[MD] Krimel vs dmb

[david buchanan]

Krimel said to dmb:
.... Against all expectation they not only accepted my but invited me to come full time on a Graduate Fellowship. 

dmb says:
Congratulations and break a leg. You're going to have fun.

Krimel also said:
In the continuum of objective versus interpretive, the department is heavily skewed toward interpretative. In fact some the main people in the department have been key in developing the field of autoethnography which is a direct response to some of the kinds of criticisms of anthropology, or in this case sociology, that Pirsig levels in Lila. ...While I seriously doubt that emersion in this environment will ultimately make me more sympathetic to what I regard as your wooly headed analysis, who can say. I originally entered graduate school 30 years ago as something of a mystic and emerged as a behaviorist. Perhaps the reverse will happen at this late stage. I rather hope not but I think this should illustrate that with my deeds, if not so much with my words on this forum, I do try to remain open in my thinking.


dmb says:
I think your instincts are right on here. That environment will definitely make you more sympathetic to my "wooly-headed" analysis. I guarantee it. In fact, the difference between the objective approach and the interpretive approach is the difference between Modernism and Postmodernism. In a nutshell, that's what James and Pirsig are saying: that reality is fundamentally interpretive rather than objective. You will soon discover that this view is now so common among thinkers that the objective approach is considered to be quaint and old-fashioned. There are still some defenders of 'realism", but they have to defend it on completely different terms now. You're about to find out how wooly-headed Pirsig is not. You'll see what wooly-headed really looks like these days and then'll we'll have a laugh about how sensible pragmatism is. You'll see it for yourself.