[MD] Philosophy and Abstraction

[david buchanan]

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


dmb says:

There's nothing wrong with dissolving bad questions. What concerns me is your sincere and earnest attempt to avoid accidentally giving answers to old riddles. As I understand it, you're reading Pirsig's claims through the lens of Rorty's particular strain of anti-Platonism and anti-representationalism. By doing so the key terms are put into a different context, where they have a very different meaning. That particular recontextualization doesn't work because the meaning of the terms is dramatically altered in the process. Like I said, this is just a plain, old-fashioned mix up.
A Jamesian term like "pure experience" and a Pirsigian term like "primary empirical reality" comes to look like claims about "perfect correspondence" or some kind of direct realism. I think that Rorty's targets are positivism and traditional empiricism and they all subscribe to some version of SOM and he's right to tell them that they cannot have what they seek. James and Pirsig are also saying that traditional empiricists and the positivists cannot have the kind of truth or knowledge they think they can. They reject the correspondence theory and the metaphysical dualism underlying it and then go on to make claims involving terms like pure experience and direct experience. So I think this Rortian lens leads you to misread the alternative to the correspondence theory as if it were essentially re-assertion of the correspondence theory. The alternative to Platonism is taken as more Platonism.