[MD] suspended in language

[MarshaV]

Matt,

What are you talking about?  What exactly do you want?  You sound like you
are lecturing about something that is relative to your interests, but
foreign to mine.    


Marsha   




-----Original Message-----
From: moq_discuss-bounces at lists.moqtalk.org
[mailto:moq_discuss-bounces at lists.moqtalk.org] On Behalf Of Matt Kundert
Sent: Thursday, November 05, 2009 3:41 PM
To: moq_discuss at moqtalk.org
Subject: Re: [MD] suspended in language


Hi Marsha, (Steve,)

Your response to Steve is an excellent case-in-point 
about what I meant by "grammar differences," Marsha.

Marsha said:
Thanks for the post, but I think you and dmb should 
update your rather naive understanding and reading list 
on the topic.  You've bought into the same assumptions 
that Plato would have wished you to. Somewhere in LILA 
RMP sees this is what Plato is up to, and Protagoras 
really is not.  Protagoras was not teaching absolute 
relativism or any type of 'whatever you please', and 
neither are modern relativists heading in that direction 
either.

Matt:
Steve, I believe, was attempting to enunciate the buy-in 
assumption that Plato "would have wished us to."  Steve 
calls this the absolute/relative distinction.  I think you are 
right to see Protagoras as "not teaching absolute 
relativism," what I called the scarecrow that Ian called 
"total relativism."  But Steve doesn't think Protagoras 
_was_ teaching absolute relativism--

Steve said:
Though Protagorus was pretty much reduced to a 
punching bag in Plato's dialogues, pragmatists may still 
like his slogan because it captures the notion that, unlike 
theists and rationalists, pragmatists are not looking for a 
great, non-human, ahistorical power to tell us right from 
wrong; however, pragmatists deny being relativists as 
well as absolutists.

Matt:
The _only_ reason Steve wants to deny relativism is 
because it (traditionally) stands in contrast to absolutism, 
and just as you agree Marsha ("I've never believed in an 
independent truth"), absolutism is the bugbear that 
needs to be disbelieved in.  Steve is suggesting the 
mantle "pragmatist" to remove the rhetorical stigma that 
will hang _conversationally_ around the necks of those 
who talk to real Platonists.  Steve's not being naive in 
talking about real attempts to change other people's 
opinions about X or Y, and the obstacles to doing so.  
And _that's_ the context in which his name-plate 
suggestion takes place.

As I see it, and this lies at the heart of my effort in this 
conversation, the dispute between you and Steve is an 
_internal_ dispute about the best way forward for the 
_common community_ both of you reside in.  Whereas 
it occasionally appears, Marsha, that you do not 
recognize Steve and yourself as in a common struggle 
against someone else (Platonism).  That's why, that 
while ago, I glossed briefly on the feeling of isolation 
in relativism.  I don't think you are alone as it 
sometimes appears you feel.

I think it's great that you've found an avenue of 
exploration in Margolis, Zilioli, and current philosophical 
trends--I don't think either Steve or I is suggesting that 
you not read X or Y.  But you do keep recurring to that 
trope when conversing with Steve and I: that we're 
suggesting what Peirce called a no-no, "blocking the road 
of inquiry."  That continued thought-pattern on your part 
keeps leading me to think that you have defenses up 
that I keep trying to quiet by saying, "Marsha--we're on 
your side."  _That's_ why I say, "Don't forget your 
friends with different tastes in grammar."

It's hard, when you've had your back up for so long, to 
see anyone but with those eyes.  I think that's what lies 
at the heart of whatever the continuing, hard-boiled 
controversy is between DMB and I.  It's what lied at the 
heart of the controversy between Booker T. Washington 
and W.E.B. DuBois--those were important times to 
determine the course blacks should take in claiming a 
humantiy that should never have been denied them.  I 
choose this analogy specifically because of the analogous 
choices in language that have, and continue, to face 
large, repressed segments like blacks, gays, and women.  
Part of the process of fighting back has always been 
choosing whether to "take back" some epithet or not.  
"Black is beautiful" was an important slogan for blacks 
early in the century, a reversal of a horrible connotation 
that reverberates through the literature of cultural fighters 
like Richard Wright, Ralph Ellison, and James Baldwin.  
Baldwin, in his essays, talks a lot about it, and I don't 
think he ever got over it personally, ever, deep down, 
thought he was beautiful.

"Nigger" and "faggot," as terror-epithets created by the 
oppressor, have somewhat divided fortunes as 
reclamations in the larger struggle for dignity.  Dan 
Savage, who for years tried reclaiming "faggot" for 
gays in his column Savage Love, eventually abandoned 
the avenue.  "Nigger" has well-known ambiguity of 
success in the black community, one angle of which was 
punched up during 30 Rock's first season in a dispute 
between the two main black characters, the street-raised 
comedian Tracey Jordan and the Harvard-educated 
comedy writer Toofer.  Tracey referred to Toofer 
(nicknamed because of his status on the writing staff, 
tradition holding that every staff needs at least one 
Harvard alumnus and one black) as "my nigga'," which 
greatly offended Toofer (who, in the black community, 
would politely be called an "oreo").  As they implored 
Toofer through the episode to see the epithet as a 
community-engendering term of endearment, it ends 
with Toofer finally returning the compliment to 
Tracey--the humor being that they bleeped the word 
when Toofer said it, everybody including Tracey reacting 
as if he violated their ears ("it just don't sound right 
when he says it").

I think of "relativist" as a similar terror-epithet in the 
philosophical community.  Some, like you Marsha, see 
value in trying to reclaim it.  Others, like Steve, don't.  
But you're in the same community, deciding the best 
way forward.  The important difference, in my analogy, 
between "relativist" on the one hand and "nigger" and 
"faggot" on the other is that the former has nearly none 
of the cultural consequence as the latter do.  "Relativist," 
relatively speaking, is almost only a concern for a small 
number of philosophical insiders, whereas the tensions 
over whether the community in question should use 
"nigger" and "faggot" has much more riding on it.  Even 
when neocon demagogues (like an Allan Bloom, in The 
Closing of the American Mind) use it as a term of 
derision, their audience only registers it minutely as a 
mirroring action--they don't know what it means and 
hardly know how to use it, so rarely parrot it themselves, 
considering it hardly has an effect on their opposition 
(liberals) most of whom, like them, hardly know what it is.

This, truly I think, is a rarefied dispute contentious for 
only a few, and the consequences of naming this 
community are significantly less than the new habits of 
thought engendered in the community, as these will be 
promulgated through all kinds of actions throughout our 
lives, almost none of which will come attached with, "Oh, 
I said/did this because I am a relativist/pragmatist, which 
is ...."  We'll just do and say these things, and the good 
effects--should they be generated--will reverberate 
outwards as people ignorant of their deliberated origins 
mimic the good patterns.

Matt

> From: valkyr at att.net
> To: moq_discuss at moqtalk.org
> Date: Thu, 5 Nov 2009 13:58:07 -0500
> Subject: Re: [MD] suspended in language
> 
> 
> Hi Steve,
> 
> Thanks for the post, but I think you and dmb should update your rather
naive
> understanding and reading list on the topic.  You've bought into the same
> assumptions that Plato would have wished you to. Somewhere in LILA RMP
sees
> this is what Plato is up to, and Protagoras really is not.  Protagoras was
> not teaching absolute relativism or any type of 'whatever you please', and
> neither are modern relativists heading in that direction either.  I see
some
> sort of relativism as the best way to make sense of conventional reality,
> which I see as a synonym to the static patterned world.     
> 
> I'm exploring perceptual relativism, epistemological relativism,
ontological
> relativism and ontological indeterminism, and there are a whole lot of
very
> up-to-date, interesting books on the topic.  I've never believed in an
> independent truth, so this seems right up my alley.  The Measure Doctrine
> "says something about the conditions of truth and knowledge, but it also
> takes open reference to the ontology of the world and it can also be read
as
> a maxim that says something about the nature of truth".(Zilioli)  You
> wouldn't ask me to bypass such delicious topics, would you?  So no to
> 'absolute relativism' and yes to further exploration into the topic.
There
> should be some tolerance for the diversity of knowledge and interest. 
> 
> Ever hear of the 'Cosmic Porridge' ontological view?  Robert Kirk's view
> extracted from Zilioli's book:
> "All that really exists [...] is an indeterminate something, and -- the
key
> component of the idea -- this something has no features of its own: the
> porridge is undifferentiated.  Instead, we somehow impose features on it
> [...].  On the one hand, something really exists 'out there', but on the
> other hand nothing else can be said about it which is objectively true
> [...].  Sticks and stones, atoms and electrons, stars and clouds are our
> construction in the strong sense that there is no more to existence than
the
> fact that we have imposed those particular concepts on the otherwise
> indeterminate stuff, the cosmic porridge itself."  Sounds most interesting
> to me, and I've only just scratched the surface.
> 
> 
> 
> Marsha
 		 	   		  
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