[MD] Taking words Seriously

[Matt Kundert]

Hey Dave,

This is backlogged stuff that I hadn't read because I wanted to give it 
time I haven't had much of.  There isn't anything philosophically 
interesting though, just more of our inability to talk to each other.

Matt said:
I think you've been reading me very poorly for a little while then, 
because my shift happened some time ago.  Perhaps you're confusing 
assertion that Pirsig _is_ a Platonist or whatever (indeed, if ever I 
actually did, which I'm not sure I'd concede) with attempting to 
understand how a piece of philosophy is or is not caught up in 
certain kinds of assumptions and consequences.  Call that 
disingenuous if you want, but it's a sensitivity I wished you had.

DMB said:
You are protesting way too much. 

Matt:
You're telling me--I shouldn't have to protest at all, which is why any 
of it looks like too much.

DMB said:
I don't know what "some time ago" means to you, but I can show you 
an example of what I'm complaining about, one that you posted this 
month and in this thread. You said to Steve, "I've always had difficulty 
seeing how the direct/indirect distinction doesn't reproduce the 
problems of the experience/reality distinction. " This is not a direct 
claim that the DQ/sq distinction simply is Platonism. It's more 
cautious and tentative than that, but it amounts to the same thing. 

Matt:
That's the sensitivity I'm talking about.  I do not think they at all 
"amount to the same thing."  These "difficulty" claims I have a habit 
of making (which is true, it's a rhetorical form I use a lot) are 
precisely not definitive claims about, in this case, X producing Y.  I 
use them because I've come to think that that's not how intellectual 
static patterns work.  Problems are things people run into, not 
concepts or metaphors.  Whereas in an earlier age (when I started 
writing at the MD) I began by parroting, e.g., the mantras that 
mirror imagery will lead inexorably to Platonism, I've come to think 
that the "inexorable" is exactly wrong.  I've come to see, over the 
years through my experience here, and reading other philosophers, 
and reading more Rorty, that the importance of the pragmatist 
slogan that "beliefs are habits of action" is that metaphors can 
create fly-bottles, but it is philosophers who fly in them.  Our 
concepts can create rice-traps, but its philosophers who stick their 
hands in.  And, in fact, careful handling of rice-traps and fly-bottles 
can successfully avoid traps.

One of the surprises for me was that _Rorty_, in fact, never even 
believed that concepts had _necessary_ consequences--all 
conceptual consequences are practical and experiential.  I had 
mis-appreciated the difficulty of what he was saying when I'd given 
off the impression that some metaphors and analogies are
 _inherently_ bad.  Nothing is inherently bad, I've come to learn 
(Dewey tells us this).

Again, I've come to realize that you'll just read this as disingenuous, 
but I'm trying to explain how, actually, my philosophical views impact 
the rhetorical forms I use to talk to people.  The "difficulty" claim 
you've cited is me thinking these things: 1) X has so often produced 
Y, that I find it hard to believe people can get X to do what they want 
without creating Y and 2) I'm not sure I could use X without 
producing Y.  But I do not what to say ahead of the experience of 
people working out the line of reasoning, including me, that it cannot 
be done.  The "difficulty" claim, while full of doubt, also says 3) the 
trick might be done, and perhaps done in a way that not only dispels 
my doubt, but makes me want to start using X myself.  In my recent 
posts, in fact, I've tried articulating--with some suggestions I've 
picked up from Steve--some notions of directness that I think work 
without Platonism.

DMB said:
And there are other recent examples. Maybe you don't call that a 
"stated case" and maybe you don't equate the appearance/reality 
distinction with Platonism, but this is what I'm talking about. You 
said that to Steve in this same thread about two weeks ago.

I really don't think it's paranoid to see deception here. It's not crazy 
to suspect that you're being less than honest. At the very least, you 
have to admit that the gap between your claim and the actual 
record raises certain questions.

Matt:
Yeah, if this is what you're talking about, then I'm not sure why you 
talk to me.  Because if I never follow through on an actual critique of 
Pirsig, then what could all this "difficulty"-stuff mean even from your 
perspective?  Just kicking up dirt?  But why?  You see me as pressing 
a critique, while disavowing it.  To what end?  Or, I'm pressing a 
critique while not putting up evidence.  Why not dismiss me?  Ah, 
because you feel obliged to fight Pirsig's enemies.  But there's the 
trouble, because if I don't view myself as an enemy, and as not 
pressing a critique, responses to you as such produce your feeling 
that I'm being dishonest.  But to what end?  Why would I be 
dishonest?

You might easily think, "How should I know?  You, Matt, are the crazy 
person being dishonest for no good reason."  But might I again 
suggest that these moments of supposed dishonesty are actually 
something else, that there's actually interpretations at your disposal 
that make me appear rational and as a decent human being.

God, I'm helping in a class on colonial/postcolonial literature, and 
one of our readings is Franz Fanon.  Fanon, a black 
French-Caribbean, is great for saying: why should I have to demand 
to be treated like a human being?  That's the Catch-22 people of 
color in the Europeanized world had to struggle with: it always looks 
like protesting too much when everyone should just be treating each 
other like human beings.

Matt