[MD] subject/object: pragmatism

[David M]

Hi Matt  see comments

Mat
t>I didn't really understand your explanation of "pure experience."  I think 
I may just have a tin ear when it comes to "trying to talk about experience 
in non-SOM >terms," because as far as I can see, getting rid of Platonism 
does pretty much all of that, and the big problem with SOM is for 
philosophers, not lay folk.  That's >the big place, I suppose, where I 
differ with Pirsig: I don't see SOM as a cultural problem of amazing 
magnitude.

DM: Of course, Being and Time goes to great lengths to create a non SOM 
language and so the question may be how great a book it is for us philsophy 
students. The Continental tradition after Heidegger clearly argues that SOM 
has vast cultural implications, take Heidegger's student Marcuse for 
example, or the arguments about scientism, Foucault's criticisms of 
knowledge-power, or the questioning of the secular settlement.

>DM said:
>Is all knowledge linguistic?

Matt:
>Yes.  Why?  Because I'm defining it as such, specifically to deal with 
>problems about consciousness, concepts, universals and other Platonically 
>inspired >problems.  It is easy enough to say that when your dog behaves 
>the way it does, that when we say it "knows" that there's food on the other 
>side of the door, we >are treating by analogy, as one of us for the 
>purposes of predicting its behavior.  Like any of the multitude of things 
>we say about computers.


DM: See for me, the analogy means that where behaviour can be described in 
terms of the recording and processing of information we are talking about 
knowledge, this is why DNA is also understood as acoding or even a language, 
why do you think word language has some kind of privilege?

Matt:
>I'm not against saying that dogs know things, I'm just against the kind of 
>muddying done by those, e.g., who think that direct intuition of reality 
>bequeaths us >concepts.

DM: I think you are begging questions about what we mean by concepts. You 
see it is just as easy to muddy the notion of concept and say that 
recognised patterns that we sense require something like concepts to be 
recognised. Rorty and you are not going far enough I'd suggest because you 
are attempting tokeep distinctions that are up for grabs.

>DM said:
>I also think we are missing Dewey's discussion of the situations we find 
>ourselves in, and that these present us with problems (as we value them) 
>and possibilities  >(DQ) to change them, and it is through activity that we 
>can knowledge not just chat.

>Matt:
>This is also where I differ from Rorty-bashers: I just don't see how what 
>Rorty's saying precludes Dewey's notion that reflection occurs when a habit 
>fails and we >suddenly have a problem that needs to be solved.

DM: I agree but the emphasis is missing, I prefer Dewey's emphasis.

Matt:
>I guess maybe I just read Rorty, and maybe philosophy in general, 
>differently than others.  My experience of reading Rorty is that he attends 
>to what he wants to >attend to while being careful not step on the toes of 
>people doing something different (rather than conflicting, like 
>Platonists).  Others think, mainly I think because >they unconsciously 
>suppose philosophers are required to have an opinion about everything, that 
>Rorty isn't as careful.  I don't know, hard to adjudicate that one, >but 
>from my point of view: Rorty revises some of Dewey, not all of Dewey.

>I just don't get the "just chat" charge.  Too facile.

DM: I think Dewey takes it up and does a better job with his discussion of 
spectator thoery of knowledge. Don't get me wrong, I agree alot with Rorty 
and the linguistic update of Dewey is very useful but it losses something of 
Dewey's concern with our relationship with nature as opposed to only each 
other. Have you read much Dewey? -I am only just starting to get into him 
directly, all previous knowledge having come from Rorty.