[MD] DMB and Me

[Matt Kundert]

Hi John,

Steve said:
This is the anti-intellectual bit in Pirsig's philosophy that I 
wish weren't there--as if we would all be better off if we 
just stopped thinking. As if language can take us further 
from or closer to reality.

John said:
There is that claim, but I don't think the point being made 
is that we should therefore stop, I think the point being 
made is regarding over-attachment to our verbal 
formulations - getting us out of our stucknessess.

Matt:
You provide a good opportunity to clarify the purposes 
behind Steve and I's dialogue with Pirsig.

This is the claim pragmatism (Rorty, Steve, and I) wants 
to make: because of the metaphors, analogies, and other 
linguistic choices James/Pirsig/whoever chooses to use in 
which to make their "point," the one "being made," it is 
difficult to tell sometimes whether there is an 
"anti-intellectual bit."  This is the point at which Dave steps 
in (and you're stepping in here at that same point) and 
suggests, with ample evidence, that that is not, however, 
what James/Pirsig/whoever _means_.  For Dave to make his 
point, there has to be a distinction, here, between the 
vehicle of a point and the point, between a sentence and 
the meaning of the sentence.

There is a long tradition in philosophy in which the vehicle 
of thought has been denigrated in the face of thought sans 
vehicle--sentence vs. meaning of sentence.  One version 
of the battle in this tradition is rhetoric (vehicle) vs. 
dialectic (thought).  The dialectical tradition has taught us 
that the vehicle of a sentence doesn't matter.  The 
rhetorical tradition counters that it is more complicated 
than that.

What Rorty, Steve, and I need to be clear about is that 
most of the time--almost all of that evidence--we can 
quite agree that Dave is getting the _meaning_ behind the 
vehicles right, and that there is not conflict between that 
meaning and good philosophy we should all want to 
promote.  This is what produces, for example, the desire in 
Rorty, Steve, and I to self-identify as pragmatists, as 
adherents of James and (for Steve and I) of Pirsig, rather 
than saying they were "wrong," or something.  We reserve 
our "wrongs" for the dialectical tradition.

However, Steve and I also follow Rorty in thinking that the 
_vehicles_ used by our forebears could stand to use some 
refurbishing.  Being in the rhetorical tradition, we agree with 
our forebears that the vehicle is a public item that can be 
picked up and misunderstood (hence, Pirsig's criticism of 
James's "capitalist" rhetoric) and that, while acknowledging 
what a beloved precursor _meant_ we might also suggest 
ways in which the point might be _better stated_.

So, Steve should be read as suggesting that Pirsig might 
better put his point ("getting us out of our stuckness") by 
_not_ using, e.g., the metaphor of language as a pirate, as 
something that "captures" something else.  Indeed, the 
ditching of that and the like metaphors--any metaphor that 
suggests distance between language and reality--is what 
leads us further into the rhetorical tradition and seeing that 
while we can in practice--and _need_ to in 
practice--distinguish between "vehicle" and "meaning," what 
we shouldn't do is reify into a theory of language, because 
it isn't as simple as all that: vehicles effect meaning.

Matt

p.s. I do a short bit about "language as a pirate" here:
http://pirsigaffliction.blogspot.com/2009/05/quote-of-day-4.html
 		 	   		  
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