[MD] Experience, essentialism, physicalism

[david buchanan]

Matt, Anthony and all MOQers:

Matt said to Anthony:
Concepts of postulation are "deduced" and concepts of intuition are 
"immediately apprehended."  The latter we given by experience, the former we 
deduce later from the experience.  Between Quine's attack on the 
analytic/synthetic distinction and Sellars' attack on the Myth of the Given, 
I don't think such a dichotomy can survive.  I'll ask one question to try 
and cast suspicion on the distinction: is the distinction between concepts 
of postulation and concepts of intuition a concept of postulation or a 
concept of intuition?  This is the same question that killed the logical 
positivists strong principle of verfication.

dmb says:
I'd be interested to hear Ant's reply to this. As I understand it, an attack 
on the analytic/synthetic distinction would not be relevant to the 
difference between concepts of intuition and postulation. If, in terms of 
the MOQ, intuition is DQ and postulation is sq whereas analytic and 
synthetic are both sq. And to the extent that the attack on the Myth of the 
Given is an attack on SOM, that's not relevant to the MOQ's central 
distinction either. To answer your positivist-killing question, I simply 
point out that the verbal distinction itself is static, but it is asserted 
on the basis of experience. The deductions and descriptions have to be 
static, of course, but these distinctions do not create or produce that 
experience. In the MOQ, that would be approximately backwards.

Matt said Ant:
So, what needs discussion between us is whether or not we need this 
distinction between concepts of intuition and concepts of postulation.

dmb says:
If they equate with DQ and sq, then I'd say we need them to make sense of 
the MOQ...

Anthony said:
The paradox in your concluding paragraphs i.e. “we do have to chuck the idea 
that qualia is non-linguistic”, “that the ‘non-linguistic’ [such as Dynamic 
Quality] is created in a language game” and “is a function of us talking 
about them, they are a function of static intellectual patterns” completely 
causes havoc with the internal logical consistency of the MOQ. ...I remember 
Pirsig mentioning last Summer that the components of the MOQ are very much 
intertwined so it is very difficult to radically change one part without 
undermining the whole lot.

Matt replied:
Well, I'll agree that they are intertwined, but I've been arguing for a long 
while that it looks like Pirsig intertwined two insoluable philosophical 
traditions.  Reliance on a distinction between concepts of intuition and 
postulation are one occurence.  I think that reliance is SOMic.  I think the 
other half of Pirsig, the pragmatist half, is constantly at war with the 
half that uses those kinds of distinctions.  Going one way or the other will 
undermine the other half.  I think emphasizing the types of arguments you're 
wielding against my pragmatism undermine's Pirsig's own pragmatism.  And on 
the other hand, I do think the pragmatism I'm wielding does undermine part 
of Pirsig.  But I think of it as purging Pirsig of stuff he didn't need 
anyways.

dmb says:
I'm pretty sure that the attack on the distinctions of the positivists is 
not relevant to the distinction between intuition (DQ ) and postulation (sq) 
and I don't think the MOQ would survive its removal. I think you've 
misconstrued this central distinction as something its not and are rejecting 
that rather than the actual concepts Pirsig is using. I certainly hope you 
and Ant have that discussion about "whether or not we need this 
distinction".

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