[MD] Language, SOM, and the MoQ

[Matt Kundert]

DMB,

DMB said:
Skepticism vs. Idealism. Whadya think, Matt? Anyone? Is this the crux of the 
difference, or what?

Matt:
Sort of, I guess.  But not really the way you framed much of it.  If you 
were going to cut a difference like that between myself and Pirsig, it would 
be a tonal difference, or a difference in preoccupation.  Like the 
difference between Robert Brandom and Rorty.  Brandom was a student of 
Rorty's and, accepting pretty much the scope of Rortyan pragmatism, went out 
and wrote a gigantic, systematic philosophy of language in a book called 
Making it Explicit.  That book, essentially, is the constructive side of 
pragmatism.  After destroying all the pictures of rationality that had come 
before, Rorty's never done anything more than provide pregnant hints about 
what the new picture would look like.  Brandom set out to fill in the 
details.  And lo' and behold, Rorty's commendations of the project.  It's 
not that Rorty and Brandom were doing something completely different, 
bringing out two different "entailments" of the pragmatist "theory" of 
truth.  They were just working two different sides of the same street.  
Rorty either didn't have the inclination or skill to bring off the big ole' 
reconstruction (likely a little of both; Rorty likes to read more than write 
and doesn't have the patience to bring off something like that and, as he 
mentioned in a review of Brandom, he doesn't understand Frege well enough to 
bring off the project).

Your latching on to this way of framing our difference actually strikes up 
exactly what I think is wrong with our conversations.  I can't ever find a 
very good way to move the conversation forward because it doesn't seem like 
you ever want to move it forward.  (The struggle, of course, is that both of 
us feel exactly the same way about the other.)  Take your insistence that I 
reject "philosophy in general and metaphysics in particular."  That's 
severely misleading.  I'm not sure that I've ever rejected philosophy.  And 
when it comes to metaphysics, you have to distinguish between two kinds: the 
kind pragmatists want to deconstruct (i.e., ones that revolve around the 
appearance/reality distinction) and the kind that simply means "paradigms 
for thought."  The first is something I, and you and every other Pirsigian, 
reject, the second is something I, and you and every other Pirsigian, 
accept.  I've been stating so for many years and our most recent 
conversation, predictably, stumbled accross that terrain.  So saying that I 
reject metaphysics in a way that Pirsig does not either implies 1) you keep 
accidently skipping those sections I write or don't understand them or 2) 
there _is_ something in Pirsig that I may want to reject.  So I keep writing 
my little polemics against things that sound (bad) metaphysical, because I 
haven't become convinced that all those noises I'm hearing are innocuous to 
the concerns of a negative pragmatist deconstructer.  I'm more or less 
convinced that the noises Paul makes are innocuous (i.e., I'm convinced that 
Paul understands what I think should be avoided and agrees that it should be 
avoided).  But Paul and I went over that whole "What the hell do you mean 
about rejecting metaphysics?" thing once some time ago and, since then, 
we've been able to move on to other more interesting areas.

So, in essence, the way I see the issue, there aren't two different 
entailments to pragmatism.  There are just two different sides to the same 
coin.  One side is the "skeptical of appearance/reality distinction stuff" 
that I specialize in.  This was more or less Pirsig's emphasis in ZMM.  The 
other side is the "painting of an alternative picture to Platonism" that I 
don't specialize in.  This was more or less Pirsig's emphasis in Lila.  Both 
sides are evident in both books.  Both sides, for that matter, are evident 
in my own writings.  So, it is more or less accurate to say that my 
"skeptical postion and the resignation that follows from it would be a 
perfectly acceptable postion FROM WITHIN THIS LIMITED RATIONALITY."  I'm not 
sure about resignation, but the pragmatist only plays the skeptic from 
within the old SOM box.  He does that to show how SOM doesn't work, because 
as long as the skeptic is a possiblity, it won't.  However, the pragmatist 
doesn't make some spurious choice of subjectivity over objectivity because 
he's still trapped in the box.  Like Pirsig, he's rejecting both horns of 
the dilemma and offering a different, alternative understanding of what 
rationality means.

Its your failure to understand what I'm up to, by writing things that are 
very misleading about my position, that prompts me to not believe you when 
you say you've successfully rejected representationalism.  Its not out of 
spite, as in "Well, since he keeps punting me, I'll keep punting him."  Its 
because I believe you when you say them.  I think you are being sincere, and 
not just out to slander my position.  But if that's the case, then you don't 
understand me and my concerns and so there's still the possibility that 
there's something wrong with the things you say.  And I try and ferret them 
out on occasion.  Until I'm convinced that it isn't a possibility, then 
there's still a reason for me to be, well, skeptical.

I've never said that Pirsig, or anyone else (except Ham, because he admits 
to being one), _is_ a representationalist.  I've said things like, "Ya' see 
this right here?  That sounds like bad metaphysics to me."  The conversation 
then involves me attempting to show why its bad if it ceases to just _sound_ 
like bad metaphysics, but actually becomes it (by showing how the web of 
uses of the words being bandied about produce bad effects), and the other 
person trying to convince me that, no, it just sounds like that, but its not 
really.  "I say 'metaphysics,' but all I mean is the same thing you mean by 
'philosophy.'"  If I heard that from your mouth, I'd feel much better about 
moving the conversation forward and believing you that your tools aren't 
contaminated by SOM residue.

Matt

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