[MD] Dialectical Knowledge and Nonlinguistic Knowledge

[Matt Kundert]

DMB,

I'd read your little dodgeballs lobbed in my direction the last day or so 
and this stuck in my head:

"In his refusal to accept only dialectical knowledge as knowledge, I see 
Matt's version of Rorty doing the same thing as Plato."

"Dialectical knowledge" was an interesting term to create, but all of today 
I've been thinking that you said that "Matt's version of Rorty" _only_ 
accepts dialectical knowledge, which made a lot of sense and I've been 
playing around in my head all day with it and thought of a way that we might 
repair some mutual understanding, but what I thought you said is _not_ what 
the sentence would appear to say.

So, I would still like to repair a bridge of understanding where there 
appears to be none (on both sides) if it all possible.  Since I think it has 
a lot to do with the fact that I find what you think Rorty is denying, the 
idea of "nonlinguistic knowledge" (right?), terribly obscure (and you're now 
finally convinced that I _don't_ have any idea what you are talking about 
when you do), if you could clarify on what you mean by dialectical knowledge 
and what's being denied and what not (nothing much, just a short schpiel to 
get started with), maybe we could go from there.

I thought you were contrasting "dialectical knowledge" to "mystical 
knowledge" and that this distinction paralleled the "linguistic knowledge" 
to "nonlinguistic knowledge" distinction, so that it explained why you and 
Hildebrand both think that Rorty's denying we can have knowledge of 
nonlinguistic stuff (and you additionally thinking that he has no room for 
mystical knowledge).

Matt

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