[MD] Matt and DMB disagree?

[david buchanan]

Matt and all:

Matt said to dmb:
...do I really need to smirkinigly remind you who first introduced you to 
the very idea of the appearance/reality distinction and how it needs to be 
rejected?  Or have you forgotten our first conversations in which you 
couldn't make out the connection between SOM and the appearance/reality 
distinction and blasted me for talking about such a thing?

dmb says:
As with the prohibition against "ocular metaphors" and so many other things, 
I had no idea what you were talking about. If memory serves, after quite a 
long time I saw some connection between SOM and the appearance/reality 
distinction and complained about the fact that you never made that 
connection and I remember thinking, "Why the heck didn't he just say that a 
year ago?". Maybe I even typed a version of that sentiment at the time, am I 
right? It still seems to me that it was your task to make the connections 
between Pirsig, which is the common demoninator here, and the terms you were 
bringing to the table. Back then, for example, I'd ask something like, "We 
shouldn't use ocular metaphors? Why? What's the problem?". You should have 
just said, its Rorty secret code for rejecting the sensory empiricism of the 
positivists. And I would have said, "Oh, I see." because I would have 
understood that and I'm a funny guy.

In any case, I think we still might disagree. It seems to me that this a/r 
distinction makes a lot more sense in relation to the collaspe of Positivism 
in particular rather than the assumptions of SOM or all forms of Platonism.

Matt continued:
...Or the fact that, apparently until quite recently, you couldn't imagine 
_anybody_ who'd _ever_ thought the way you now seem quite content to paint 
them--ways in which philosophers thought they'd cut to the absolute truth of 
things, appearance to reality?

dmb says:
Well, yes. I'm surprised to find that anyone was looking for the "essence", 
but again I think this makes a lot more sense in terms of the collaspe of 
realism. But what I found even more of a surprize was the heavily religious 
nature of the earlier continentals like Hegel. Wilber reads this group as 
mostly half-baked mystics and so I looked at it that way too, but now I'm 
seeing the grandiose and theological side of it. Its just incredible.

Matt continued:
If you've finally figured out how to use that vocabulary, and how SOM, 
Pirsig's vocabulary, links to it, why have you continued with the one note 
tune of Rorty rejecting one half of a dualism that Pirsig rejects the whole 
of when the primary promulgator of the vocabulary of the appearance/reality 
distinction--_and how it needs to be rejected_--is Richard Rorty, primarily 
through Philosophy and the Mirror of Nature which singles out the metaphor 
of _sight_ as the main lynchpin in the problematic we should be rejecting? 
Sound familiar?

dmb says:
Excellent question. Firstly, I used the vocabulary of the 
"appearance/reality" distinction simply because you do and I'm talking to 
you. And I almost never apply any criticism directly to Rorty, with my paper 
being the one big exception, the only time I've read any Rorty and that's 
because it was assigned reading. Other than that, 100% of what I know of him 
comes from you. I'm pretty much limited to that and I guess I just figured 
that if Rorty's rejection of his appearance/reality distinction was the same 
as Pirsig's rejection of SOM then you would have shown me that by now. I do 
not recall any such thing. It occurs to me now that Rorty is responding to a 
more specific problem, as I just mentioned. I mean, this vocabulary makes 
quite a lot more sense in the context of the collapse of postivisim and 
realism than it does in the context of the MOQ. Or so it seems to me. Isn't 
it fair to say that he was to drop the distinction because of he's concluded 
that its not possible to cross the epistemic gap, that there is no way to 
get at objective reality? I can see how this is a rejection of positivism 
and essentialism, but is it a rejection of the assumptions on which this 
failure is predicated? Isn't it more like resignation in the face of that 
impossible gap rather than a rejection of the gap? In that assigned reading, 
"Lumps and Texts", he pretty much says we can't have objectivity and so all 
we can have is subjectivity. How can this be construed as anything but SOM? 
I really don't see how, but maybe you can tell me.

Matt said more:
...Why have you continued where you should perhaps think about revising?  By 
taking on Rorty's vocabulary you've made it even _easier_ for me to rebut 
the accusations because now, instead of traveling the road of translation 
from Pirsig's vocab into Rorty's, all I have to do is cite a line in which 
he explicitly denies what you accuse.

dmb says:
I'd like to see his explicit denials. Then we'd both have it easy. But you 
can't just cite a line. I don't have any of Rorty's books. And I'm not 
taking on Rorty's vocabulary so much as learning about the context in which 
it makes sense, the 20th century's crisis of empiricism. Sorry Matt, but I 
think my little thesis (Rorty is a broken-hearted positivist) looks even 
better and stronger in this new context.

Matt continued:
...To deny that Rorty rejects the appearance/reality distinction when a 
_whole_ lot of what he does is explicitly show us ways to reject it and 
replace it with other things--and especially in the tone you've adopted, 
where it sounds like Rorty's never even thought rejection was possible or 
sometimes even _heard_of the distinctions he should be rejecting--is a very 
suspicious kind of treatment.

dmb says:
The question in not whether or not he rejects that distinction. Even I agree 
with that much. The question is, what does it mean to reject that 
distinction? Doesn't Pirsig go further and also reject the assumptions on 
which it is founded? Doesn't Rorty's rejection of empiricism indicate a 
resignation to SOM's epistemic gap rather than a rejection of SOM per se? 
Don't you think the difference between Pirsig's adoption of radical 
empiricism and Rorty's abandonment of empiricism are two starkly different 
moves? This are still outstanding questions as far as I can see.

Matt said:
You sound scorned.

dmb says:
Really? I don't feel scorned. Quite the opposite. In fact, I was afraid of 
sounding too smug because I felt so vindicated by these discoveries.

later,
dmb

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