[MD] Philosophy and Abstraction

[david buchanan]

 Matt said:
Okay.  And as I said, this particular context is dialogue with not-Pirsig-themselves-Pirsigians, which means my anti-Platonic awareness is not tout court out of place, though I take it you think it leads me astray a lot.  

dmb says:
I don't know what you mean. The "context is dialogue with not-Pirsig-themselves-Pirsigians"? And more importantly, why does the "context" have to be anything more complicated that you talking to me? 

Matt said:
Think about it this way: you think that between you and I, in that particular context, I impede discussion between us about Pirsig's philosophy because I'm so anti-Platonically suspicious.

dmb says:
That's right.


Matt continued:
 ...However, part of the reason I'm suspicious of you (though not Pirsig) is because you wield the exact terms in question ("pure," "direct," "pre-intellectual") as your weapons against Rorty.  You want to explain their _substantive_ differences with reference to those terms.

dmb says:
That's right. The terms in question refer to the MOQ's central meaning and Rortyism has no equivalent concepts. The terms in question represent a very substantial difference between the two thinkers.   


Matt said:
If it were the case that we were all anti-Platonic buddies, then it is superficially the case that those terms should not be weapons against Rorty the anti-Platonist.


dmb says:
No, it simply doesn't follow. They can both be anti-Platonists or post-Metaphysical while also having substantial differences on other matters. I mean, Platonism and anti-Platonism is not what separates them. The terms in question are epistemological or empirical. That's where Pirsig and Rorty differ. 


Matt said:
..I haven't thought about what I'd say about substantive differences between Rorty and Pirsig in a while, as I've been more concerned with defending similarities, but what I generally think is that when you try to articulate what those substantive differences are, they don't sound right.  It might partly be because I don't understand Pirsig well enough, but the main conscious source is because I don't think you understand Rorty well enough.  As we both agree given the interpretive principle above, that would be a problem for formulating substantive differences. Maybe some particular, substantive difference is what's obscuring clarity.  But to me what that difference is is not yet at all clear.


dmb says:
I think you're being unfair. You're basically saying that I don't know enough to formulate the differences. That's a bit insulting and it's not very true either. Be a sport, eh?



Matt said:
...I think you're _wrongly_ using Rorty.  Whoever the "Rorty" is that you describe looks like a strawman filled with the popular, professional animus that academic philosophers have largely created.  He was a popular target for a long while (perhaps he still is), but it was rare in my experience for the targeting to have been done well.  My advice was to choose a different enemy because I think your fight with Rorty looks like shadowboxing.


dmb says:
You'd have to be a lot more specific if you want me to believe that. And again, it simply doesn't follow. Yes, Rorty has lots of enemies in academia. I've seen all kinds of pragmatists take aim at him and it hardly matters whether they're defending Pierce, James or Dewey. But mostly I'm just interested in your particular version of Rortyism and its relation to the MOQ. That probably makes you kinda squeamish, but it's not about what's popular in academia. I bring the pros just so you can't say I'm confused or making stuff up and I think it's downright silly for you to dismiss them. As far as I'm concerned it's just about your view of the MOQ. 
So anyway, if you think Seigfried - or me or anyone else - has attacked a straw man, I'd sincerely like to know what the genuine article is and how it differs from the straw version. 



Matt:
Well, how about this for starters: I recognize no distinction between "empirical" and "linguistic" as you use it here to catch a difference between Rorty and Pirsig/James.  I don't understand how Rorty is not empirical in the same way as they, partly because I do not understand how language is not empirical.

dmb says:
Well, I never said language in not empirical and I don't thing any part of their difference would hinge on that anyway. The question centers around Rorty's rejection of epistemology and his linguistic reasons for doing so. The distinction is between an having an Empiricism and not having an Empiricism. It's not subtle. 


Matt said:
As an example of an ambiguity in apprehension of Rorty that leads to the thought that he isn't empirical, take the passage from Seigfried you quote: "Therefore, in answer to what Rorty calls 'a bedrock metaphilosophical issue'; namely, whether one can 'ever appeal to nonlinguistic knowledge in philosophical argument,' the answer is an unambiguous 'yes' and 'no'."  Without fully apprehending the whole of her case, it does strike me that part of the distinct emphasis in what Rorty's point about this is is on "knowledge," not "nonlinguistic."  Rorty has tried to offer an alternative manner in understanding how the nonlinguistic impacts knowledge-claims, the relationship between the linguistic and the non-.  One needn't follow him, but I don't see how, if one properly understands the model Rorty was offering (in say, "Inquiry as Recontextualization" and "Non-Reductive Physicalism"), Rorty wouldn't fall on the side of pragmatists who "argue for warranted assertions" rather than the "nihilism and relativism" side that Seigfried appears to place him.



dmb says:
I honestly have no idea what you mean. 
Seigfried's point is simply that Rorty's answer to the post-Metaphysical question of truth is "conversation" and she thinks that position amounts to relativism. A lot of scholars say that about him and so do I. "What ties Dewey, Foucault, James and Nietzsche together", Rorty thinks, is "the sense that there is nothing deep down inside us except what we have put there ourselves, no criterion that we have not created in the course of creating a practice, no standard of rationality that is not an appeal to such a criteria, no rigorous argumentation that is not obedience to our own conventions." I think that's a pretty clear expression of relativism and I think he's wrong to characterize James this way. James held to a kind of perspectivism wherein truth only has meaning in relation to particular situations and our purposes within them, but he also insisted on experience as the crucial factor in truth making. I also take Rorty's statement as an articulation of the slogan that says it's language all the way down. If you think that's a straw man, please explain.