[MD] Truth and the Linguistic Turn

[David M]

dmb replies Krim/Matt:
I think you've raised a crucial point here. Its a good example of the sort 
of unwarranted charge that invariably comes up whenever the topic is 
somewhere near mysticism. It's pretty clear that Pirsig's distinction 
between direct and indirect comes only after he's rejected the 
representational theory of knowledge. The difference is between two 
categories of experience, neither of which is any less "real" than the 
other. If memory serves, Dewey made the distinction between "had" experience 
and later reflection. He insisted that cognitive knowledge was not more real 
than the initial experience. This would be more or less the same as the 
difference between dynamic and static or direct and indirect. As Pirsig 
points out, the German language has two words for "knowing" that reflect 
this same distinction. One refers to a basic familiarity, something you 
"know" from experience even never deliberately think about it, like riding a 
bike, your grandmother's face, walking through a doorway. And then there is 
cognitive knowledge, where you "know" the principles of geometry or law. I 
think these guys are emphasizing the non-cognitive, pre-reflective mode of 
experience not because they think it is more real but because it has 
traditionally been ignored and excluded by philosophy. Pirsig traces it back 
to the Platonic demand for intelligibility, the one that tried to turn truth 
into a fixed, rigid thing. So I see Pirsig's distinction between static and 
dynamic as a move against Platonism and a rehabilitation of the 
non-conceptual "knowledge" he denigrated at every opportunity.


DM: That seems OK to me. But Rorty and Matt are right to question whether 
experience is a form of knowledge, as it is not linguistic or
propositional. But DMB and David Hildebrand are right to say that Rorty (in 
opposition to bad Dewey, Rorty also has a good Dewey)
underplays experience. Experience and experiment are key to life and wisdom 
and practical undertakings and science. Experience
does not give us certain knowledge but it is the subject matter of 
knowledge, it is what our knowledge is about. It is because of
our experiences and the trouble and delights and problems they give us that 
we want to try and make sense of our experiences, experiences
that are sometimes individual but are often shared.