[MD] Taking words Seriously

[david buchanan]

Steve said to Matt:

...Ironically, the direct/indirect distinction that dmb is trying to use to push against us itself makes the so-called "out of touch with DQ" problem impossible or at least merely "secondary." If this problem is (as dmb must be saying) a problem with our concepts, it is merely a "secondary" problem. The problem of not being in touch with primary experience because of our lousy ideas can't be a problem for being in touch with primary experience since primary experience precedes all concepts. ...There can't be any problem in philosophy as fake as not being in touch with primary experience.

dmb says:
That's exactly wrong. It's interesting, which is nice. But the problem is only secondary in the sense that it's intellectual and static, but it certainly isn't unimportant. I mean, the problem is philosophical in the sense that our philosophies are serving life badly. Of all the things one might worry about, that's for real. The problem IS a result of "our lousy concepts". And the solution will naturally involve getting better concepts. The whole point of the MOQ, as Paul Turner explained so well, is to expand and improve rationality. The aim is a root expansion of rationality. That's WHY we care about DQ and why it's so central. It's the key to the expansion of our philosophies. 

"Squareness may be succinctly and yet thoroughly defined as an inability to see quality before it's been intellectually defined, that is, before it gets all chopped up into words. We have proved that quality, though undefined, exists. Its existence can be seen empirically in the classroom, and can be demonstrated logically by showing that a world without it cannot exist as we know it. What remains to be seen, the thing to be analyzed, is not quality, but those peculiar habits of thought called 'squareness' that sometime prevent us from seeing it.   Thus did he seek to turn the attack. The subject for analysis, the patient on the table, was no longer Quality, but analysis itself. Quality was healthy and in good shape. Analysis, however, seemed to have something wrong with it that prevented it from seeing the obvious." (ZAMM 218-9)