[MD] Experience, essentialism, physicalism

[Matt Kundert]

David,

I figured it was because you liked me.

I don't doubt there are non-linguistic elements to our experiences.  In 
fact, I think we should probably say that the linguistic and the 
non-linguistic are inseparable.  I just think, for the most part, common 
sense and science handles it well enough.  (I remember reading the trouble 
Rorty has had with figuring out what Donald Davidson means by his very sharp 
distinction between the Mental and the Physical, on how that could not be a 
regression on Davidson's part, and, with the help of Bjorn Ramberg, he 
finally saw the point, which is something that is still too esoteric for me 
to fully comprehend, but I think it has to do with just this kind of thing.)

Realism, in the sense you seem to be using it, just looks like common sense. 
  Saying science has to handle non-linguistic signs from nature, answer its 
questions and the like, is an okay heuristic, but I still don't like it and 
won't use it for the same pragmatist reasons I used, what must be years ago 
now, when you first talked like that in relation to Rorty's philosophy of 
science: roughly, nature (commonsensically) doesn't talk and thinking that 
nature talks is one of the things that has caused so much junk in the 
philosophy of science.  I don't think that makes me an irrealist, I just 
think I'm eschewing a particular metaphor to get it off the ground.

Matt

>Hi Matt
>
>Yes, DMB has to answer it too, but I like picking on you,
>your my favourite. I think we need the distinction because there
>is a non-linguistic element to experience. I find your reluctance
>to talk apples suspicious, but well done you've taken the forbidden
>fruit. Realism requires us to have an ability to answer questions about
>nature via the non-linguistic signs of nature, this is what science has
>to deal with, what is created in controlled experiments and tested.
>
>DM

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