[MD] Trust in Philosophy

[Matt Kundert]

Anyone who cares about the social dynamics of philosophy,

Marsha said to Dave:
As I see it I'm only asking you to say what you mean.   I'm telling you 
that I don't know what you mean ...  and I'm asking you to say what 
you mean in your own words.   I really don't see how the 
reasonableness of that request can be denied. I can speak english, I 
know the language of philosophy to some extent.  I really don't see 
why it should be a problem for you to make your ideas clear to me.  
You're angry because I'm asking you to say what you mean, because 
I'm asking you to define the terms you use?  Isn't that just the most 
basic demand placed on anyone who wishes to communicate about 
anything?  I think so. And your apparently refusal is more than a little 
suspicious. I mean, it's hard to believe that you're really trying.

Matt:
Can I just say that if I had marked the above paragraph "DMB said to 
Matt:" people wouldn't have thought twice?  That Dave has been 
saying the same thing to me for years now?

I want to point this out to point out how important _trust_ is to any 
piece communication.  In this case, it is trust in the sincerity and 
earnestness of a Question or Response.  Dave does not trust that 
Marsha was being sincere or in earnest, and so took her to be trying 
to simply score rhetorical points by implying he's unclear or muddled.  
The devolution of trust between participants seems to me to be a 
regular pattern in the course of a participant's stay at the MD.  And 
trust is terribly difficult to repair.

My relationship to Dave can be taken as a good case history for how 
trust works and how differing perspectives function in it.  In my 
history with Dave, our trust has nearly completely evaporated.  I think 
I have tried as much as one can reasonably try to put the past behind 
at various stages and take Dave's comments and questions as sincere 
and in earnest and not simply part of some rhetorical game of scoring.  
Dave doesn't think I have, but the only way to tell who has tried harder 
to repair our relationship, me or Dave, would be to look back minutely 
at the evolution of our relationship.  In the MD Archives, we actually 
do have a track-record at our disposal, but who really has time for 
that kind of thing?  So both of us rest on our sense of the situation, 
which happens to vindicate whoever's perspective is taken.  I have no 
way to reconcile our perspectives, only a defense of why mine takes 
the form it does.  If anything at all, I am merely better at articulating 
the rhetorical parameters of our situation and, additionally, my 
position in those parameters.  But it does not eliminate or even 
attempt to contradict the direct, incorrigible sense that Dave has of 
being frustrated with me.

So these days, I now don't take Dave's questions or comments to be 
in particular earnest.  When Dave used to ask in the past, I'd explain 
as best I could.  And eventually the conversation would break down 
(for various reasons, some good, some bad).  Dave was always 
consistent: I never answered him directly.  I don't think this is true, 
but Dave was at least consistent in his perception of the situation.  
And so, when Dave recapitulates events, he likes to imply that I am 
unreasonable in my wearied refusal to explain myself anymore 
because I _have never_ explained myself successfully.  Of course, 
I _haven't_ had success at explaining myself, because here success 
is defined by Dave's ability to understand (which is merely 
convenient for his rhetorical case).  I resist as much as is possible 
the implication that Dave shares more of the responsibility in this 
particular communication-circuit than I do, though Dave does not 
resist much in implying that it is rather I who shares most of the 
responsibility.  

_Who_, in fact, does isn't even a good question if the conversation 
is ever to be renewed in earnest.  If ever I detected that Dave was 
in earnest in relationship to questions or comments he posed me, 
I would take them up in earnest as best I could.  (And whenever I 
do so reengage, it is because--against my better judgment--I sense 
this to be the case.)  But _saying_ one is in earnest does not _mean_ 
one is in earnest, and there is always the possibility that one lacks 
the social sense of being able to tell the difference.

My best, most up-to-date explanations to topics that interest Dave 
are on my website--
my Ode, which takes up Dewey and one of Dave's mentors, David 
Hildebrand:
http://pirsigaffliction.blogspot.com/2006/10/dewey-pirsig-rorty-or-how-i-convinced.html

my last interesting back and forth:
http://pirsigaffliction.blogspot.com/2010/01/discussion-with-dave-buchanan.html

my last attempt to articulate why I think Rorty's "linguistification" of 
pragmatism can be safely put together with the older-school "radical 
empiricism":
http://pirsigaffliction.blogspot.com/2009/04/quine-sellars-empiricism-and-linguistic.html

If one wanted to take up and press me on defending my particular 
brand of Pirsigianism, one would start there.  Anyone can, though no 
one needs to.

Matt