[MD] Reason, Tradition

[Matt Kundert]

DMB, Mike, Ian,

DMB said:
As I understand it, this is your way of describing the problem that liberal 
intellectuals like Pirsig have had with respect to human rights. They were 
just a soup of sentiments one was supposed to cheer for even though nobody 
could spell out what they were. (You already know the quotes alluded to 
here.) It seems that begging the question, failing to get their arguments 
off the ground and admiting that "our" values are as inculcated as anyone 
else's is just a specific way to paint that same soup of sentiments. As I 
see it, the problem you've described is one that the MOQ tries to solve. I 
mean, you seem to be saying that the social/intellectual distinction fails 
because of this problem, but I'm saying that the social/intellectual 
distinction is aimed at solving this sort of intellectual paralysis.

Matt:
That's an excellent connection to make between the Reason/Tradition 
distinction and the "soup of sentiments".  I've never been fond of Pirsig's 
trashing of the soup of sentiments.  However, the "intellectual paralysis" 
thing is related to (but not the same as) the liberal paradox thing, but 
only if you become convinced that the consequence of the liberal paradox is 
relativism.  That's the wrong consequence.  The threat of relativism (which 
would produce the paralysis) is what Enlightenment philosophers would use to 
get people to tow the philosophical line, that Reason _can_ save us from 
relativism and all that.  What pragmatists say is that the threat is a 
mirage.  Tearing down the distinction (which hasn't worked for a number of 
reasons including the paradox, but Enlightenment believers keep trying to 
defend and reconstitute in the hope of finally getting it to work) won't 
throw us into relativism, it'll throw us right back where we were: people 
arguing about values.  Enlightenment philosophers didn't want that: they 
erected the distinction essentially to make politics obselete.  They wanted 
to claim that philosophy, i.e. pure Reason, would tell us which were the 
right values to have, and you could only reject the right values by pain of 
irrational prejudice (which Gadamer called the Enlightenment's "prejudice 
prejudice").

So framing the social/intellectual distinction as attempting to solve 
"intellectual paralysis" would mean taking the threat of relativism 
seriously, which would mean erecting something hard like a Tradition/Reason 
distinction.  That would mean it falls into paradox.  The distinction 
doesn't solve the paradox, it produces it by taking relativism seriously.  
Solving it takes something else.  I gather you say rejecting the distinction 
would mean "admitting that 'our' values are as inculcated as anyone else's" 
because you don't want to admit that.  But what I'm saying liberal 
philosophers should admit is simply that people are educated in their 
mythos, their analogues upon analogues upon analogues, that babies are born 
nowhere and are educated somewhere.  That admission does _not_ mean 
relativism and the inability to judge.  It's just the precondition of 
judgment.  And as long as that's all we're admitting, that we're inculcated 
but that doesn't produce relativism, then there's no reason to try and erect 
a philosophically interesting Reason/Tradition distinction.

DMB said:
It seems you're saying that the tradition/reason distinction has to be 
thrown out along with SOM. But, as you may recall, my question about that 
included a reminder that the MOQ retains the social/intellectual distinction 
even after its attack on SOM. As I see it, getting rid of the assumptions of 
SOM and replacing it with the MOQ is the thing that allows us to retain this 
distinction, to rank these rival value systems. You know, the non-objective 
approach to anthroplogy, the reading of historical and political conflict as 
a conflict of levels and generally trading a SOM's narrow epistemologies for 
a pluralistic one. This is the stuff that basically lets us retain a more 
refined version of the the tradition/reason distinction, which is called the 
social/intellectual distinction in the MOQ.

Matt:
I should remind you that I'm not claiming that there aren't distinctions to 
be made between tradition and reason or social and intellectual.  But I 
can't see that refining the Enlightenment's distinction, which is also kind 
of what Ian suggested, is going to help (and not simply reproduce SOMic 
problems) if for no other reason than it hasn't helped yet.  Rawls is still 
getting hit by the same criticisms that Kant got two hundred years later.  
(And when Rawls first got hit, he started becoming more and more 
pragmatist-like, e.g. in his paper "Justice as Fairness: Political not 
Metaphysical".)

I should clarify for people in case it hasn't been clear:  something 
important in the Enlightenment _did_ happen.  But it was Enlightenment 
_politics_, not Enlightenment _philosophy_.  Intellectuals at the time did 
use the philosophy of the time to batter their opponents and convince people 
that secularism is the way to go.  But their opponents have gotten craftier, 
learned from their mistakes, and are able combat those philosophical 
weapons.  Enlightenment philosophy may have been a useful weapon two hundred 
years ago, but what pragmatists are arguing is that that tool is now 
outdated.  It doesn't work, it won't stand up to scrutiny.

DMB said:
Basically, I think you're just re-describing the problem and suggesting we 
should just resign ourselves to the idea that religion and science and just 
different traditons. It seems like you're objecting to the MOQ's solution, 
but you're doing so without really mentioning the solution at all. You see 
what I mean?

Matt:
Given the above, I'm not redescribing the problem of intellectual paralysis, 
I'm undercutting the problem before it even gets off the ground so we won't 
have to try and cook up a solution to it.  So I am objecting to Pirsig's 
solution (if, in fact, the social/intellectual distinction is used to 
parallel the Tradition/Reason distinction) on the grounds that it doesn't 
work.  It might have been useful to categorize different ideologies (like 
liberal, communist, conservative, fascist) with the social/intellectual 
distinction if the distinction _worked_.  I haven't been talking a lot about 
the particulars of Pirsig's solution because the claim has been that the 
very effort to categorize along those lines begs the question over your 
opponent (in your case, over conservatives; in Platt's case, over liberals), 
thus pushing you aside the bounds of argumentation--when the entire effort 
was to stay _inside_ the conversation.  All sides agree that we need to stay 
inside the conversation.  Pragmatists are just trying to help with that by 
pointing out that we should try using a different weapon, or fight on 
different terrain.

Mike said:
More specifically, I think the paradox is only apparent when one assumes the 
bad Reason/Tradition dichotomy that you're resisting. Under that dichotomy, 
any inculcation of Tradition acts as an impediment to the free and unbiased 
activity of Reason. In an MOQ context, we can say that certain social 
customs enable and cultivate the personal skill of reasoned argument.

Matt:
Right, I'm saying if the social/intellectual distinction banks on an 
Enlightenment Reason/Tradition philosophical distinction, then we should 
resist it.  Like I've said, though, I'm not saying there are no distinctions 
to be made.  For instance, I can accept your point that "we can say that 
certain social customs [or traditions of upbringing] enable and cultivate 
the personal skill of reasoned argument".  I would call that a good way of 
distinguishing the two.  However, I don't think its enough to hold up 
Pirsig's account and the way he puts it to use.

Mike said:
In Mill's words: "The only part of the conduct of any one, for which he is 
amenable to society, is that which concerns others. In the part which merely 
concerns himself, his independence is, of right, absolute. Over himself, 
over his own body and mind, the individual is sovereign."

So in Mill's liberalism, the society is allowed to evaluate conduct which 
directly affects society, whereas the individual is allowed to evaluate 
conduct which directly affects only himself.

Matt:
I think this may be the essence of what I consider a good distinction 
between a third and fourth level to be.  However, looking at it, you can 
imagine why I've been suggesting that perhaps "intellectual" isn't the best 
word.  I like Platt's "individual", but the way Platt uses it half the time 
it looks like the same begging-the-question way that DMB uses it.  I don't 
think these distinctions between levels are good at all for conducting 
arguments with other democratic citizens--unless you could create a 
convincing case in which either side became either a communist or fascist, 
i.e. societies that do not leave space for the sovereign individual.  Those 
cases are hard to make, however, given that Platt calling me and DMB Red 
Commie Pig-Dogs and us calling him a White Fascist Homophobe fall a little 
flat and border on a little ridiculous and overstated.  My gut feeling is 
that the three of us have minor differences of opinion compared to our 
differences with Stalinists and Nazis, that a level distinction is the wrong 
weapon because its too big a weapon, good for smearing an opponent radically 
different from us, but too unwieldy for smaller differences.

Matt

_________________________________________________________________
Don’t just search. Find. Check out the new MSN Search! 
http://search.msn.click-url.com/go/onm00200636ave/direct/01/