[MD] Quality Conversations

[ian glendinning]

Matt, DMB,

I guess I'm one of those with the (distasteful) "cultural illness"
view - but at least I'm aware of it. Particularly liked the
"synthetic" angle here - stop thinking of other philosophers as
"enemies" and see what they can bring to the party. No surprises
there.

On cost-benefit. Reading (well, my younger son is reading) "The
Economic Naturalist" by Robert H Frank, and we're relating the idea
that ecomonics is just (psychological) evolution and evolution is just
economics - Dawkins / Dennett et al all use cost-benefit ideas in
explaining various evolutionary mechanisms. But I hadn't made the
connection to Phronesis, not consciously anyway. Thanks for that.

On the "its all too much like maths" view of analytic philosophy my
elder son has just written his dissertation on Completeness and
Consistency in Systems of Ethics and concludes that kind of analytic
view will never work, thanks to Godel.

Ian

On 5/19/08, Matt Kundert <pirsigaffliction at hotmail.com> wrote:
>
> DMB said:
> If it weren't for philosophical mysticism and such, I'd tend to agree with him about religion. But I'm thinking that when it comes to mysticism he is not just unmusical. He's downright tone-deaf. This is why he tend to view guys like Pirsig and Heidegger as Platonists. Apparently, he didn't know what else to make of it.
>
> Matt:
> Well, Rorty doesn't have any views about Pirsig.  But, I think Rorty's relationship to Heidegger is a lot more complicated then you've let on, but you are right to be tickled, because I've thought for some time that my relationship to Pirsig mirrors Rorty's to Heidegger: complicated.
>
> DMB said:
> What is the neopragmatist's view of "our relation to the world"? I'd sincerely like to know what that is. Basically, what I find in Dewey, James and Pirsig is a version of Heidegger's being-in-the-world.
>
> Matt:
> Well, actually I'd freely use language from Dewey, James, Pirsig, and Heidegger.  The only difference is that I've learned from Rorty to freely use language from Sellars, Quine and Davidson.  Heidegger's being-in-the-world is about right.
>
> DMB said:
> But they're all more or less convinced that its a cure for a kind of cultural illness. Yes, the notion of being always already in the world is going to effect epistemological issues but I think they're all concern with the state of our civilization and the quality of our lives. Rorty is no less concerned, I'm sure. But I think he's tone deaf in this area. It just sounds like Platonism to him. Or religion, if there's a difference.
>
> Matt:
> This is, I think, the true, but minor, difference.  Rorty, and I, get less excited about the notion of philosophy changing the world.  "Cultural illness" is language we both would have a distaste for, but the notion of it being a cultural problem--a cultural _battle_--is right.  His view is, basically, that politics is the best route (though certainly not the only) to effect change in this regard.  At the end of his life, he liked to refer to philosophy as a kind of cultural politics.  It's a temperamental difference, probably.  Rorty and I both think that many of the problems in the world stem from economic issues and that cleaning that up is the main precursor to paradise.
>
> DMB said:
> I'm extremely skeptical of the analytic approach. Tastes like math to me. These are among the tone-deafest philosophers when it comes to the sort of stuff I was just explaining. Some of those guys made a career out of mocking Heidegger. Maybe its just a matter of temperament but I think this amounts to a logical analysis of poetry, an autistic critique of art. I don't understand language to be a logical thing and think its fundamentally wrong to expect it to conform to formal logic. I can see how that approach might develop some important tools, but language much bigger and deeper more mysterious than any such tools. But, I have to admit that my distaste for the analytic philosophers has left me in the dark about them. Foolishly perhaps, I've decided its not worth the time or effort to find out.
>
> Matt:
> I don't blame you, though as a professional course of action, I'm not so sure (as you seem to sense).  Then again, I don't have boots on the ground or skin in the game.  And I don't like much analytic philosophy, nor would I say that I know a whole lot about it, either.  I get the same taste.  But some of it is cool.  I don't know--I just read the stuff that Rorty liked.  I think your view of what it is might be a little skewed, too.  "Oxford philosophy" or "ordinary-language philosophy" didn't take to symbolic logic much, either.  You might like J. L. Austin.  You'd probably like Wittgenstein's Philosophical Investigations.  But, who knows--it's just a matter of cost-benefit analysis.  I don't know--I just like translating back and forth between different approaches.  I get it from Rorty, I like it, I don't think it's always a big deal, and as long as you pay attention to context, building bridges is the only way to get a bigger conversation going then your circle of friends.
>
> I think if you just dropped--out of the blue and randomly--the idea that Rorty is an enemy, and just read him to pick through what he said for tools to allow you to better enunciate _your_ philosophy, he might prove to be useful to you, and perhaps a good guide to the arid, analytic junk.  Or else Richard Bernstein.  I think you'd really like Bernstein (especially his Beyond Objectivism and Relativism).
>
> But, you are no doubt right: I'm tone-deaf to mysticism.  Not as much as some, but I don't get a whole lot out of the approach or the tradition, though I've gotten pretty good at talking about it without talking about it.  Is that license to ignore some of the things I say about Pirsig?  Maybe.  It is all cost-benefit analysis.  Or as the Greeks would say: phronesis.
>
> Matt
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