[MD] Taking Swords Erriously

[david buchanan]

Matt said to Ron:
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.


dmb says:
But Matt, you put yourself in the Rorty box and lately you've wrapped DQ in Rorty's slogan about truth being a compliment we pay to sentences. Your own words put you in that box and I've been saying you ought to get out. Except for your general declarations about how "obscure" my meaning has been, I haven't seen any response to the substance of these explanations. You don't even bother to say what it is that you don't understand. And since these explanations are dished up in my direct style while also being well supported by a variety of scholarly voices, your claims about their obscurity are hardly plausible. Sorry, but it really seems like a fake excuse to avoid what I'm saying. If you were genuinely perplexed, you'd be asking about the substance in particular ways, not issuing a blanket dismissal.




Matt said to Ron:
...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.  ..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.



dmb says:

I have lacked the "internal diagnostic" of your position and you want to refrain from "external diagnostics"? You'd have to explain how that vocabulary works because I honestly have no idea what you're talking about. 

But let me restate the substance of the matter. Yes, I'm saying that you are misreading of the MOQ's central term and its central distinction along with it. I'll remind you that this line of reasoning began with our discussion of the various metaphors for DQ and I suggested that a proper understanding of DQ would result in a harmonious fit between all the various images and analogies. This is one of the ways in which your reading doesn't work. Since I've also used a range of scholarly voices and their various terms for DQ, your suggestion that it's just a matter of differing vocabulary is quite implausible. 


I explained how David Scott, by way of William James, says the same thing about the relation between static concepts and dynamic reality. Scott says that, "James’ ‘pure experience’ [DQ] is like the Zen Buddhist sense of a natural pre-conceptualising, pre-discriminatory setting, which Zen traditionally calls one’s ‘original face’ and which Suzuki calls ‘no-mind’ . I showed how we can talk about this same stuff in Dewey's terms too. We can say that Pirsig's "primary empirical reality" is the same as Dewey's "infinitely complex situational whole" or that Pirsig's "endless landscape of awareness" is the same as Granger's "unanalyzed totality of experience" and Northrop's  "undifferentiated aesthetic continuum". All these various ways of referring to Dynamic Quality are not just arbitrary labels, of course, they are DESCRIPTIVE terms. They tell you what DQ is NOT. (And it's NOT like a compliment paid to sentences in any respect.) Like I said, my purpose is not to dazzle you with my awesome philosophical vocabulary but to shine light on Pirsig's central term. We can get at the meaning poetically, by harmonizing the meaning of Pirsig's figurative speech, by reading the metaphors and analogies so that they all fit together. Or we can get at the meaning by harmonizing the technical terms from a half dozen philosophers, all of whom are some combination of pragmatist, radical empiricist and Buddhist. That's the other way in which your reading doesn't work (DQ as a blank page or as a placeholder, for example).

That's what you're calling opaque and obscure? Please be serious. I'd really like to know what could be more clear or more direct? What more could I possibly do to explain the exact nature of my accusation? If by "internal diagnostics" you want me to explore the details of your reasoning, that would require your cooperation because, of course, I can't read your mind. I can only know what you think and how you got there to the extent that you tell me. 



Ron said to Matt:
...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 replied:
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.


dmb says:
For whatever it's worth, I think you try way too hard to qualify everything. To accomplish this you end up with excessively complex sentences that refer to other complex sentences and these long chains are usually interrupted by several parenthetical qualifications. After all this whittling away, there's never much of a pay off. If asked to characterize the result of this style, I'd say it was cautious, elusive, stand-offish, and a bit condescending and pretentious too. I wish you were more inclined to be direct but nobody asked me and I don't think your style or my tastes are very relevant anyway.   


Matt continued:
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.   ...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. 


dmb says:

I guess this would be a fairly typical example of what I was just saying about your style. It strikes as an elusive and condescending thought-maze. It begins by praising directness but it very quickly turns in the opposite direction. Being direct doesn't help, you say, because I'm shooting at the wrong target and I'm talking past you. Until we can talk, you say, it's a mistake to draw conclusions based on what you say. That doesn't strike you as ridiculous? You talk for ten years and I can't draw any conclusions from that? That's totally preposterous and you know it. And if I draw (or anyone else draws) the wrong conclusion, you can try to fix that anytime you like. Doing that would mean an actual engagement with the substance of my complaint and so I very much wish you would try to make such corrections. Instead, you just insist that you don't understand. That's where I think you're pretending to understand less than you actually do. You pretended, for example, that you couldn't understand how your "blank page" or "placeholder" characterizations of DQ could possibly be at odds with DQ as "the source and substance of everything" or "the continuing stimulus which causes us to create the world". You're pretending the difference is only one of "vocabulary", as if there is no substantial difference in the meaning of these terms and images. That's not plausible, Matt. Not even close. You're telling me you can't "see" the difference between clean, white, emptiness and a booming, buzzing confusion? Nobody is that insensitive, especially not an aspiring literary critic. C'mon, a guy would have to be a total idiot to miss that difference - and you know it. Stop pretending to be daft.

Either you are willing to state your views clearly and directly or you are not. You are willing to seek understanding through conversation or you are not. I have been nothing but direct and forthcoming. You have been anything but that, so don't go looking for conversational bridges. Just step up and stop pretending that I'm being obscure and opaque. If anyone deserves those labels, it's you, Mr. Exterior diagnostic.