[MD] Philosophy and Abstraction

[Matt Kundert]

Hey Dan,

Matt said:
Think about this way John: if you told someone that it was language 
all 
the way down, and they looked down at their feet and said they 
didn't 
see any language anywhere, they'd just articulated to you the 

sensitivity to context Steve and Rorty desire, and how the notion of 

"not language" still plays a role.

John said:
I'd say they'd also articulated a certain stubbornly obtuse evasion of 
sincere philosophical discussion, Matt.

Dan said:
I think Matt is pointing to context,., and attempting to show you, John, 
in a simple fashion, that not all reality can be reduced to language. 
So, "it" is not language all the way down. 

Matt:
I want to make my position clear with respect to any slogan that 
uses "all the way down," including Pirsig's variation of "analogues 
upon analogues upon analogues."

The reason, as I see it, why you are right, Dan, that "'it' is not 
language all the way down" is because "all reality" cannot be 
reduced to _anything_ in that way.  The fact that the point is being 
made about language is irrelevant in this case.  Because the sensitivity 
to context I'm pointing to needs to be extended to John and other "all 
the way down" sloganeers, too: when they are paying attention, their 
context is a narrowly defined context of philosophical debate (and, for 
their purposes, ignoring certain parts of common sense).  And in that 
context, their polemic against a non-linguistic reality that is a given 
compared to the clothing we dress it up in with language, is, I think, 
true.  This follows, for example, Wilfrid Sellars' attack on the Myth of 
the Given, which I sum up in "Quine, Sellars, Empiricism, and the 
Linguistic Turn" as "the idea that there is a bald experience given to 
our minds that we simply add the hairplugs of language to."

Samuel Johnson's stubbornness to Berkeley's idealism only becomes 
out of control if Johnson had remained stubborn in the face of 
Berkeley's more nuanced claim that "only an idea can represent 
another idea."  However, if Berkeley had remained stubborn with an 
"it's idea all the way down" slogan in front of the kicked rock, then 
we'd have good cause to think Johnson's stubbornness as winning 
the day.  It's all about sensitivity to context and knowing _when_ to 
be stubborn, for stubbornness is just another another word for 
"conviction," or "I believe this is true."  And why give up on true 
beliefs?  The trick is knowing how far the stubbornly held truth 
extends.

Matt