[MD] Taking words Seriously

[Matt Kundert]

Hey Steve,

Steve said:
Ironically, the direct (preconceptual)/indirect (conceptual) 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 (and even the whole problem of SOM versus the 
MOQ) is merely a "secondary" problem.

Matt said:
Now, this is an interesting insight.  It seems to scan, too: even 
SOM-philosophers are able to have direct experience despite their 
inability to conceptualize it (properly, we might say).  This makes 
philosophy a kind of therapy (much like Wittgenstein envisioned), 
where one tries and get people to stop fussing with bad philosophical 
hang-ups.  Ultimately, one might say (meaning "primarily"), it doesn't 
matter what philosophy one holds in terms of one's ability to tune 
into the direct experience of one's life.  But if it _does_ get in the way, 
well--so says the therapeutic Pirsig--here's a way of not so getting 
hung up.

Steve said:
Right. The issue as I see it is that while dmb is trying to push against 
us with the notion of philosophy as getting in touch with life (he 
objects that we are failing to adequately do that), we see philosophy 
as concerned with making life better.

Matt:
I like both of those slogans, actually, and would wish to endorse both 
after a fashion, but I see that you are using "for getting in touch with 
life" as emblematic of the view Dave seems to be pressing against 
us, one you wish us to avoid.  "Getting in touch," you want to say, is 
the pseudo-problem that Pirsig correctly diagnoses in ZMM, in 
modern philosophical terms, the one bequeathed us when one 
accepts the root distinction between knowing-subject and 
object-known.  So why would Dave _want_ to press that (you 
further say)?

I am only further confused by Dave's responses to your attempts to 
unconfuse the problem we three would like to consider as our 
mutual post-Pirsigian-revolution problem.  (I think part of it might be 
that Dave can't countenance the idea that the two of us actually 
agree with him on some points.)  Once one gets rid of that 
pseudo-problem, however, is there a way of reconstruing the notion 
of "getting in touch with reality"?  The trick, I think, is to see all 
distinctions as retail, and not global.  "Getting in touch with reality" 
sounds global, but if you think of it as a retail problem, the question 
becomes: "what does 'reality' stand in for, and what is getting in 
between us?"  Dewey, I further think, gives us a good idea of how to 
construe "reality" for this purpose, as his notion of reflection makes it 
clear that _to reflect about X_ is to interpose something between the 
reflector and the X (in grammatical terms, the "about").  So reflection, 
inquiry, philosophy--these are all things that are not the X.  And 
"getting in touch" is getting back to just the X.  (I talk about this 
Deweyan notion of reflection in relationship to Pirsig here, a kind of 
diary entry about the scales falling from my eyes; the philosophy 
starts at paragraph 6: 
http://pirsigaffliction.blogspot.com/2007/03/notes-on-experience-dewey-and-pirsig.html)

So, as a way of reconstruing both notions of philosophy, I'd assimilate 
"for making life better" to 
Dewey and "for getting in touch with life" to 
Wittgenstein.  This makes 
the former something like philosophy as an 
aid to inquiry, or simply 
"philosophy as problem-solving."  The latter, 
on this model, would then 
be an extrapolation of Wittgenstein's 
dictum of knowing when to put 
philosophy down.  For, as we've 
learned through history (as the Rortyan 
reflex goes), some problems 
turn out to be built like sinkholes--once 
you get in, you don't come 
out, and certainly with nothing having been 
learned except to avoid 
sinkholes.  The two, then, are complementary as 
"making life better" 
is seen as a movement away from life, requiring an 
opposing 
practice to gird one's sensitivity to that fact (and this 
follows Dewey's 
model of life/reflection).  (It also has the additional 
benefit of 
explaining other problems like the relationship between 
political 
idealism and political realism.)

Matt

p.s.
To anyone who is curious about what I think about Steve and Dave's 
recent back-and-forth since I disappeared in the conversation, I tend 
to agree with Steve's approach.  I get more and more confused 
about what Dave thinks the further it goes on, which I know Dave 
thinks is disingenuous of me, but I just can't wrap my head around 
some of the claims he thinks I'm making.  Dave moves just too fast 
for me through what he thinks I think, that there's no time, nor real 
purpose for someone who has their mind made up, to try and go 
back over them all.  Dave's right that it is my reading of Rorty that 
likely makes me so disagreeable to him, but I've apparently climbed 
into a box that Dave sees no reason for ever letting me out of in his 
own mind.