[MD] Philosophy and Abstraction

[Matt Kundert]

Hi Dave,

Matt said:
Well, that is the purpose of recontextualization.  ...always wading out 
onto ground you and not someone else has prepared. That's why 
Dave has for years said I've been indirect: because I used always to 
say variations of, "if I let you have these terms, I lose, so here are 
some new terms...."  The problem, as Dave notes with the cringe in 
his response in this thread, is that he feels the deck is stacked my 
way when I say stuff.  Naturally, of course, just as it is for him.

DMB said:
The framing is always negotiable, just like any other part of the 
argument. That's not a problem.

But IF you're just changing the subject because you might have to 
concede a point or two, well that's something different altogether. 
That's not kosher or legit, not one bit.

Matt:
Yes, that is a better way of stating the problem.  The problem has 
been that you perceive me as illegitimately dodging, whereas I haven't 
consciously ever thought myself to have done so.

However, you do go on to say something that sounds suspicious

DMB said:
I mean, IF my the meaning of my terms evaporate when they're 
"recontextualized", then the ideas have not been refined or qualified. 
They've simply been pushed off the table.

Matt:
I have a feeling this is directed to my use of Rorty's notorious notion 
of "changing the subject" as one purpose of the mode of 
recontextualization.  However, I would quote a bit of text from your 
paper on Rorty and James as explicating the only point Rorty ever 
wanted out of the slogan (a point I agree with):

>From "Clash of the Pragmatists":
The Radical Empiricism of James and Pirsig, by contrast is like Dewey’s 
empiricism. “No transcendental gaps are posited; we are of nature, 
live with nature” (Hildebrand 2003, 60). This has the magical effect of 
making some of the most serious problems of traditional epistemology 
disappear. It doesn’t give answers to old riddles. It simply dissolves the 
questions. “This obviates the need to argue for ‘access’ to reality by 
insisting that this access is something we find we already possess” 
(Hildebrand 2003, 154).

Matt:
"Avoiding old riddles by dissolving the questions" is what Rorty 
pugnaciously meant by "changing the subject" (which, given his 
understanding of what a "subject" is, is more like "changing the 
question").

The issue of exegesis aside (for you may very well disagree with me 
that that is what Rorty meant since you don't appear conscious of the 
fact that you are saying in the passage an agreeable version of a 
theoretical plank in Rorty's Wittgensteinianism), all I have ever 
perceived of my negotiations with the stated terms of others is that 
they were sincere and in earnest in the attempt to avoid accidentally 
giving answers to old riddles, and not an attempt to avoid losing when 
I had lost (as it were).  If I once did, I certainly no longer perceive the 
actual experience of philosophical dialogue like a wargame, even if it 
is still the handiest metaphor to describe conceptual dialectics (if you 
will).  The injection of that metaphor into the actual experience is, so 
it seems to me now, often the quickest way to dissolved trusts (for no 
longer are we "in this conversation together," like we are in life, but 
now we are opponents who must be vanquished, etc., etc.).

That's one of the sources of our maladjusted experience together: 
you perceive very clearly that there are points I must concede, 
whereas, for the life of me, I cannot formulate what these points are 
while sincerely agreeing that I either disagree with them (thus 
conceding points about, for example, Pirsig or Rorty exegesis I've 
gotten wrong) or that I once disagreed but now agree (the idea of 
using topic-change deceitfully to avoid having to _say_ that I've 
changed my mind, but I secretly have).  That's one reason why I feel 
left exhausted of things to say: I have no idea what could move the 
conversation forward for I have no idea what could make you 
argumentatively happy.  It's not about changing each other's mind, 
as you've often agreed, but lack of perceived common ground (despite 
the fact that we both sub/consciously know that we have _a lot_ of 
common ground) leaves a bad odor over all of our important 
sentences.

None of this has yet been about the conversational terrain at hand.  
I'd still like to be able to ponder a reply to that.

Matt