[MD] DMB and Me

[Matt Kundert]

DMB said:
You're conflating form and content.

Matt:
You're conflating "conflation" with "disagreement in 
vocabulary"--crazy, wacko' nihilio-pragmatists like Rorty 
follow Donald Davidson in thinking that the form/content 
distinction (which Davidson called "scheme and content") 
as used in the very context in which you tried to deploy it, 
is the "third and perhaps last dogma of empiricism," which is 
to say _traditional_ empiricism.

Now--you say you are not a traditional empiricist.  I believe 
that you think this.  I also believe James when he says it.  
That doesn't mean you are above examination, right?  Same 
goes for Rorty, Pirsig, me, anybody else.  Just 'cuz a person 
say it, don't mean it true.

Now--_that_ doesn't mean that you _are_ a traditional 
empiricist.  It just means that I'm pointing at the place 
where I become suspicious of backsliding, something I 
believe--since I think Platonism is like Bowser in Super 
Mario and will keep coming back every level you 
finish--everyone has to be aware of in themselves (and 
others).

Now--if you would like to say that radical empiricism 
_requires_ the use of the form/content distinction, then we 
have a problem.

Now--I think radical empiricism can do without it.  In fact, 
if I were being as contentious as you, I would begin saying 
you are attacking radical empiricism and rejecting Quality 
for thinking the form/content distinction (which Pirsig 
boggled at in the guise of the substance/method distinction 
in disciplines when confronting McKeon at the start of the 
Chicago episode) should come into play at that point.  But I 
won't, because that's lame.

Now--all I have are suspicions with short glosses on why I 
become suspicious.  I don't have the philosophical 
machinery to back them up.  But they are suspicions, not 
arguments or essays or books.  I would think "suspicion" is 
an acceptable gloss on something a person can have validly 
for the level of commitment they're willing to make.  Like, 
DQ--that vague feeling you get.  Argument is the static 
latching, which I'm not capable of.

Now--I don't know what kind of study regiment you are 
embarking on, but if you do take on the two sides of the 
attack on logical positivism (one retro-, one post-positivistic), 
I hope somebody suggests that Quine's "Two Dogmas of 
Empiricism," Sellars' "Empiricism and Philosophy of Mind" 
(where "myth of the given" comes from), and Davidson's "On 
the Very Idea of a Conceptual Scheme (where the "third 
dogma" bit comes from) be added to your reading list.  
Because I don't think one can appreciate what the difference 
is between the two sides without the players that made one 
of the sides happen.

Matt
 		 	   		  
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