[MD] in defence of the "relative"

[Matt Kundert]

Ron said:
I don't quite understand the hostility I seem to be getting 
Matt, If you'd rather not discuss this just say so, it seems 
to really irritate you. You're chock full of criticism but offer 
little in the way of your own thoughts on the subject.

Matt:
Yikes--I think there's been a large misunderstanding in 
my tone.  I honestly didn't think I was being hostile in 
tone, though I am hostile, if you will, to certain ideas.

Perhaps I just am unused to what kind of process you 
like to see in a conversation.  With Aristotle, I don't know 
what to say, so I said so, though the writerly concern is 
always the tone of it, so I apologize that it came out 
ambiguous.  I'm not sure what you'd have me honestly 
say to you on the subject.  You later say you detect a 
disinterest in hooking anything up to my own 
thought-processes and vocabularies, and you have a 
right to that estimation.  I don't think I am, but on the 
other hand I don't have awesome abilities of 
interpretation or all the time in the world to spend on 
things like this, so I triage my time.  (And it's not as if 
you'd been dropping 20 pages to ponder--they were 
bits and pieces, which are notoriously hard to pin 
correct, intended meaning to.)

With the "experience explains experience" thing, I 
thought I was honestly engaging your thoughts and I 
didn't think I was being hostile.  You offered an X, and I 
thought I was offering counter-considerations for the 
offering of X.

Ron said:
What I seem to be failing at expressing is that all we 
have is language in explaination, I speak of accuracy via 
experiential verification as more precise in meaning than 
more abstract comparisons and you get all ...Idunno 
prickly.

Matt:
Why is it prickly for someone to say, "I apologize, but I 
don't know what you mean here."

You're being precise, and quite concise, but precision 
doesn't guarantee you understanding.  I mean, for all 
the precision, I had no idea that you were expressing "all 
we have is language in explanation"--that seems entirely 
new to the conversation, more like something I would say, 
and antithetical to what I thought you were saying.  And 
you have thoughts on that, too:

Ron said:
Sorry if my questioning doesent follow your own ideas, 
but I'm asking for a dialog on the subject because I find 
it interesting and I'm hoping to learn something from 
you, but that seems to piss you off more. I'll not bother 
you with any more of my ideas since you seem to assume 
(talk about making asses of ourselves) you are quite sure 
of my intent with this line of thought.

Matt:
I thought I was offering a dialogue (though the role of 
"teacher" is one that I avoid).

If I knew your intent, then I'd much better understand 
what your pithy lines meant.  But I don't, which is part of 
what more dialogue is supposed to generate.  When I 
offer my "interpretations" of what I think you mean or 
are trying to say, part of the point of that is to say, 
"Here's what I think you're saying.  Correct me if I'm 
wrong.  But if you are saying this reconstruction, then 
here's what I think about that."  I don't know how else 
to carry on an intelligent dialogue with someone when 
using difficult sentences--assuming, I had thought, 
would have been to repeat your lines, then just go off on 
them.  And then, if I had assumed wrongly, you'd just 
have to repeat yourself, saying, "No, dumbass, that's not 
what I meant."  The reconstructed version of you is there 
so you can correct that version for me, it provides more 
fodder for us to understand each other.

That's my process of dialogue.  It doesn't always come 
out as obviously as stated, but that's the intention 
behind "it looks like you're trying to say."

Ron said:
How about unpacking a hardy "fuck you" as an 
explaination whose meaning would be expressed more 
accurately by a swift bitch slap.

Matt:
Really?  More accurately?

Do you really want to say that a non-linguistic, physical 
expression is always more accurate than its linguistic 
counterpart?

For one, that generates the demand that every linguistic 
phrase have a physical counterpart.  That's tough 
(though something like it has been tried in analytic 
philosophy).  

And two, from where I'm sitting a slap to the face has a 
_much different_ meaning than a "fuck you."  If we were 
having an argument (face to face), and you said, "fuck 
you!" I might respond with a similar verbal epithet.  If 
you hit me, I might respond by hitting you back.  The 
question for your analysis would be, if I hit you after you 
said "fuck you!", would you be wrong in supposing that I 
_raised_ the level of aggression and violence in the room?  
Would you be wrong in saying I had "misread" your "fuck 
you!" as a bitch slap and responded in a disproportionate, 
mismeasured fashion?  

Is a "fuck you!" inaccurate physical violence?  Should all 
verbal anger be replaced by physical violence, since it is, 
afterall, more accurate?  I don't want to deny the 
existence of so-called "fighting words" (legally considered 
proper physical instigators), but sometimes--I want to 
say--a fuck you is just a fuck you, and not more accurately 
something else.

Ron said:
I think this conversation is a fine example of what I mean, 
The more I try to explain what I mean the more irritated 
you seem to get, the more I try to explain the my meaning 
on the subject the more you claim not to understand me.

Matt:
This is bitchy: your sentence construction sucks.  

In the above, it doesn't get in the way of my 
understanding your meaning, but in the middle of dense 
philosophical statements, you might want to proofread 
and make sure all your clauses are clear.  I proofread 
everything I write because I don't want crappy syntax to 
get in the way of my audience's 
understanding--philosophy is hard enough as it is.

People can write any way they want.  Some people here 
practically write poetry.  Good for them.  But poetry takes 
an awful long time to unpack, and is terribly ambiguous.  
I don't write back to everyone constantly nagging on 
their mistakes and grammar fouls or demanding they 
write in a certain way, but I would think everyone 
reserves the right to think to themselves, "I--I just don't 
understand what's being written here."  Hell, some 
people apparently reserve the right to form a negative 
opinion about the content of the statement simply 
_because_ they don't understand it (the "plain spoken" 
crowd).  At least I don't do that.  But we all reserve the 
right to move on with our day.

And why should a stronger claim of non-understanding 
on my part not be a viable option?  The first time I go, 
"Eh, say again?"  The second time, "Er, I'm sorry, 
again?"  The third time, "I don't think I'm going to get it."

Shouldn't it be okay for someone to say honestly and 
without hostility, "I'm sorry, I'm not getting it, and I 
don't think I'm going to get it any time soon.  Let's work 
on something else."

Ron said:
"Language is humanity's tool in measuring our way 
through a panrelational reality,"  is exactly the sort of 
thing I'm trying to work out and explain but have a 
difficult time conveying

Matt:
See, I wouldn't have thought that.  From the things that 
went before, I wouldn't have thought that my statement 
would have scanned for you with your previous 
statements.  And with non-linguistic stuff more accurately 
expressing the meaning of linguistic stuff (which I take 
you to have been expressing above), I'm not sure how it 
does.

Matt
 		 	   		  
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