[MD] All the way down

[Steven Peterson]

Hi DMB,


> Steve said:
>
> [B]  Language use is a process of relating things to other things, but language never bottoms out. The things that are being related by language are bits of language to other bits of language. Rather than knowledge being a matter of finding the proper correspondences between sentences and non-language, such linguistic relations go all the way down. The test of truth for a knowledge claim is then not correspondence with non-linguistic reality but the consequences of believing or disbelieving a claim. ... Does Pirsig agree with Rorty on [B]? The only way Pirsig could be right and Rorty wrong is if Pirsig denies [B].
>
>
> dmb says:
>
> Well, the problem is that [B] denies and asserts several different things. And you've framed the issue as if there were only two choices; either subscribe to the correspondence theory or say that it's language all the way down. This is a false dilemma and, as I understand it, the MOQ definitely asserts a non-linguistic reality.

Steve:
That's not at all how I frame the issue. No one needs to say, "it's
language all the way down" if they don't feel like it. I'm just
telling you what that phrase means to figure out why you could
possibly find it objectionable as Rorty uses it given Pirsig's
it's-analogues-all-the-way-down.

"Language all the way down" is a denial of the correspondence theory
of truth and a theory of language. It is NOT an assertion about the
nature of reality. The "It" in "it's language all the way down" is
"language." There is no denial of non-linguistic reality in Rorty's
philosophy. Rorty doesn't think that the nature of reality is even a
good topic of conversation. You'll never find Rorty saying that the
fundamental nature of reality is this or that or not this or not that
or part this and part that.

You can say that Rorty never addressed some important philosophical
problem (the fundamental nature of reality), but that is a different
argument than what you are trying to make which is that Rorty takes
the wrong side on an important philosophical argument.


DMB:
I think the picture of language as a web in which every term derives
its meaning by virtue of its relation to all the other terms and that
proper language use will necessarily involve relating these bits of
language to each other in some intelligible way. Pirsig might prefer
mythos or logos to describe this pile of evolved analogies, but it's
basically the same idea. BUT - and this is a very big BUT, even bigger
than your momma's but - Pirsig also says that this whole conceptual
reality was derived from an non-linguistic reality, which he calls
Quality or DQ or the primary empirical reality.
>
> As far as I know, there simply isn't anything comparable to that in Rorty or any other post-analytic pragmatist. And this is where they differ.

Steve:
I agree. Rorty never says that. They do differ. Of course they do. (To
you that fact seems to force the conclusion that Rorty is wrong on
anyway you point this out to.) But what you are reading as a denial of
the non-linguistic is a misreading of Rorty.

DMB:
I think it's a mistake to read Pirsig's claims about pre-conceptual
Quality as a relapse into Platonism or as falling back into SOM-based
traditional empiricism.

Steve:
I agree, but I have misgivings about using such language so that I
don't also get misread in that way.


DMB:
I think Pirsig and James use terms like pre-intellectual experience in
presenting the radical empiricists ALTERNATIVE to those dualisms. In
this picture, the relation between concepts and reality is never one
of correspondence. You can never use the primary empirical reality as
a foundation for any propositional sentence. It is never true or
false, not even in the pragmatic sense. It not that one is mere
appearance and the other is the real reality either. Instead, the
relation between concepts and reality is the relation between two
parts of experience. James used the same exact terms for these two
parts of experience; static and dynamic. This is the heart, the
central core of the MOQ.

Steve:
I agree. Of course the MOQ is not the same thing as Rorty's
pragmatism. I can't figure out why you think that you need to say that
to me. Yes, dynamic and static experience experience are terms in
Pirsig and James but not in Rorty. That's obvious. Now, the question
remains, what philosophical problems do these terms help Pirsig and
James deal with better than Rorty?

Best,
Steve