[MD] continental and analytic philosophy

[david buchanan]

Matt said to DmB:
...The rhetoric of error and confusion typically lends credence to the Platonic notion of demonstration, to notion of dialectic over rhetoric. Since there is no method of demonstration in the area, .., I think the rhetoric of error and confusion should be laid aside.  It is the kind of rhetoric the early analytics used, is it the kind of thing that gives professional philosophy a bad name, and it is the kind of thing I wish you didn't like about professional philosophy.

Ron replied:

Error and confusion have consequences in experience yet you seem to want to insist on arguing it from a forum of certain types of popular assumption. I think this is what Dave bases his critique on.



dmb says:

I think we have to talk about error and confusion but that has nothing to do with Plato or the things analytic philosophers used say. Since it would be so intellectually irresponsible to literally lay aside the notions of error and confusion, I guess you mean something else. Error is NOT a matter of weighing opinion against the absolute truth or the objective truth or Plato's truth. Here again I think you are bringing in the analytic critique of traditional empiricism, but this does not apply to radical empiricism nor to any of the claims I'm making. If it is true that you're confusing the two notions of "nonconceptual" and conflating the two kinds of empiricism, then error and confusion are just words that describe a particular situation. To correct these conceptual errors we only need to consult the texts in question to see how the descriptions line up with each other. We only need to consult easily checkable sources to ascertain the truth of the matter.


I'm trying to be reasonable but I have to tell you that this kind of response rubs me the wrong way. The rhetoric or error and confusion should be laid aside because the schools I'm arguing against once used it badly? How are the mistakes of early analytic philosophers relevant to whether or not you understand Pirsig? Sorry, but I think this is just a way to avoid the issue and I don't buy it.


  		 	   		  
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