[MD] in defence of the "relative"

[Matt Kundert]

Hi Ron,

Matt said:
But, if language-use is experiential, as Pirsig has to be 
committed to saying, then what does that mean for 
"experience verified with experience explains more than 
what can be said about it"?  If "experience" is the broad 
category out of which we can distinguish particular types 
of experience (e.g., inorganic or intellectual), then how 
can your statement make sense?

Ron said:
We are always dealing with generalities in understanding 
and agreements of the linguistic variety are more limited 
in explaination in matters of the verification of meaning.

Which has greater explaination? a linguistic explaination 
of a lit match burning my hand or a lit match actually 
burning my hand?

What would you say had the greater explanitory power, 
if you wanted to verify and agree about the experience 
of burning your hand with a lit match?

Matt:
"Agreements of the linguistic variety"?  How would we 
ever know an "agreement" if not for communication of a 
"linguistic variety"?  I don't particularly want to argue 
about a "linguistic bias" in presentations of communication 
(which tend to down-play other essential non-word 
elements to communication), but what could this phrase 
mean here?  

Clearly you take "the verification of meaning" to be more 
than linguistic by itself, of having other elements at the 
very least to it.  You go a bit further than this least, 
however, in seeming to suggest that a burning hand 
might explain by itself.  Explain what?  Looks like just a 
burning hand to me.  Aren't explanations typically in order 
after a question, which is a linguistic act?  This would at 
the very least make more blurry a simple separation of 
two different kinds of explanation, one linguistic and the 
other not.

It is very unclear to me what you mean by "explanation," 
and then too "verify" and "agreement."  If language 
wasn't involved, it is unclear to me how two people are 
going to explain, verify, or agree on any common 
experience they may or may not have because without 
language there will be very little communication.

You look like you're simply trying to articulate the idea 
that if you wanted to explain to someone else the 
experience you had of accidentally lighting your hand on 
fire, you might best do it by lighting _their_ hand on fire.  
Reproduce the excruciatingly private, non-linguistic 
experience, just like science suggests when it says that 
admissible data must be reproducible so it can be 
independently verified.  But is two lit hands an exchange 
of explanations?  The difficulty of explaining a personal 
experience (of what it feels like, for instance) is what 
produces the idea of "you have to experience it yourself," 
but how would you know if _their_ experience was the 
same as yours?  Do you just assume?  (When you 
assume you make an ass out of you and me...)  As far as 
I can tell, the only way to "compare" experiences, to 
explain them or agree about them, is to talk about them.  
Which is exactly what the scientists do with all of their 
data (which is why many philosophers of science these 
days talk about the "theory-ladenness" of experiential 
data).

Your above response about "explanation" and such is an 
interesting response to my suggestion of ambiguity in the 
term "experience" in your earlier formulation, what I think 
of as a slide in terminology that Pirsig tends to foster.  
But such a leveling of notions usually attached to 
language, like meaning and explanation, seems to me to 
just avoid the problems inherent in language, rather than 
facing them as the impetus seems to be.  The mantra of 
"language takes you away from experience" seems to 
me to simply produce bad understandings of language 
_and_ of experience.  Rather than helping us with the 
problem, it fosters bad ways of putting the two together.

Matt said:
With Aristotle and all that, I have to apologize, but I 
didn't realize we were talking about the meaning of 
"meaning" and I still don't have a real grasp on your 
thought-angle.

Ron said:
To try to make it more clear, it's the effort at gaining 
knowledge in the face of the realization that all is relative. 
The conclusion is meaning. Meaning gives measure to the 
relative.

Aristotle starts from the philosophical situation of 
relativism, That really suprised me. The metaphysics is 
an attempt at a theory of meaning. Go figure...smells like 
Pragmatism.

I'm uncovering this Matt, I wish to in no way, to elude to 
my being in the know of anything but the exploration of 
the paralells in our discussions as they relate to similar 
discussions by the ancient Greeks, my aim was to perhaps 
mark these paralells and point you at them so that you 
may help me to understand  Pragmatism, relativism and 
how they may fit with Pirsigs ideas. I'm merely throwing 
out how these topics may connect in some fashon. I get 
the feeling they relate but I do not have a clear 
explaination of these suspicions. So I'm hoping you'll help 
me work them out.

Matt:
I appreciate that you're still working things out, but I'm 
not sure I can be of any real use.  It appears to me that 
our two understandings of the Greeks are worked out in 
very different vocabularies and perspectives, which gives 
me a tenuous handle on what you think is going on in 
relationship to what I think is going on.  My 
understanding of Aristotle is generally lacking anyways, 
so I don't think I can really say much about the 
relationship between Aristotle (don't know much), 
relativism (never clear what it is), and pragmatism (only 
from a limited perspective).  The snippets you're 
throwing out probably do relate to pragmatism in a 
positive way, but I don't know how in any expansive 
kind of way.  For instance, your "Meaning gives measure 
to the relative" sounds great, but I don't know how it 
hooks up to anything in my vocabulary.  Aside from, 
"Language is humanity's tool in measuring our way 
through a panrelational reality," but it doesn't appear 
you'd be happy with that.

There's a book on Aristotle (called helpfully Aristotle) by 
John Herman Randall, Jr. that produces a portrait of 
Aristotle that is very congenial to pragmatism.  Randall 
was an excellent historian of philosophy, and was a 
student of Dewey's.  Perhaps that might help the 
rapprochement.

Matt
 		 	   		  
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