[MD] Taking Words Seriously

[david buchanan]

Matt said to Ian:
...Given the state of the MD (as I felt it) at the point at which I sent the post (recently), I felt like this was the thing to say. I.e. it seemed like, while not being contentious, we might be occasionally violating its strictures. For example, why didn't Dave say all of those neutral things about compassion and empathy in his expansion of the MoQ to Steve, and not me?  One answer might be because of how he perceives Steve as an interlocutor, and on the other hand how he perceives me. ...

dmb says:
Please feel free to reply even if my posts are specifically addressed to you. If I directed my comments about compassion and empathy at Steve rather than you, it's only because Steve has said many objectionable things about compassion and empathy, whereas you haven't said much at all. 

Steve looks up to you, you know? He calls on you when he gets in trouble. He gets upset to nearly the same degree when I criticize your view as when I criticize his. He has attached himself to you. I think of you two as Siamese twins, philosophically speaking. I'm not saying it's a match made in heaven, the poet and the accountant. But in this case (the free will debate) it seems you've decided not to get involved. In fact, I have no idea what you think about Pirsig's reformulation of the issue and your comments about the "state of the MD" are just too general to be helpful. 

My complaints about Steve's conversational behavior don't seem to be registering with anyone and your comments did not address them either. Since his behavior is, I think, outrageously and conspicuously awful, your (and everyone else's) silence on this matter is really quite baffling to me. Does anyone know what the hell he's talking about with this notion of free will behind free will? He says stuff like, "Sure we make choices but we're not free to choose our choices". Does anyone think that makes any sense at all? If so, maybe you can explain it to me. Maybe you can explain how there can be moral responsibility without human agency. That's Steve's claim, even though he's never once said how that could work. And the linkage between the two shows up in every dictionary and encyclopedia, but he denies it anyway. Do you think that defying all that for no apparent reason is a good way to conduct yourself in a conversation? It's okay to go meta but generalized abstractions are going to gloss over the concrete and actual conversational tactics. I mean, the guy with a spike in his foot is going to be far more interested in the particulars of his situation and if you start a conversation about pain and injury in general, he's going to feel that you're not really addressing his concrete concerns about very specific items. In that sense, such a movement to general seem like dismissal of the actual particulars. 

Despite that, I did respond to your general "lecture" in a general way. In general, I think we agree that term usage has to be understood in light of the context and purpose of that use.