[MD] Taking words Seriously

[Matt Kundert]

Hey Ron,

Matt said:
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.

Ron said:
Although that may be the case, it seems Daves fight is over different 
reasons. I think Steve and yourself have a particularly fine line of 
discussion going concerning Philosophy. However I feel Steve and 
Dave are talking past eachother and I think, to my reading, Steve 
knows what Dave is on about but is teasing him out semantically. 
just to fuk with him.

Matt:
Yeah, I think there's a lot of talking past.  I don't think Steve is just 
"fucking" with Dave, though.  The sense of getting fucked with is 
what Dave complained about with me, too.  But I just want to get on 
a communicative page we can agree is the same shape.  Dave calls 
that disingenuous, but what else am I to do?  I refuse to just 
assume, anymore, that I know what people are talking about.  And 
I want to refrain, as much as I can, such external diagnostics of a 
position, which is what Dave's chosen epithets for what I do to DQ 
are (that I make it "trivial, inert, and meaningless").  Those are 
conclusions to a train of thought that remains obscure to me.  
Clearly, I don't think I do this to DQ, but the line of reasoning 
wherein it is perspicuous as to which moves I make are claimed as 
evidence for these particular epithets, and how one would avoid 
them by making different moves, is opaque.  What Dave has lacked, 
and what I wish I could see, is the _internal_ diagnostic of my 
position.  The most I get is the feeling that because I don't use the 
same vocabulary to do philosophy as Pirsig or James or Dewey or 
whoever, I'm thereby getting them wrong.  But that just seems to 
me a bad understanding of how philosophy is in fact done.  And 
then I get blamed for not knowing how philosophy is done.  (More 
or less.)

Ron said:
The problem that you and Dave share is well beyond anything I could 
even suggest. Matt, you often take a rather complex read to uncover 
the subleties of your meaning whereas Dave is more direct. If 
anything I could add, this would be the primary distiction in your 
styles of discussion.

Matt:
I'm not sure I catch the difference.  If you're saying I write densely 
and precisely--such that I want to articulate to my reader that there 
is one thing I mean here and not a myriad of other possibilities--then 
yes, that's what I'm hoping I do.  It's not that I hope it takes people 
forever to figure out what the hell I'm saying, but I do hope that 
people paying attention get paid for the attention they've given.  But 
I'm not sure what the "more direct" side of the distinction is.  Being 
direct is great, but not when you haven't figured out where the 
target is that you're shooting at.  I think Dave gets the feeling like 
I'm trying to be a moving target (this being an illegitimate maneuver 
if you aren't also charting changes of opinion).  But I'm certainly not 
trying to do this, or be sophistical or anything.  And neither is Steve, 
for that matter.  There's just not a lot of trust that everyone's trying 
as much as they can to be on the up and up.

If there's a distinction between me and Dave, it's that he draws 
conclusions about me from these discussions, whereas I draw no 
conclusions about him.  Because if we _are_ talking past each other, 
it means we don't understand what the other is saying, the point 
and purpose behind it.  Until the communicative bridges can be 
built, it seems to me a mistake to draw any conclusions.  Until 
understanding can be built, the conclusion is "mu," not 1 or 0.

Matt