DMB said:
If I follow your thinking, intellectual patterns out of the natural
sciences tend to have a "flavor" of pre-existence. (People tend to
think that a lot of the stuff in "nature" was around before we
personally were.)" As Dan said, this is where "you seemed to be
saying that certain intellectual patterns pertaining to natural sciences
hold a higher value on account of 'stuff in nature' being around
before we personally were". That's what raised his intellectual
hackles.
Matt:
I guess I still don't see why the "'flavor' of pre-existence" is assumed
to go hand in hand with a higher value than other flavors. (If I'm
being honest, I'd suggest that a purified MoQer wouldn't feel that
connection, but rather only someone with lingering SOMist instincts
would, or someone SOMist-hunting. Which is why I assumed Dan
was doing the latter. You,...I don't know about. Normally I'd just
as well assume you don't have the lingering instincts, but I can't tell
whether you're simply recapitulating the conversation, or reapplying
the hackle-raising that Dan has since repealed because of my
clarification. And if it's reapplying, that's kinda' like saying one's
hackles are still raised. Which I don't get.)
DMB said:
You "used 'flavor' to try and suggest the idea that there wasn't
anything better about intellectual patterns that extend in this way,"
you said, because you "don't want to suggest that the natural
sciences have better patterns or something. It's just a different
taste," you said, "like people who like chocolate on their pancakes,
but butterscotch on their ice cream". My approach to the issue was
very different in that it heavily emphasized the empirical basis of
common sense and the natural science.
If two rival visions are equally supported by empirical evidence and
there is no other way to decide the issue, then it becomes a matter
of taste but your version seems to ignore the empirical dimension.
To say that scientific truths are just a matter of taste is to present a
very different, very un-empirical vision, one that lives right next door
to solipsism. This is Rortyism, not the MOQ.
Matt:
I guess I don't really see the difference. After all, I wasn't talking
about "empirical evidence" in its role in deciding issues between two
rival visions of the world (or theories covering more limited
conceptual terrain, like within a particular discipline). I was talking
at the very abstract level about the differences between, say, the
natural sciences, the social sciences, and the humanities (to use
three very old pigeonholes). I wasn't suggesting the "empirical
evidence" has no role in the world, as you leapt in conclusion to for
some reason, just that the conclusions of the natural sciences tend
to have a longer temporal range than conclusions in the human
sciences, but that doesn't make the natural sciences somehow
cooler or more important than the human sciences (which was a
common thought in the Enlightenment). One way of putting the
difference between disciplines, a difference I was disavowing, is
in terms of one group who uses empirical evidence, and another
that doesn't. But since I was urging "no difference," I'm not sure
why you thought I was suggesting that there was nothing
empirical, rather than the reverse, that everything is empirical. (And
I'm kidding, by the way: I know why you jumped to conclusions
rather than patiently inquiring into how I see my philosophical claims
hooking up together inferentially. You did it because you have a
visceral abhorrence of Rorty. That's fine, but you really should be
more patient in investigating how different planks in a philosophy fit
together.)
DMB said:
Seriously? You really don't see why obscure jargon is a problem? Is
there ANYONE here who is going to find such labels helpful?
Matt:
I was using obscure jargon? I was using well-known names in the
history of philosophy. And how do I know who will find such
short-hand labeling useful? Isn't a little condescending to think that
your interlocutors can't handle a certain kind of discourse? That
people are so afraid of the unfamiliar that they'll run away? Or so
fragile that they'll fall apart?
Maybe I am a pretentious name-dropper. However, my philosophical
formulas using historical figures do have a precise philosophical
import. I'm not just spouting names for fun. (Or at least, I wasn't
right then. Sometimes I suppose I do.)
DMB said:
It's not quite apparent or obvious but once again you are trying to
convert Pirsig into some kind of post-Analytic neo-Pragmatist.
Matt:
Nah, that'd be like saying that Arlo's trying to convert Pirsig into
some kind of Nietzschean. Arlo's just exploring parallels, and my
point isn't that Pirsig _is_ a post-positivist neopragmatist, but rather
that Pirsig and some of my other philosophical heroes inhabit a
common philosophical position when viewed from a little distance.
Are they exactly the same? Nah. Do I need Pirsig to be Robert
Brandom? Absolutely not: I'm glad Pirsig wrote ZMM, because no
one else was, though I am glad to have Brandom's Making It
Explicit. I'm glad they're working two different sides of the street,
because I think both sides should be worked, and my claim would
only be that they are on the same street.
DMB said:
There is a group of Analytic philosophers (your heros Wilfred Sellars
and Robert Brandom among them) and they have tried to revise
"absolute empiricist philosophy in the light of Hegel".
Matt:
My understanding is that Sellars wasn't trying to revise Hegel, he
was trying to revise Kant. Brandom you're right about, though I
don't know what the phrase "absolute empiricist philosophy" in the
quotation marks means. And I'm not sure I'd call Sellars one of my
heroes. Brandom, yes.
DMB said:
Everyone who did philosophy in James' and Dewey's time was
influenced by Hegel.
Matt:
Well, kind of. That's roughly the same as saying that everyone in the
50s was influenced by Oxford philosophy (Ryle, Austin, and
Strawson). Sure, but only a few people thought it was really
amazing and tried to internalize it and transform it into something
even more amazing. As far as I can tell, you're saying this to
downplay my claim about Hegel's influence on Dewey, or at least as
how you perceive what _my_ claim entails (versus what the exact
same claim would entail in your hands), but I'm just thinking of the
Dewey of "From Absolutism to Experimentalism." (And if you
remind me of Dewey's self-described break with Hegel in that essay,
I'll just remind you that the Hegelians he was breaking from were
the Absolute Hegelians that inhabited St. Louis and Oxford. Neither
Dewey nor Rorty, Brandom, Robert Pippin, or Terry Pinkard are
Absolute Hegelians, though I would call them all Hegelians.)
DMB said:
But their (James and Dewey) sensible emphasis on the cultural and
historical context of knowledge becomes a kind of unhinged
relativism in the hands of the post-structuralists and the new
historicists.
Matt:
Yeah, that's kinda' true. Did you think Rorty or Brandom or I was a
post-structuralist or New Historicist?
DMB said:
I mean, people draw very different conclusions about the extent and
meaning of contextualism.
Matt:
You're telling me. I have to live with you drawing very different
conclusions from what I draw from Rorty.
DMB said:
The similarities between Pirsig and these other neo-Pragmatists is
mostly just a superficial resemblance based on some common
enemies. But, following them, you've landed in a very different
place.
Matt:
Meh, I don't think so. Rorty, Putnam, and Brandom didn't pick up the
moniker "pragmatism" just because they held some common
enemies as James and Dewey.
DMB said:
Their Hegelian revisions are mostly a matter of exorcising their own
demons, of disavowing the assumptions and projects of their own
quasi-Postivistic tradition.
Matt:
And? Didn't Socrates initiate philosophy by saying that the
unexamined life is not worth living? Philosophy begins at home, with
yourself, in an attempt to sort through what in you is an angel and
what a demon that needs to be exorcized.
DMB said:
Think about this way; when Pirsig gets around to the point where he
is explicitly identifying his MOQ with James's radical empiricism, with
mainstream American Pragmatism and Instrumentalism, he also
thinks it's worth mentioning Hegel in order to rule him out as saying
something comparable. Why do you suppose he felt the need to
deny Hegel at that point?
Matt:
I think Pirsig said it because he had Absolute Hegelians in mind. I
would reject them, too.
DMB said:
The comparison to Hegel isn't crazy because Phaedrus was some
kind of Monist and the MOQ is a Monism in some sense, among
other things. It's plausible enough that Pirsig feels the need to
explicitly deny it just as he's identifying with pragmatism.
Matt:
So, you're saying you're not going to read Hegel to find out what
Dewey thought was good in him because Pirsig, among others,
disavows one piece of Hegel? (And, because you won't read
Hegel, you can't even be sure whether Pirsig is disavowing one
piece or the whole thing.)
I don't know, I read people like Pippin and Pinkard on what Hegel
really meant, and the stigma of the Absolute Hegelians'
interpretation of what the "Absolute" meant tends to go away.
(Though even then, I don't really feel inclined to talk about the
"Absolute.")
DMB said:
who are the critics? Who sees the specter of solipsism?
Matt said:
They might be fictions of my imagination. However, to understand
Pirsig's dialectical position in the philosophical landscape, I think one
very well should understand just how and where in Pirsig's
philosophy a wrong turn could have landed Pirsig in this or that
philosophological quandary. It's only by such understanding that one
can make variations of the claim, "Pirsig's philosophy is better than
other people's," because then you can show specifically how
("whereas Descartes would fall into solipsism because of X, we can
see Pirsig here making a claim that allows him to avoid it...").
DMB said:
So the "aggressive critics" turn out to be vague and distant memories
(or even fictions) who are concerned about hypothetical turns that
could have been taken.
Matt:
Turn out? I thought I had left an indicator that these were memories.
I also didn't think identifying them was that important to my point.
Like, at all. And that's why I still have no inclination to do research
in the archives. I don't see the point, how it would help me make
my point. I'm not entirely sure why you are obsessed with who they
might be, where my memory-impressions came from. Because if
my methodological point is right, it doesn't matter if no one
mis-interprets Pirsig. It rather matters greatly that his interpreters
know how wrong turns can happen in interpretation, and how
wrong turns can change a philosophical position. However, I'm not
sure you understood my methodological point (given the way you
chopped up the passage you quoted into "They might be fictions of
my imagination. However, ...a wrong turn could have landed Pirsig
in this or that philosophological quandary. ...").
(Again, I'm kidding: I do know why you are obsessed. It appears
easier
to you to discredit the authority of a voice than it is to engage
with
what the voice is saying. The funny thing is that I don't think it
is
any easier, if one understands the density and dynamics of
authority
rightly, but it _is_ easier if one doesn't think one's audience
_does_
understand how authority works. I guess I have, again, a
higher opinion
of the audience here at the MD.)
DMB said:
Dude, sometimes I think you're just making this stuff up.
Matt:
I thought that's what philosophers were supposed to do, rather than
go to wikipedia to find out what they should say.
DMB said:
If a statement and claim is going to be that vague and flimsy, maybe
you ought to think twice about posting it. I mean, you've got to know
that people are going to ask questions. That's just the nature of a
discussion group, don't you think?
Matt:
I usually assume my interlocutors are going to ask good, relevant
questions, not red herrings. Perhaps that's my mistake, don't you
think?
Matt
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