[MD] Argumentation: Social/Intellectual

[Matt Kundert]

Hey Steve,

Steve said:
To the extent we are talking about a personality we are talking about social 
patterns and to the extent we are talking about ideas we are talking about 
intellectual patterns.
...
It is still useful to try to identify these different types of experience so 
that we may choose to emphasize our truth-sense in such a case by trying to 
think about the argument in purely intellectual terms and weighing authority 
appropriately  in the overall evaluation while forgetting about how charming 
socially or physically attractive or intimidating the person arguing may be.

Matt:
I don't think the distinctions between personality and ideas works for this 
philosophical issue.  It works fine in common sense, just as it does for 
distinguishing between charm and physical beauty.  Those common sense 
distinctions, I think, break down when they try and hold apart the social 
and intellectual.  For instance, when I said "authority", you started 
interpreting it with things like celebrity and charm as opposed to "purely 
intellectual terms".  Celebrity and charm are not what I mean by "authority" 
and "purely intellectual terms" is the kind of thing I'm trying to call into 
question when its put to philosophical use.

I'm suggesting that "authority," while traditionally thought of as an 
obviously bad, anti-rational side show like celebrity, social grace, and 
sexual appeal, is actually where we see most clearly that the 
social/intellectual discrete distinction breaks down.  For instance, do any 
of us here take Pirsig as an authority figure on such issues as Greece, 
Buddhism, or insanity because he's famous or because we're strangely 
attracted to older men with oblong noses?  No, we consider him an authority 
because his arguments won us over.  He holds intellectual authority over us, 
and other philosophers we read are in a contest with Pirsig when we read 
them.  I'm suggesting that "intellectual authority" is a strange bird that 
doesn't quite make sense as being explicated by truth (as it might be on the 
intellectual level) or by commandment (as it might be on the social level).  
I think those are false dichotomies, along with the Reason/Tradition, 
Dialectic/Rhetoric, and Objective/Subjective distinctions--and if any 
distinction between levels banks on those distinctions, then its gotta' go, 
too.  There _are_ distinctions to be made, just as all eight of the terms I 
just used can be demarcated from each other for certain purposes, but when 
we start generalizing, theorizing, when we wax philosophical, I think danger 
begins staring us in the face.

However, I don't really have any more arguments or much more to say.  I'm 
still weaving my way around.

Matt

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