[MD] Language, SOM, and the MoQ

[Matt Kundert]

DMB,

I think you've completely misunderstood me.  I don't know.  I read your 
response and its that totally disproportionate response style that I just 
complained about.  You rip me for a position that we both oppose.  I don't 
get it.

I say this to sum up the main point (that I was saying _we agree on_) that I 
had been writing about:

"You want to say that philosophical mysticism is better than SOM because SOM 
_reduces_ all other perspectives and vocabularies to a single, physical 
perspective or vocabulary.  Philosophical mysticism, on the other hand, 
_includes_ the other perspectives without reducing them to any particular 
perspective.  It lets them rub elbows without becoming identical."

You _agree_:

"I want to say that? I think I have been saying that. For years."

I think you _are_ "just bitching about the conversation."  I don't see why 
you can't just say to yourself, "Hey, we agree on this.  How can I gloss 
back through the other iffier things he says so that maybe they'll make more 
sense and look more agreeable?"  I try doing that all the time for you.  
It's what Thomas Kuhn called the first rule of translation and 
interpretation.  The principle of charity.

To try and make clear.  The only way you get to say this as a point against 
me---

"By now it should be pretty clear that I think there is an important 
distinction between adding things up and merely putting things in a house. 
The difference is somthing like the difference between a home and pile of 
unconstructed building materials, between a structure a heap. I don't think 
your approach really produces harmony so much as it lets everybody sing 
their own song. Don't get me wrong, I do think just about every perspective 
has something valid to offer and so every voice deserves to be heard. I just 
think that's not enough. I think a genuinely pluralistic view has to be more 
than the sum of its parts, it has to do something with those voices."

----is if your position says that neurology itself is pointless, useless and 
should be stopped.  _If it doesn't_, then as far as I'm concerned, our 
positions are nearly identical when it comes to whether we have a home or 
whether we have a pile of unconstructed building materials, to whether we 
produce harmony or not.

If you agree with this analogy----

By themselves, a vector description of the car crash is no more wrong then a 
first-person description.  But when trying to figure out how fast your face 
went through the windshield, it is inappropriate to answer "It was the most 
terrifying thing..." because it doesn't help for what you're looking for at 
that moment.  And likewise, when recovering from the emotional trauma of the 
accident, the particular velocities of your body and the car and the 
windshield aren't any help ("How did you feel during the accident?" "My head 
went through the windshield at 70mph." "Okay, but how did you feel?").  They 
are different descriptions for the same event that are only useful depending 
on what you're doing, just as Pirsig said sometimes Cartesian coordinates 
help, sometimes polar.

----then your position is nearly identical to mine on this point.

And as I said here----

"See, that's the advantage of being a one-trick pony.  If you're only 
performing one trick at a time, then it makes it very easy to see who is 
with you and who against (on that particular topic).  I do in fact perform 
other tricks, and have done so on many occasions here.  But I try very hard 
not to put too many balls in the air at once, and if I do, to keep track of 
them _seperately_ so that some clear answers can be developed about where I 
stand in relation to others."

----I'm almost positive you'll agree with the analogy and agree that 
neurology isn't totally pointless.  If you agree with that, then you agree 
on the point I was looking for agreement on this whole time, pretty much the 
single fulcrum on which the whole conversation swung, the point that makes 
or doesn't make pragmatism compatible with mysticism.  That means my 
original doubts are gone.  My pragmatism is complatible with forms of 
mysticism.  In fact, even your mysticism.  I'm glad to see us finally agree 
on something.

Matt

_________________________________________________________________
Express yourself instantly with MSN Messenger! Download today - it's FREE! 
http://messenger.msn.click-url.com/go/onm00200471ave/direct/01/