[MD] Language Games (was Theatre and Definitions)

[Matt Kundert]

DMB,

DMB said:
Correct me if I'm off the mark here, but isn't it true that this 
philosophical method is part of a larger anti-metaphysical project? Isn't it 
true that one of the not-so-hidden assumptions is that we are necessarily 
limited to small truths about small things? There is no way to properly 
unify or rank these various vocabularies, no way good to assert plumber talk 
over physics talk or anything else? We just say its different and menaingful 
in its own terms. Isn't that about right, even if its not very generous? 
Well, that how it seems to me; rigged to fail from the start. The game is 
fixed to preclude metaphysics or anything beyond practical purposes, to rule 
it out, am I right? Well, if that's the case, then I think its only natural 
that this would frustrate a metaphysical conversation rather than clear up 
anything.

Matt:
This is where you continually go off the mark with summing up what I'm 
saying.  Pragmatism is only anti-metaphysical if by metaphysics we mean 
"find out what reality really is behind the appearances" (what Plato was 
doing), but it is not anti-metaphysical if by metaphysics we mean "setting 
up a general vision or paradigm for thinking about stuff" (what Pirsig is 
doing).  Nobody is antimetaphysical in the second sense.  Pragmatism just 
means that _everything_ is practical, including what we do we when we create 
big, large general visions of things.  There is no distinction between 
"metaphysics" and "practical purposes" as you were using it.

I've been making a distinction between the two uses of metaphysics for a 
long, long time.  I told you in December that I wasn't going to talk to you 
until you acknowledged that distinction.  The way you keep saying things 
like this is why your type of dialogue looks more like slander.  "Look, 
look, he's anti-metaphysical!  Pirsig does metaphysics, so he must be crazy 
to like Pirsig!"  The trouble is that it is just plain _wrong_ to say that 
I'm antimetaphysical because by _your_ lights, by _your_ definition of 
"metaphysics," I'm as metaphysical as you.

Matt

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