[MD] Taking words Seriously

[MarshaV]

Greetings Matt,  

On Oct 17, 2011, at 7:59 PM, Matt Kundert wrote:

> 
> Hi Marsha,
> 
> Marsha said:
> I dismissed what I thought were _negative_ statements without 
> supporting arguments.  I can accept that they were your personal 
> opinion.  If you would like to present the standards by which one is 
> judged an adequate vs limited scholar and why RMP failed, please 
> do so.  If you would like to present standards by which an argument 
> is ultimately judged good or bad and why RMP presented a bad 
> argument, please do so.  If you would like to present any other 
> evidence, examples and explanation to support your claim please do 
> so.  And if you do address your argument to me, please write down to 
> my level.  Though I am often interested in what you might have to say, 
> I have never enjoyed or felt adequate to unpack your rhetoric.  
> 
> I can also see this type of labeling (good and bad) as reification, a 
> som habit; a som habit which I too often fall into myself.
> 
> Matt:
> What I find very curious about your angle of approach to what I said 
> is that it strikes me as the "som habit" par excellence when it comes 
> to argumentation.  And it can't be the "good" or "bad" labels 
> themselves, for aren't they just the labels we attach to our evaluative 
> connection to reality, which Pirsig says we couldn't get rid of if we 
> tried?  (Not the labels, the connection.)  The habit, I think, is rather 
> preconceiving the area in which the labels get deployed as being 
> static, which I don't do.  Kicking that habit would involve seeing the 
> conversational space that arguments are deployed in as a fluid area 
> in which it doesn't make any sense to ask about "ultimately judged 
> good or bad."  I was assuming no such grandiose and 
> impossible-to-approach standard in the background to what I said, so 
> I find it odd to have it requested.
> 
> I also do not, for reasons articulated in my "Pirsig Institutionalized" in 
> the Essay Forum, accept the transition between "without supporting 
> arguments" to "[just] personal opinion."  I take it, on the model of 
> "we _are_ our static patterns," that our personal identity (i.e. 
> whatever is called into being by "Matt Kundert" or "MarshaV") always 
> comes along with  arguments in its train (on Pirsig's analogy, in fact).  
> This is what "authority" or "expertise" or "intellectual reputation" are.  
> They are the necessary social latches to which specifically intellectual 
> patterns accrue so that we can do more than create long scrolls of 
> amassed data and argument-strings when we are trying to articulate 
> ourselves and communicate to each other.
> 
> I did not offer any evidence the first time around of whose example 
> divested Pirsig's argument of its veracity (i.e. that no one's seen 
> connections between Aristotle, Spinoza, and James before).  As 
> such, I was relying on my reputation.  One can, quite legitimately, ask 
> for more than just that.  But what I do think is a nasty SOM habit is 
> supposing that a "personal opinion," i.e. anything that does not come 
> with elaborate argumentative chains with mountains of evidence (I'm 
> being hyperbolic, clearly) is ignorable.  After all: what evidence did 
> Pirsig supply?  None, none at all.  You were taking him at his 
> authoritative word.  And that's what I matched against his.  That's 
> why I talked about your rhetoric of responding to me.  I have no idea 
> whether you really were just dismissing me--but that's the stance 
> your words told me you were taking.  You can dismiss me, but not, 
> it would seem to me, on the grounds you appeared to be.
> 
> So, what you were doing is saying, "Nah, I'll take Pirsig's expertise 
> over yours Matt."  That's a perfectly fair judgment, the kind we make 
> all the time in life when confronted with different persons saying 
> different things.  Given that I didn't offer any examples, that I didn't 
> do any research to solidify my point, that's a perfectly acceptable 
> response.  But what isn't, I think, is supposing that I was doing 
> something different in kind to what Pirsig had done in that passage.  
> If I had really cared about the point I was making, thought it was 
> important (which I don't really), I would have done research.  But 
> do we really need to do intensive research for every suspicion and 
> judgment we make in life?  Shouldn't we prioritize and give our time 
> to important things, rather than marginal, unimportant things?
> 
> But, even though it's not really a point I think it's all that important to 
> make, the second time around I offered Randall, who sits on my 
> shelf.  If one example is not enough to at least lend a creak of doubt 
> to Pirsig's grandiose rhetoric of "why has no one ever noticed," then 
> I'm not even sure what more research would do.  I don't have a 
> programmatic standard by which to judge good from bad scholars--I 
> do so by direct acquaintance, a dim apprehension, if you will, of 
> worth based on my experience in reading scholars.  I wouldn't ask 
> for anything else from a scholar working in the field who is _not_ 
> writing research on the subject, but is instead offering rather like 
> balancing comments and impressions based on their experience.  
> And "based on experience" is what accumulates and creates 
> "authority."
> 
> That's how I see it, at least.

Okay.


> 
> Matt
> 
> p.s.  I don't know how to write to you, specifically, Marsha, so I 
> apologize for the displeasure my style causes.  But we all deal 
> with that from each other, don't we?

I appreciate your effort.  



Marsha

 
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