Hey Dave, This is backlogged stuff that I hadn't read because I wanted to give it time I haven't had much of. There isn't anything philosophically interesting though, just more of our inability to talk to each other.
Matt said: I think you've been reading me very poorly for a little while then, because my shift happened some time ago. Perhaps you're confusing assertion that Pirsig _is_ a Platonist or whatever (indeed, if ever I actually did, which I'm not sure I'd concede) with attempting to understand how a piece of philosophy is or is not caught up in certain kinds of assumptions and consequences. Call that disingenuous if you want, but it's a sensitivity I wished you had. DMB said: You are protesting way too much. Matt: You're telling me--I shouldn't have to protest at all, which is why any of it looks like too much. DMB said: I don't know what "some time ago" means to you, but I can show you an example of what I'm complaining about, one that you posted this month and in this thread. You said to Steve, "I've always had difficulty seeing how the direct/indirect distinction doesn't reproduce the problems of the experience/reality distinction. " This is not a direct claim that the DQ/sq distinction simply is Platonism. It's more cautious and tentative than that, but it amounts to the same thing. Matt: That's the sensitivity I'm talking about. I do not think they at all "amount to the same thing." These "difficulty" claims I have a habit of making (which is true, it's a rhetorical form I use a lot) are precisely not definitive claims about, in this case, X producing Y. I use them because I've come to think that that's not how intellectual static patterns work. Problems are things people run into, not concepts or metaphors. Whereas in an earlier age (when I started writing at the MD) I began by parroting, e.g., the mantras that mirror imagery will lead inexorably to Platonism, I've come to think that the "inexorable" is exactly wrong. I've come to see, over the years through my experience here, and reading other philosophers, and reading more Rorty, that the importance of the pragmatist slogan that "beliefs are habits of action" is that metaphors can create fly-bottles, but it is philosophers who fly in them. Our concepts can create rice-traps, but its philosophers who stick their hands in. And, in fact, careful handling of rice-traps and fly-bottles can successfully avoid traps. One of the surprises for me was that _Rorty_, in fact, never even believed that concepts had _necessary_ consequences--all conceptual consequences are practical and experiential. I had mis-appreciated the difficulty of what he was saying when I'd given off the impression that some metaphors and analogies are _inherently_ bad. Nothing is inherently bad, I've come to learn (Dewey tells us this). Again, I've come to realize that you'll just read this as disingenuous, but I'm trying to explain how, actually, my philosophical views impact the rhetorical forms I use to talk to people. The "difficulty" claim you've cited is me thinking these things: 1) X has so often produced Y, that I find it hard to believe people can get X to do what they want without creating Y and 2) I'm not sure I could use X without producing Y. But I do not what to say ahead of the experience of people working out the line of reasoning, including me, that it cannot be done. The "difficulty" claim, while full of doubt, also says 3) the trick might be done, and perhaps done in a way that not only dispels my doubt, but makes me want to start using X myself. In my recent posts, in fact, I've tried articulating--with some suggestions I've picked up from Steve--some notions of directness that I think work without Platonism. DMB said: And there are other recent examples. Maybe you don't call that a "stated case" and maybe you don't equate the appearance/reality distinction with Platonism, but this is what I'm talking about. You said that to Steve in this same thread about two weeks ago. I really don't think it's paranoid to see deception here. It's not crazy to suspect that you're being less than honest. At the very least, you have to admit that the gap between your claim and the actual record raises certain questions. Matt: Yeah, if this is what you're talking about, then I'm not sure why you talk to me. Because if I never follow through on an actual critique of Pirsig, then what could all this "difficulty"-stuff mean even from your perspective? Just kicking up dirt? But why? You see me as pressing a critique, while disavowing it. To what end? Or, I'm pressing a critique while not putting up evidence. Why not dismiss me? Ah, because you feel obliged to fight Pirsig's enemies. But there's the trouble, because if I don't view myself as an enemy, and as not pressing a critique, responses to you as such produce your feeling that I'm being dishonest. But to what end? Why would I be dishonest? You might easily think, "How should I know? You, Matt, are the crazy person being dishonest for no good reason." But might I again suggest that these moments of supposed dishonesty are actually something else, that there's actually interpretations at your disposal that make me appear rational and as a decent human being. God, I'm helping in a class on colonial/postcolonial literature, and one of our readings is Franz Fanon. Fanon, a black French-Caribbean, is great for saying: why should I have to demand to be treated like a human being? That's the Catch-22 people of color in the Europeanized world had to struggle with: it always looks like protesting too much when everyone should just be treating each other like human beings. 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