[MD] Taking Words Seriously

[Matt Kundert]

Hello Marsha,

Marsha said:
I am looking forward to your laundry list concerning DQ, and even 
more to your attempt to string them together into a logical syllogism.  
Add my Oxford quote if you like.

Matt:
I'm not sure why you're being facetious (as I take it you are being).  
For I'm not sure how such a project would cut against anything you 
are doing.  But, as I said, it was a project I long ago abandoned, 
though I've attached below as an appendix to this post the list found 
in a Draft to a post for the MD that I never sent (for the list is neither 
complete, nor completely researched: in no way finished nor 
defendable as it is; just what I found).

Marsha said:
I also resent your "groove on it" remark. I have an advanced degree, 
but I'm not trying to posture as an Academic.  I would think a GOOD 
motorcycle mechanic, or carpenter, or a musician, would be as 
welcome on this list as university students and university instructors.  
No one should be forced to speak academiceze.; well, only 
Chimpanzees.

Matt:
I take it you either didn't believe me or accept my attempt to suggest 
that I wasn't, in my remarks, suggesting that everyone "should be 
forced to speak academiceze."  I used "groove on it" because the 
phrase was in my mind, for some reason, as being in the air here as 
a translation of what it's like to follow Dynamic Quality.  I was using 
it as technical phrase, if you will, not as a mode of put-down.

If you don't believe me when I say I don't think people have to read a 
lick of professional philosophy to produce good amateur philosophy, 
then there's not much more to say.  If you take me to be merely 
posturing in front of an amateur crowd, then I wonder about my own 
intelligence, considering that such "posturing" has clearly never 
worked before, as--if I'm not mistaken--I'm almost universally 
regarded as the closest thing to an academic snob the MD has (or, at 
least, I might have the longest running tenure for being that).

If you believe I'm sincere, but unsuccessful in creating a via media 
position for being able to value professional and amateur philosophy 
equally without excluding the other, then I wonder where the fault 
line exists in the position I wish to take.  For I do, like you, want to 
say that amateur philosophers are not, ipso facto, "trying to posture 
as academics," or as I put it "merely bad academics."  It appears 
you think, against my explicit hopes, that I've implied that charge.  
I'm just not sure how.

Matt

Appendix (from Nov. 2005): 
Notes Towards a List of Uses of "Dynamic Quality"

1.  DQ as undefined 73
2.  DQ as pre-intellectual cutting edge of reality 114, 118, 133 (as 
primary empirical reality (76), as ultimate reality, as direct 
experience (73, 112-3))
3.  DQ as betterness 132, 139
4.  DQ as the good (as moral order (111, 133))
5.  DQ as telos 160
6.  DQ as noun
7.  DQ as change 131, 139, 165
8.  DQ as weird 113, 138, 164 (new 133, 135)
9.  DQ as virginity (as orgasm) 74
10.  DQ as genesis 137 (as universal source of things (88, 133))
12.  DQ as inexpressible
13.  DQ as pre-reflective
14.  DQ as Romantic Quality
15.  DQ as intuition
16.  DQ as freedom 133, 139 (as broken 136)
17.  DQ as holistic viewpoint
18.  DQ as perfection