[MD] Philosophy and Abstraction

[david buchanan]

Briefly....

Matt said to dmb:
You say, for example, it's a "translation problem," but I don't have a sense for the specifics of the particular translation problem.  What you say as a generalization, and quote from Seigfried, might be true.  But my sense is that it isn't true of, for example, Rorty, and it would be swinging in the dark to try to preemptorily defend Rorty or myself of a position that hasn't been explicitly criticized in any particular kind of way.  I don't know what your exact problem is, so how I can defend any particular position exactly?

dmb says:
Well, I'm asking you to look at some very specific ideas when translating guys like Sellars because he uses terms like "pre-conceptual" to mean something very different from the meaning intended by James or Pirsig. In this case, that one term refers to two completely different concepts. I'm saying you're right to reject the notion as Sellars uses it and I agree with that rejection for the same basic reasons. 

The pre-conceptual experience asserted by radical empiricism is not raw sense data and in fact radical empiricism rejects the metaphysical assumptions behind such a model of perception. James describes it in ordinary terms like sensation or feeling but it's important right now to point out that James used these terms very broadly, especially when talking about pure experience, this different notion of "pre-conceptual experience". In that case, feeling or sensation referred to all modes or awareness all at once so that it included thoughts, emotions, moods, attitudes, perceptions, sensations, feelings, etc. all at once. 

The reason they want to get at this cutting edge of experience is very different than the reasons for wanting to establish some kind of foundation on sense data. There is no pretense about getting at the world as it really is. It's about getting at the nature of experience as it actually is and they find something that the traditional empiricists overlooked. They both want to say that the "human serpent is over everything" but this is where they do it, from the bottom up. It's this cutting edge of experience that they want to integrate into our thinking and truth-making processes. The motorcycle mechanic and the scientist are both guided to select the right hypothesis or the quarterback finds the open man and throws before he has time to think about it deliberately. Without this initial, immediate sense of quality, researchers have found, a person can't even choose a breakfast cereal from the grocery store shelf. I mean, pure experience or DQ is a crucial but widely overlook phase of the overall cognitive process. Not to mention the widespread phenomenon known as the mystical experience and its relation to all the world's religions.  

Matt said:
Hey, you smell scientific materialism all over analytic philosophy.  I smell Platonism over a lot of the formulations of mysticism.  Both of us want to say that, for the most part, those smells are wafting from adjacent compartments to the ones we're actually interested in. 

dmb says:

I don't think that's fair. I only described Sellars and Rorty using the terms they use for themselves and those labels don't just "smell" like scientific materialism, they declare it quite openly. (Verbal behaviorism, non-reductive physicalism, eliminative materialism are terms they use. Again, these are not my cups of tea and I think that's a very different perspective but it's not slanderous to point this out.) Platonism, on the other hand, is explicitly attacked in all kinds of ways by Pirsig. He even goes after Plato personally, by name. 

Do you really think of these differences as "elusive smells"? It's not a black and white sort of thing, but its like the difference between musical genres. There are small differences like the one between Bakersfield country and Nashville country. Then there are big differences, like the one between Mozart and The Clash or jazz and polka. Different doesn't mean worse, although there is definitely some bad music and the various genres suit various temperaments and even differing demographic profiles. Philosophies are like that too. In this case we have one pragmatist who says the fundamental nature of reality is outside of language and another who says it's language all the way down. See, I don't quote Rorty's critic's to use "relativism" as mere slander. And it doesn't even matter if it's exactly true or not. That's the sense that I get from reading his texts and from reading about his text and relativism does not suit my tastes in philosophy. I think that relativism is a charge against which Pirsig and James have to be defended. And so temperament plays a role in our arguments. I can agree with many points, as in the case of Sellars, but it still makes me bristle. And I'm pretty sure that behaviorism and physicalism are the kinds of things Pirsig had in mind in his critique of scientific objectivity. These are all a part of putting the differences on display, both broadly and in specific terms.