[MD] continental and analytic philosophy
Matt Kundert
pirsigaffliction at hotmail.com
Wed Mar 10 18:05:01 PST 2010
DMB said:
Yes, of course you're allowed to have an opinion. And I'm
allowed to challenge that opinion, right?
Matt:
Yeah, but as usual, it's the _way_ you do it that seems
weird and silly. You say, "I really don't see how your claim
could be true," and this because you haven't seen anything
about it in the journals. "Could" is a problem of imagination,
or a problem of demonstration. In the latter sense, it not
being in the journals demonstrates that it isn't true. That's
silly. In the former sense, you can't figure out the idea and
how it could be true, and since I'm not willing to help at this
point by explaining myself further, it sems perfectly
reasonable to say that you don't know what I've not
unpacked well enough for you. My claim is opaque, and
since no clarity is coming from me, you move on.
It's perfectly fine to say, "Matt, you're full of shit," but
your reasons often seem unreasonable. This is the part of
our argument where you say, "Huh, it's unreasonable to ask
for reasons and arguments? Geez, whose unreasonable
now?" But still, I don't have any new reasons aside from
one's I've written in the past (like my "Ode to DMB"), and I
don't have energy/time to re-enter the nitty-gritty of the
playing field to develop new strategies of persuasion. I've
been removed from what little I knew about the debate for
over a year now, and really, longer than that. I can't keep
up because I'm working on different problems now. Nor was
I ever "up" on contemporary debates, for that matter. I
have no idea what people take seriously these days, what
the current fashions or trends are. I find Ralph Ellison and
Emerson a lot more interesting and useful for me than what's
going on in the Journal of Philosophy or Review of
Metaphysics, or whatever journals are hot these days. It's
perfectly legitimate to discount my opinion because I'm not
up to speed--that's every individual's call. Professional
philosophy is just not my bag.
About other people who "hold my opinion"--God, it would be
pretty sweet if I was original about this. But I've stolen
everything. I should clarify what "this claim about
experience and language" is, since even the way you stage
it seems odd, or at least could be misleading. The claim is
that the philosophical term "experience" functions in the
same role in, say, James and Dewey (but also Continentals
like Bergson) as the philosophical term "language" functions
in, say, Rorty, Sellars, and Quine (but also Continentals like
Derrida and Foucault). Pretty broad and sweeping, but I
don't think that original, and could be shown with the
requisite work (so I think).
Aside from Rorty, who I think I've stolen the idea from, try
Ian Hacking's Why Does Language Matter to Philosophy?
It's pretty much the potted story I tell in that one post.
And that's all I can think of off the top of my head. I truly
doubt my originality, but I'm not in the thick of a debate
and don't have my finger on the pulse of materials. If I
had to say, people started talking less and less about the
linguistic turn through the 80s and 90s partly because
people stopped seeing the move as significant (which is
part of my argument). They kept talking about semantics
and philosophy of language, but without the
metaphilosophical claims about how language was going to
replace experience. It's getting play nowadays because
people want to talk, I suspect, about something other
than semantics and philosophy of language, which means
they have to pick the metaphilosophical battles that were
just simply ignored as professors of philosophy for 30
years neither wanted to stop saying they were "analytic"
with a special method, nor wanted to go back to the
realism vs. idealism debate and "experience" as a
philosophical term (which they still vaguely remembered
unfondly from their youth). As these guys die and retire,
the new generation are finally picking up the baton of
James and Dewey that got ignored when "linguistic turn"
philosophers convinced everyone that they could avoid
silly metaphysical problems (like of the External World or
of Other Minds) better by talking about language and
logic. In the fury of new subdisciplines, the real fight
James and Dewey were fighting got lost, and realism vs.
idealism was simply transposed into realism vs. antirealism.
Now, my hope is that this "heated conversation" you're
talking about is at least in part metaphilosophical, about
what it is philosophers do when they do philosophy,
because it is at that level, I think, that James and Dewey
had the most to say, and it is at that level that the debate
between realism and idealism slowly fades for a more useful
philosophy. Because the way you talk, it makes it sound
like we are just re-doing the "bad metaphysical" debates
from the turn of the century, with Fans of the
Experience-Term now the realists and Fans of the
Language-Term the idealists Experience-Termers once were
(opposed to Fans of the Reality-Term that opposed them
100 years ago, a club that has died off).
My interest in philosophical debates is nearly only
metaphilosophical--that's the part that probably makes
you weirded out, because it looks like I've evacuated
"metaphysics." But in the notion of "metaphysics" typically
employed by people turning back the clock of the linguistic
turn, I don't see much disagreeable since the term has
been defined so largely (like, "how shit hangs together in
the widest possible sense"). In that sense of metaphysics,
I have a metaphysics. I still don't like talking about it much,
but mainly because my attachment to terms in the
hang-together realm isn't that great--I pick out whatever
helps me at the time.
Something occured to me though: how could there be a
heated conversation about the reality of an
experience-language gulf (the commonsense distinction I've
never denied, mind you) if no one is posing the other side
(e.g., there is no gulf)? People suit up for arguments when
they have somebody to argue _against_, right?
Matt
> From: dmbuchanan at hotmail.com
> To: moq_discuss at moqtalk.org
> Date: Wed, 10 Mar 2010 11:50:49 -0700
> Subject: Re: [MD] continental and analytic philosophy
>
>
> dmb said to Matt:
> To gloss over the difference between language and experience is a bit ham-handed. ... Given the heated conversations that are going on in the journals about this difference between experience and language, I really don't see how your claim could be true.
>
> Matt replied:
>
> Because philosophers disagree...? I didn't say I wasn't simplifying or hamily summing up my opinion. Am I not allowed my opinion, or to summarize my opinion without offering a dissertation on the subject? ...If you want to "see" how my "claim could be true," read Richard Rorty. You and everyone else is well-aware that I'm just stealing his stuff. If you want to reject Rorty because most people in "the journals" reject him, that's fine, but....
>
>
>
> dmb says:
>
> Yes, of course you're allowed to have an opinion. And I'm allowed to challenge that opinion, right?
>
> But I sincerely wonder if anyone shares your opinion. If there is any work out there that makes this claim about experience and language, I'd definitely like to know about it. Do you have a name or a title or anything like that? Part of the reason I'm so skeptical is simply that I've never seen such a thing. All the sources I've seen say the difference is not just real, but that it is seemingly irreconcilable. As far as I know, you're the only one who makes a claim to the contrary. If I'm wrong about that and you can show me that, I'd be grateful.
>
>
>
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