philosophers, all of whom are some combination of pragmatist,
radical empiricist and Buddhist. That's the other way in which your reading
doesn't work (DQ as a blank page or as a placeholder, for example).
That's what you're calling opaque and obscure? Please be serious. I'd really
like to know what could be more clear or more direct? What more could I
possibly do to explain the exact nature of my accusation? If by "internal
diagnostics" you want me to explore the details of your reasoning, that would
require your cooperation because, of course, I can't read your mind. I can only
know what you think and how you got there to the extent that you tell me.
Ron said to Matt:
...Matt, you often take a rather complex read to uncover the subleties of your
meaning whereas Dave is more direct. If anything I could add, this would be the
primary distiction in your styles of discussion.
Matt replied:
I'm not sure I catch the difference. If you're saying I write densely and
precisely--such that I want to articulate to my reader that there is one thing
I mean here and not a myriad of other possibilities--then yes, that's what I'm
hoping I do. It's not that I hope it takes people forever to figure out what
the hell I'm saying, but I do hope that people paying attention get paid for
the attention they've given. But I'm not sure what the "more direct" side of
the distinction is.
dmb says:
For whatever it's worth, I think you try way too hard to qualify everything. To
accomplish this you end up with excessively complex sentences that refer to
other complex sentences and these long chains are usually interrupted by
several parenthetical qualifications. After all this whittling away, there's
never much of a pay off. If asked to characterize the result of this style, I'd
say it was cautious, elusive, stand-offish, and a bit condescending and
pretentious too. I wish you were more inclined to be direct but nobody asked me
and I don't think your style or my tastes are very relevant anyway.
Matt continued:
Being direct is great, but not when you haven't figured out where the target is
that you're shooting at. I think Dave gets the feeling like I'm trying to be a
moving target (this being an illegitimate maneuver if you aren't also charting
changes of opinion). But I'm certainly not trying to do this, or be
sophistical or anything. ...If there's a distinction between me and Dave,
it's that he draws conclusions about me from these discussions, whereas I draw
no conclusions about him. Because if we _are_ talking past each other, it
means we don't understand what the other is saying, the point and purpose
behind it. Until the communicative bridges can be built, it seems to me a
mistake to draw any conclusions.
dmb says:
I guess this would be a fairly typical example of what I was just saying about
your style. It strikes as an elusive and condescending thought-maze. It begins
by praising directness but it very quickly turns in the opposite direction.
Being direct doesn't help, you say, because I'm shooting at the wrong target
and I'm talking past you. Until we can talk, you say, it's a mistake to draw
conclusions based on what you say. That doesn't strike you as ridiculous? You
talk for ten years and I can't draw any conclusions from that? That's totally
preposterous and you know it. And if I draw (or anyone else draws) the wrong
conclusion, you can try to fix that anytime you like. Doing that would mean an
actual engagement with the substance of my complaint and so I very much wish
you would try to make such corrections. Instead, you just insist that you don't
understand. That's where I think you're pretending to understand less than you
actually do. You pretended, for example, that you couldn't understand how your
"blank page" or "placeholder" characterizations of DQ could possibly be at odds
with DQ as "the source and substance of everything" or "the continuing stimulus
which causes us to create the world". You're pretending the difference is only
one of "vocabulary", as if there is no substantial difference in the meaning of
these terms and images. That's not plausible, Matt. Not even close. You're
telling me you can't "see" the difference between clean, white, emptiness and a
booming, buzzing confusion? Nobody is that insensitive, especially not an
aspiring literary critic. C'mon, a guy would have to be a total idiot to miss
that difference - and you know it. Stop pretending to be daft.
Either you are willing to state your views clearly and directly or you are not.
You are willing to seek understanding through conversation or you are not. I
have been nothing but direct and forthcoming. You have been anything but that,
so don't go looking for conversational bridges. Just step up and stop
pretending that I'm being obscure and opaque. If anyone deserves those labels,
it's you, Mr. Exterior diagnostic.
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