[MD] A Suggestion for Horse

[Matt Kundert]

Hey Ian,

Ian said:
For you the content is everything, for me nothing is 
"throw away" either but it is part of the context, a 
process, cumulative, relationships, evolving, replacing. 
ie It's only "thrown away" (or archived) when we agree 
we have something better.

Matt:
Yeah, I don't disagree.  Philosophically speaking, there is 
only a "content" because of the relational context which 
creates it.  And in terms of my writing, I might speak of 
my own stuff in a piecemeal fashion of "this blog 
post/essay is still up-to-date"--I haven't thought of 
anything better on the topic of, say, the linguistic turn 
and radical empiricism, so I refer people to that post.  It's 
like I keep two lists in my head (though I let readers 
decide for themselves what they like)--one is 
"what I think" and the other is "archived" in the sense 
that you used.  But because I generally don't write about 
the _exact_ same topic every time, the keeping of literally 
two lists would be difficult.  I just don't write systematically 
and repetitively (though some philosophers do, like 
comparing T. H. Irwin's Plato's Moral Theory to his later 
Plato's Ethics or Dennett's Content and Consciousness to 
Consciousness Explained--the latter books replace the 
former books in a way that, e.g., Rorty's Contingency, 
Irony, and Solidarity does not replace Philosophy and the 
Mirror of Nature).

What you're talking about, it seems, is a stylistic 
consequence of a theoretical position.  Something like 
that, right?  You say afterward, "we need all kinds of 
content and interactions," but that seems to me to slide 
away from the differences you summarized as "for you..., 
for me...."  Do you see what I mean?  As a theoretical 
point, I don't disagree with your "for me..." and in fact 
can go along quite hardily with your "we need all kinds 
of content and interactions."  I would die if I _always_ 
were required to drop two hours of time and 600 
perfected words on everything posed to me (which is 
what some people, I think, do want from me).  The 
pressure on more ephemeral comments is different, they 
are much more like little trial-balloons.  My blog posts 
are bigger trial-balloons.  Essays even more, and books 
huge Hindenburg-like things.  But--and this is the 
pragmatist, theoretical point come round again--we 
understand all of them as relational experiments.

What I'm wondering is if you foresee a stylistic shift that 
_should_ occur in our culture's forms of intellectual 
discourse given pragmatist theoretical positions about 
evolutionary panrelationalism (which I just made up, 
mind you).  Something of the form like when people say 
that the internet is going to change the way knowledge 
is created (or whatever).  This, to me, might be an 
interesting difference between us if you do.  What we 
are stylistically committed to in the short-run can be 
given a "different strokes" shrug and our theoretical 
orientation to content is the same, so an interesting 
difference would have to involve a long-run 
prognositication and moral suggestion on the future of 
knowledge and discourse.  I tend to think we need a 
balance between book-Hindenburgs and oral 
emphemerality (which the internet mirrors in certain 
ways), and so wouldn't go so far as to suggest that 
pragmatism implies a stylistic consequence.  I suspect 
you wouldn't either, but I'm curious.

Matt


> And specifically to Matt ...
> 
> You said interestingly ...
> "But mainly, everything I write is gold and there's no way I'd write
> for something that was just thrown away.  It's why I hardly ever speak
> to anybody."
> 
> This is why I found it hard to engage in what you call "conversation"
> (on your blog). For you the content is everything, for me nothing is
> "throw away" either but it is part of the context, a process,
> cumulative, relationships, evolving, replacing. ie It's only "thrown
> away" (or archived) when we agree we have something better.
> 
> Really wanted to engage with you on both the Conversation post and the
> Don Quixote post - but fear the only response I'd get would be "Yawn"
> ;-)
> 
> But I agree, we need all kinds of content and interactions.
 		 	   		  
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