[MD] FW: Quine and the Linguistic Turn

[X Acto]

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From: Matt Kundert <pirsigaffliction at hotmail.com>
To: moq_discuss at moqtalk.org
Sent: Tuesday, April 7, 2009 11:58:28 PM
Subject: Re: [MD] FW: Quine and the Linguistic Turn


Ron:
Language can be an entrapment of intellectual thought, ie, how when one analyzes philosophically,
they assume the axioms and grammar of the language structure, IS how reality functions, often
this assumption is not even realized.The analytic school of linguistics, the mathematicians,
are in business of putting together language using axioms in such a way that their meaning
is true and consistent in all situations. 

Pictoral thoughts, are symbolic of actual experience, they are simplified and exaggerated,
we communicate the pictoral thought of a sunrise which in turn cognates an exaggerated
simplified experience of an actual sunrise they have experienced, emotions linked,with associative
memories and emotions in a webwith the present. How we think, in large, as intellectual be-ings
is dictated by how our language is logically structured to provide universal meaning. 
Language as I understand the term, is not merely words, but the identification and confirmation
of experiences. It is when language ceases to be viewed as a living part of us and a "thing"
for it's meanings to be absolute, consistent, and true, that it begins to fail in purpose.

Matt:
The reason I mention both those things is because philosophers like Rorty and Donald Davidson have suggested that we not think of language as a layer we place on top of the world, or experience, or whatever.  Language, like our hands, are tools we use to interact with the world, or experience (or whatever).  (In fact, the analogy between body parts and language--and how much of "us" is left when you start removing these things--is good to meditate on.)  Using our words or our hands is a skill, a kind of know-how, not a rule-governed set of conventions, like a board game we can opt in and out of.  (On the other hand, philosophers like Rorty and Wittgenstein have gotten a lot of mileage out of the analogy between language and games.)

This has led Davidson to say that "there is no such thing as language, not at least as philosophers and linguists have often supposed" (to paraphrase).  As I see it, being Dynamic isn't a break _away_ from language wholesale, being Dynamic are breaks in static patterns, whether inorganic, bio, social, or intellectual.  Originality in language, like great poets attempt, are one kind of Dynamic Quality we should expect of language-users.

I've had a lot of different feelings about Pirsig's formula about the contradictory nature of metaphysics.  But with ineffability, I wrote a couple posts about DQ, language and Pirsig that suggest some thoughts: http://pirsigaffliction.blogspot.com/2006/04/language-som-and-pathos-of-distance.html and http://pirsigaffliction.blogspot.com/2006/04/dynamic-quality-as-pre-intellectual.html

Gav said:
life comes first.....i think that psychological nominalism or holistic
theories of language/culture are very useful given this caveat is
understood and heeded.
but maybe i am missing something?

Matt:
I don't know.  My thought tends to run, "How could life not come first?  Life is everything."  As I understand Dewey, his notion of indirect experience was reflective experience, but _direct experience_ wasn't necessarily non-linguistic.  Abstract, reflective thinking pulls us out of "direct experience," but this is to say it pulls us out of our typical habits with which we approach the world.  People who live in their heads live in worlds constructed out of their imagination, an indirect world.  But people who write, read, or talk a lot aren't necessarily neglecting direct experience, in Dewey's sense.  We can easily acheive equillibrium in our lives (that old Greek chestnut about moderation).

Maybe we might think of my difference with DMB as follows: DMB thinks radical empiricism returns us to the scene of life, a counter to abstract philosophical sterilities.  I can empathize with the formulation, as the idea of pragmatism "returning us to the scene of life" is a formula I've used over and over in the stuff on my blog.  I have a certain fondness for the phrase.  But, what I think we should rather say in most cases, is that philosophy is abstract by nature--that's what it is--and returning to the scene of life is something that _people_ need to figure out how to do, not necessarily philosophies (why would we necessarily want theoretical physics to do so?).  Philosophy is Dewey's indirect experience--returning to life is knowing, as Wittgenstein put it, when to put philosophy down..

Ron:
Returning to the scene of life is what mathematicians and physicists have done. They think in
terms of using symbols and systems as models of experience, useful models only until a better one
is found, these models, often have a certain estetic, a beauty of simplicity and form. Pragmatism
and Radical empiricism came at a time when Quantum physics was being introduced, signaling
a change from positivism that dominated thought..

Philosophy may be syntatic game playing with logic to some, evidence of an ultimate reality,
or a method in which to follow in order to live a more comfortable life. Like the old Greek chesnut,
it's not what you use rather how one uses it. If one has the wisdom, Philosophy is returning to
the cutting edge of life experience in a productive system of way. A living philosophy. 

Matt:
To say that we should return _philosophy_ to the scene of life, I have sympathy with that, too.  But I also have a strong regard for the division of labor, and a suspicion that if we let a thousand flowers bloom, there's a good chance we might find one we like in a garden that we didn't plant.

That's what I take amateur philosophy to be--one of our major purposes is to steal other people's flowers and bring the ones we like, even if they were grown in a sterile hydroponic farm, back to the grubby garden we got going behind the house.  We shouldn't rip on the hydroponic farmers too much--without them, we wouldn't have gotten that flower and, hey, at the end of the day, they go back to their houses, too.

Ron:
I take amatuer philosophy to be gathering the seeds of others flowers, creating a garden of my
own and endeavor to learn the meaning they have for their gardener, some grow, some die.
My gardens, here at home, I like to think, are a collaboration.

It's all in how you take the term "philosophy" to mean. Philosophologically speaking.



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Hey Gav and Matt,

Gav said:
i like the holism idea in reln to language: language is def a holistic affair - a word doesn't make sense except in relation to all other words...the definitional train can go on for ever - an infinite overlapping circuit.

but we are in the static realm here surely. what of DQ? this is central to the MOQ and pirsig and radical empiricism. how does the self-sufficient holistic world of language deal with this...i don't get how, do you?

do you mean that we are entrapped within language when we talk of any
philosophy, metaphysical or otherwise? when we talk, think, fullstop?
if so i get this and agree.

Matt:
We're sort of in the static realm.  Remember when Pirsig says that only people can be Dynamic?  The way I understand Pirsig, we shouldn't use a spatial metaphor for static and Dynamic, and so avoid the question of when we're "in" which "realm." The trouble is that such a question sort of supposes that we can be all in one or the other, but Pirsig's reminder that only people can be Dynamic should, partly at least, remind us that you're only breaking some patterns when being Dynamic, not all of them (you're inorganic ones are usually fine).

The other thing is that I don't think we should think of language as an "entrapment."  There is a sense in which, once we become linguistic (once we become sapient as opposed to sentient), we can't go back, but there are other senses in which we shouldn't make too big a deal out of it (like occurent pictoral thoughts of sunrises--how linguistic is that?).