[MD] Are There Bad Questions?: Rorty

[david buchanan]

dmb said to Matt:
I read this all the way through this bad boy but I don't get it. It's not at all clear WHAT the bad questions are or WHY they're so bad. (I've learned that elsewhere.) Isn't it all just a little too meta and not enough meat? Or was it your point to not have point, a performance of Rortyism at it's finest?


Matt replied:
I was thinking about this response again, and it occurs to me how silly it is.  For one, the title clearly indicated what I was going to talk about: "are there bad questions?" not "what are the bad questions?" And secondly, why is asking the former question once in a while bad?  In fact, since what you disagree about most in Rorty seems not to be any of his negative conclusions, which you by and large agree with, but the _way_ he goes about them ,wouldn't all of your disagreements with him be "meta" with no "meat," too?  And since this is the level at which you disagree with Rorty, isn't it a good idea to actually discuss it.


dmb says:

Silly? I'm saying that your piece was empty and pointless. There is something about this meta-philosophical style that skates over the surface of things, that is devoid of substance or a point of view. And isn't rather undeniable and obvious that your title, by posing the question, promises an answer to that question?  Can you imagine a book titled "Are there bad roads?" that does not say where and what a bad road is? 


Matt said:
The what and why are usually what I talk about (usually with Rorty as my proxy), so I thought I'd do something different.  Steve has been handlying the what and why very well in contradistinction to your (mysterious) position, so I thought I'd ask a different question, a question about the position the Steve and I by and large seem to share, a question about the vocabulary we use to engage in philosophy just in case people were wondering about it.


dmb says:

Well, that's just it. I do not recall any good explanations of the what and the why. That's what I meant when I said your piece was all meta and no meat. And from my point of view, Steve has handled the substance of the issue quite badly and his position is wildly incoherent. I seriously doubt if anyone here understands what you mean by "vocabulary". I sincerely wonder if you know what it means. To examine the validity of your vocabulary, don't you need to specify the particulars? Don't we need to define the point and purpose, the work we're trying to get it to do before we can say anything about its validity and appropriateness? In the abstract, in the absence of a concrete context, such a discussion is simply meaningless. And that's what I'm saying about the way you do philosophy. It's full of emptiness. 


I'm not shouting, by way. I'm too bored to shout.


 		 	   		  
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