[MD] DMB and Me

[Matt Kundert]

Steve said to DMB:
In [DMB's] view, if Matt wants to be an anti-Platonist but 
doesn't want to do radical empiricism, then he must not 
understand radical empiricism. Matt is willing to grant that 
he may not understand radical empiricism, but he thinks 
that even if he understood it, he still wouldn't necesarily 
want to use it since he already has ways of doing 
anti-Platonism. But you keep insisting that either he does 
radical empiricism or he is a Platonist in your book. Then 
Matt just shrugs and walks away. He knows that he is not 
a Platonist, but he also knows that you are no more 
interested in understanding his sort of anti-Platonism as he 
is in better understanding your radical empiricism.

Matt:
Let me augment two things to this account:

1) I think Dave is interested in understanding my "sort of 
anti-Platonism," the Rortyan neopragmatist sort, and this is 
why he's so frustrated with me for not being more 
conversable.  My trouble in conversing (which Dave doesn't 
appear to consider to be legitimate) are 1) time, 2) energy, 
3) understanding of the issues (I'm no longer reading this 
kind of stuff much) and 4) the problem of repetition.  

Dave brought up the frustration of having to repeat himself all 
the time, which is a sigh I have frequently with him, too, 
the only difference being that I must consider it more 
experientially, I guess--I don't just attribute it to stupidity 
or cotton in a person's ears (which is the only thing I can 
figure with all the deprecating remarks and parentheticals 
that often litter his posts to people, and not just me), so 
much as it might be a combination of any number of 
things I can't control, including my present ability to 
explain the things I'm saying in an accessible manner.  
That's my problem, and if I can't think of another way of 
expressing myself (because of, in part, 1, 2, and 3), then 
I "walk away."  We all make choices, and I get a little 
extra annoyed by the particular kinds of efforts that Dave 
makes to convince me to make a different choice.  (I can't 
tell, but I wonder sometimes about some of his 
descriptions of the situation, and whether or not they are 
entirely sincere, that perhaps some of them are flagrantly 
offbase--and he understands more than it appears--just 
to goad me into conversation.  Rorty-baiting, as it were.)

2) I would tone down "[Matt] knows that he is not a 
Platonist"--one of the things I've learned about philosophy 
is that it is a process, and particularly a process of 
articulation.  Anti-Platonism is not something you get over 
once, and then never look back, it is an ongoing pursuit, 
an ongoing vigilance.  The way I see it, most of my 
protestations about Platonism are reminders to me about 
why I wouldn't repeat what was just said/written because 
of X, Y, Z.  They are made public--like ZMM--in case 
others care about what I think about myself, and because 
of a marginal latent interest in helping the anti-Platonist 
cause.

Steve said to DMB:
I understand that you are comfortable with the paradox, 
but can you imagine that someone else could be less 
comfortable with paradox and choose not to say 
paradoxical things when it can be avoided? Do you think 
paradoxes are unavoidable?

Matt:
I'm reminded of something I wrote years ago, that began as 
an MD-conversation that I believe included my old friend 
Scott Roberts (who was also a paradox-monger):

"If you leave a paradox, you don't get to baptize it. You 
don't get to
say that that's just the way things are. You 
might say that leaving the
paradox makes things more 
flavorful, like in poetry, but then you're
not playing the 
game of philosophy anymore. Philosophers don't leave
the 
playing field with unresolved paradoxes. That means 
they've failed
in why they took to the field in the first 
place, to see how things
hang together. (One should note 
that in the above I've defined
philosophy in a certain way, 
which I've before suggested one shoudn't
do. What I don't 
think we should do is hypostatize any definition. We
should, 
though, define it for particular purposes, like seeing 
whether
two people are playing two different games, 
talking past each other.
Another way of putting my above 
implicit definitions is to say that
paradox-mongering is okay 
in the game of philosophy-as-poetry, but not
okay in 
philosophy-as-hanging-things-together-coherently.)"

>From the close of:
http://pirsigaffliction.blogspot.com/2006/04/dynamic-quality-as-pre-intellectual.html

If one reads "philosopher" as "writer of a system," I think 
you'll get the hang of what I was gesturing at.

DMB said:
His [Plato's?] demand for intelligibility from the Rhapsodes 
and other artists was also a way to denigrate the ineffable 
aspects of reality.

Steve said:
What demand for intelligibility?

Matt:
Right--this was the problem with the discussion imprinted 
on my website.  Dave made that claim about Rorty and me, 
and I wrinkled my nose because I was unclear what 
quadrant it came from.

My effort to not denigrate the "ineffable" (don't fear the 
scare quotes!) is contained in the effort to suggest 1) that 
"intelligibility" (like "meaning," as I impressed on Ron's 
vocabulary) is something that only makes sense within 
language and 2) to talk a lot about linguistic unintelligibility 
(like the Davidsonian notion of metaphor) and how it is the 
motor of progress.

Hey!  Just like DQ!

Steve said:
[Quality] is undefined because it is inexhaustably 
describable.

Matt:
This is awesome because it never occurred to me to gloss 
Quality's undefinition this way.  I've been glossing it as 
anti-essence for years, but this takes a big leap forward 
(at least in terms of integrating Pirsig and Rorty, which I 
don't require everyone to care about).  Way to go, Steve.

Matt
 		 	   		  
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