[MD] Rorty and Mysticism

[Matt Kundert]

DMB said:
Come on, Matt. Do you really think my present tone is so 
objectionable? Where is the ill-will in the post you're replying to? Isn't 
it more likely that old grudges are weighing things down? And even if 
my posts were dripping with profanity and abuse, they're still just 
words. I try to be sympathetic to these concerns, but I think I'm pretty 
good at using whatever tone is appropriate to the situation. Since I 
disagree with you, I use a disagreeable tone. Anything else seems like 
forced, fake pandering and I'm not going to do that. If that's a deal 
breaker for you then I just have to live with that.

Matt:
This is, apparently, another place we disagree.  For two people who 
have a history as ours, I do believe the licenses you take in tone are 
poorly chosen _if_ your primary goal was the respectful exchange of 
philosophical opinions.  It has led me to believe that you have a poor 
interpersonal sense--not a necessary prerequisite for good thinking, 
as you tirelessly point out, but probably for good conversations with 
strangers.  If you truly think that to not choose the tone you so often 
do would be to pander, and are not just scoring cheap (ironically 
Platonic) rhetorical points (which is what most people seem to think 
you enjoy doing most, which is why you are gaining a bad 
reputation), then I think you have a black and white view of the world 
of interpersonal situations, and would wish you more sensitivity in 
that arena.  You don't have to say "asshole" to behave like one.

DMB said:
I'd like to suggest that my "catty exhortations" ought not be dismissed 
as merely "catty". If memory serves I used the word "incorrigible" as 
part of a more sustained and substantial explanation of the problem 
and I was specifically saying that the problem was NOT with your 
intelligence.

Matt:
Let me try stating my point again: since you _say_ that the problem 
is not with my intelligence, yet I still (apparently) do not understand 
what you are going on about, then you are implying one of two things: 
1) that I _am_ too stupid or 2) that I am willfully not understanding.  
(1) comes about because you must at some point say that I am blind 
to what you are saying, a form of Pirsig's immune system/lens 
argument, but because the notion of communication means you have 
laid out in front of me all of the pertinent inferential connections that 
a person should need to understand, then that means I'm not a skilled 
enough negotiator of inferential connections to follow you, i.e. I'm not 
smart enough to understand you.  (1) is a consequence of your 
certainty that you are skilled enough at articulating these inferential 
paths so that the onus _must_ be on me (also partly a consequence 
of the apotheosis of the "plain style," a style that implies the user is 
being necessarily clear).

The generalized form of (1), the implied stupidity of others, is rarely 
an implication of my conversational style because I try to leave a lot 
of room for the possibility that 1) the thoughts I'm attempting to 
articulate are larger then the space I'm alotted (and so are 
incomplete, and therefore understandably obscure), 2) the thoughts 
I'm attempting to articulate are more complicated than I can handle, 
or 3) even if the thoughts aren't terribly complicated, I might yet be 
a poor communicator.  I try to evince a conversational manner in 
which the onus of understanding is not shifted entirely upon my 
interlocutor.  I hope my manner is something like, "I'm doing what I 
can, and I don't ask for anything more from my reader than what 
they can."  If the first of the three attempted implications of my 
manner seems arrogant ("Oooo, look at my ideas, they are _huge_"), 
then it's an arrogance I'm willing to risk, partly because I think all of 
the ideas that anyone is here handling are big and mighty, but partly 
because I think it's less misleading than promising that good ideas 
are simple, or than promising that the idea I just articulated should 
be perfectly clear to anyone.

(2), that I'm willfully not understanding what you are saying, implies 
a maliciousness on my part.  It should be obvious how this implies 
ill-will on your part.

Further, you often imply or say explicitly that I don't (or at some of 
your more extreme moments of cheap grandstanding, _have never_, 
covering your tracks as we might with "that I remember") explain 
myself, or this or that particular point.  Sometimes this maneuver is 
warranted, and I have been much less likely to explain myself to you 
lately, but that's only because I've tried so hard for years previously.  
And, I have littered around my website remnants of our 
conversations at
 just the point before they fall apart, or where I 
have tried to 
explicate some things you say I never do.  I have 
referred you to them 
before: what more do you want?  So what do 
you hope from this tactic except scoring cheap rhetorical points 
(which to me at least again implies ill-will)?  On top of the "you don't 
explain yourself" you mount the "you are unnecessarily obscure" 
complaint, but if the obscurity is all I have on these particular points, 
what, again, do you hope from the grandstanding?

DMB said:
This is the point that I really hope you won't dismiss: I think that bad 
lens is what keeps you from understanding pure experience as Pirsig 
means it. His central term become a form of Platonism in your 
Rortarian imagination.

Matt:
Let me say this as plainly as possible, because I'm not sure we've 
quite been communicating that well on this point: I think I can 
construe "pure experience" as Pirsig means it as a perfectly fine 
piece of non-Platonism.  Pirsig, for the most part, doesn't bother me.  
What bothers me most of the time is the use to which the phrase 
"pure experience" is put in other people's sentences.  This patten of 
bad (or at the very least obscure) usage leads to the creation of a 
category called "the rhetoric of purity"--it's not the concept of "pure 
experience," exactly, that is my concern, it is the notion of "purity" 
that people start thinking implies a lot of (what I think of as) bad 
notions.

This "criticism," if that's what you want to call it (I wouldn't), of the 
concept of "pure experience" is not terribly concrete: it's based, 
largely, on what people _can_ do with it, rather than something 
stronger like what the concept _must_ be.  But I don't have anything 
stronger up my sleeve (partly because I think it is rhetorical usage all 
the way down, as Pirsig does).  I've tried to explain to you how I 
understand Pirsig's concept, but you still think I'm missing something.  
I can't make out what that thing is: to me your explanations are 
either perfectly non-Platonic, or just more Platonic-baiting, more 
pieces of rhetoric that I think are risky when held by lesser hands.

One question that I've never understood is why I _need_ to describe 
one kind of experience as being "pure."  I've never understood why 
this certain slate of distinctions between one kind of experience and 
another is demanded as a necessary part of my philosophical 
equippage.  That's the question I've never received answers that 
I've found very satisfactory (from anybody).

DMB said:
It just seems like such a senseless tragedy that smart Pirsig fan who 
works in the academic world could misconstrue Quality the way you 
have. When I think of all the students you'll ever teach and all the 
writings you'll ever write... Seriously. I'm just sick about it.

Matt:
Seriously?  You think Steve will be a bad math teacher and I'll teach 
composition poorly because we don't really understand why we need 
to describe one kind of experience as "direct" or "pure" or 
"pre-intellectual"?

See--that is either a cheap rhetorical point, or a "Yikes.  Pirsig 
would've never have thought that."

Matt