[MD] DMB and Me

[Ian Glendinning]

Ha, I should have stopped at the simplification and "yes" and not
complicated or opined about "the problem".

Hoist with my own petard ... (like you) I wasn't being definitional
about which kind of intellect or values, but when I used the words
intellectual and academic, I was using them in the natural language
GOF-SOMist objective sense. Your sense of values - even intellectual
ones - is broad based when discussing "philosophical" things ... as
you say, you don't see biography and narrative as inferior to more
formal methods, just part of the whole picture - a tapestry we said
once before. More discursive.

I don't doubt Dave has any less broad-based sense of values in real
life, and clearly has rhetorical wit in spades when he chooses, but
when talking more formally about particular philosophies, he seems to
expect more formal objective logical rigour in his (and our) arguments
- a more academic expectation. His biggest criticism of me tends to
"incoherence" for example.

It was that aspect of the difference I considered ironic when our
subject is the MoQ.

PS that wasn't an argument designed to be sufficiently coherent to be
unpicked :-)
Ian

On Tue, Mar 16, 2010 at 8:52 PM, Matt Kundert
<pirsigaffliction at hotmail.com> wrote:
>
> Ian said:
> The problem being it's "the value of it" that Matt is
> concerned about, whereas Dave has a greater interest in
> articulating where it fits in academic philosophical argument.
> Matt confuses that issue by quoting academic philosophers
> and writers in attempting to express his concern
> intellectually - whereas his concern is not in fact intellectual.
> (Which I think is what Ron and John tried to say ?)
>
> Matt:
> Whereas I stoutly withhold judgment on whether or not I
> am confusing, I
> guess I don't see the distinction between
> "value of it" and
> "intellectual."  To use the kind of frame
> you are, I guess I would say
> that I am talking about
> intellectual value, just not the same exact
> kind as Dave.
> The difference, as I started putting it many years ago,
> is
> between doing biography and doing philosophy--the former
> cares about
> "what James did" and the latter about "what
> James can do for me."  To
> understand what "James" stands
> for in the second, "doing philosophy"
> statement, you need
> of course to understand some of the "doing
> biography."
> But your relationship to the biography is as Pirsig stated.
>
>
>
> "Academic," in what you say above, I think obscures
> another
> difference--the difference between "doing
> biography" and "doing
> professional philosophy."  Those two
> things are also different, the
> difference between "what
> James did" and "what James can do for a small
> conversation
> between people in Philosophy Departments."  This
> difference
> might roughly be called the difference between "doing
>
> history" and "doing philosophy."
>
>
>
> Where I might be confusing, in this sense, is that when I
> state what
> James does for me, I don't care when looking for
> support whether the
> people I quote were doing
> biography/history, professional philosophy,
> or philosophy.
>
>
>
> Or, perhaps, with respect to what Ron was saying (I think)
> about me
> always always being worried about Platonism and how
> annoying that is:
> what is confusing is that I have two eyes
> staring in two different
> directions--one on Platonism and one
> on me.  The problem is that
> Platonism turns
> into--sort of--professional philosophy (i.e. the
> conversation
> Plato began is [one branch of] the conversation now being
>
> continued by people in Philosophy Departments).  So it seems
> like I
> care and do not care about professional philosophy--the
> confusing part
> would not be this, but rather an unpredictability
> on my part in when
> and where I do care about it.
>
>
>
> I don't know how to rectify my unpredictability, but I'm not
> sure that
> my causing of confusion is systematic (even my
> unpredictability is not that unpredictable).  The attribution of
> a systematic
> cause for me saying weird things at weird times
> is the necessary step
> in "getting the hang of Matt," it's what
> one does to understand
> something/somebody.  So I certainly
> won't fault people for that,
> however I just reserve the right
> to input occasionally on what I think
> my "systematic cause" is
> (despite the fact that the first-person point
> of view does not
> certify by itself my estimation of myself as the right
> one), or
> at least the nearby one cause for things I just said.
>
>
>
> And how confusing is that.
>
>
>
> Matt
>
> p.s.  Pssst!  There's some hidden pragmatist philosophy in
> the last paragraph!  Who can name what it is?
>
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