[MD] brief tangent with Steve

[david buchanan]

dmb said:
I honestly don't know what the difference is between denying the slogan and refusing to use the slogan. I have the same problem understanding what you mean when you say "we don't want to deny radical empiricism, we just don't want to use it." I do not see any  difference.

Matt replied:
If we agree that differently composed sentences can mean the same thing (which one can find out through a process we've been calling "translation"), then to refuse without denying is to say "I recognize that these two sentences say the same thing, but I prefer to use one of them over the other."  The grounds of preference, then, exist to the side (as it were) of the ground upon which the two different sentences mean the same thing.   I take that to be nothing particularly contentious.


dmb says:
Oh, I see. When two sentences mean the same thing then the grounds of preferring one over the other are something other than their common meaning. But I'm still confused because this kind of preference for psychological nominalism over radical empiricism is predicated on the assertion that they mean the same thing. But that is the very thing in dispute. I don't see how a theory of language (verbal behaviorism) can be parallel to an empirical theory that centers around pre-verbal experience. And of course I've raised the issue of a translation problem because terms like "pre-verbal" stand for very different meanings. 


Matt continued:
What I mean then by not wanting "to use" radical empiricism is just that I don't feel the need to use the philosophical vocabulary supplied by radical empiricism to do philosophical work that I take another vocabulary also able to do. This is what the "parallel claim" is for: to establish that the two vocabularies "mean the same thing" over a particular ground.


dmb says:

Okay, but that's exactly what this debate is all about. I think there is nothing like radical empiricism in the vocabulary you prefer. I think the grounds for preferring one over the other are not at all off to the side. As I see, the difference is so substantial that using these linguistic theories instead of radical empiricism amounts to an evacuation of the central concepts.  

Matt said:
... the force of "it's language all the way down" is .. only pushed as a negative thesis against the enemy of Platonism, if there is no enemy, there is no more force on our part.  We aren't trying to say that you must use the slogan, only that you not be a Platonist.  That's why actively denying the slogan looks like actively denying anti-Platonism.  But, as you point out, that's just an appearance.  Likewise, however, is the appearance that we are posing a "false dilemma."  We, like you, just don't want people to be Platonists or SOMists anymore.

dmb says:
Right, I see the slogan as a negative thesis too. Its aim is to tell us what we can not have. It's says we cannot have pre-linguistic awareness as a basis for truth or knowledge. But I'm trying to say that radical empiricism centers around something that looks and sounds like everything negated by that thesis. Radical empiricism centers around the terms prohibited by the slogan but it uses them to stand for very different concepts. (The title of Seigfried's book is "William James's Radical Reconstruction of Philosophy" and Pirsig likes to think of his thesis as a Copernican revolution in philosophy.)

Matt said:
So: the issue has been, and still is, what radical empiricism does for you that a psychological nominalist vocabulary is unable to do .. and whether everyone needs to do it.

dmb says:
On that point, I think there is no contest. I think we agree that your preferred vocabulary is almost purely negative but radical empiricism is a positive program. This difference basically means that the psychological nominalist is not able to do anything that a radical empiricist can do. He just doesn't have those tools at all. 

Matt continued:
...For example, one uncontested thing the vocabulary of radical empiricism does better is "talk to," as it were, Pirsig, James, and Dewey's texts.  I take it that neither Steve nor I have any wish to argue about that. The link with the second half of the issue is whether everyone needs to "talk to" (i.e., read and assimilate to) Pirsig, James, and Dewey's texts.  My impression of how you've responded to issues, when stated like this, is that you will say "no, people don't need to 'talk to' their texts in that specific sense."  I take that to be an uncontested kind of claim, too, basically a "different strokes" approach.

dmb says:
Well, I'm not exactly sure what it would mean to say "everyone" needs to read and assimilate Pirsig's texts. As you obviously already know, reading Pirsig is the only requirement to be here and discussing those books is the purpose of this forum. I guess that would be one of the main reasons that I feel justified in insisting upon the use of Pirsig's central terms and in putting stress upon their meanings. I think it would be a bit absurd to be so insistent in some other context but also think it's a bit absurd not to in this particular context. That's why I find "Rorty's overbearing negativity towards Platonism to be at a certain point bad conversationally", as you said And it's not just that Rortyists "are not much fun to talk to if you want to do anything other than beat up Platonists", although that's probably true too. The problem is that it seems to preclude discussion of positive programs like the pragmatic theory of truth and radical empiricism


Ooops, gotta go. Later.