[MD] Side Note on "DQ"

[Matt Kundert]

Hi Ron, Dave,

Ron said:
I remember Steve and or Matt was pursuing something similar in the 
vein of "knowing" as intelligibility by direct aquaintance, as in 
recognition as remaining in the distinction of the static. I think they 
were attempting to make the arguement that in this regard the 
"pre-conceptual" is little more than a place holder for the primacy of 
the origin of understanding and I believe the focus was on what we 
mean generally, regardless of context, of what it means to "know" 
and how this fits in pragmatically with what we mean by the 
"pre-conceptual" in regard to how it functions within our system of 
the intellectual understanding of MoQ.

DMB said:
If Steve and Matt follow Rorty, then they would say that there is no 
such thing as pre-conceptual experience. The notion that DQ is a 
"place holder" or "a compliment we pay to sentences" are both ways 
of sweeping DQ under the rug or otherwise transforming it into 
something inert. I totally disagree with our resident Rortarians about 
this. Been telling Matt this his view eviscerates the MOQ - for several 
years now.

Matt:
I think I can regard Ron's summary as something I've been 
elaborating (and perhaps better than I had).  But in Dave's 
recapitulation, he doesn't capture what Ron intended to state: it 
should read

-----
The notion that "DQ" is a "place holder".
-----

For the distinction that is needed is between Dynamic Quality and the 
concept "Dynamic Quality," which is a distinction Ron went on partly 
to talk about.  I take it that further claims about rug-sweeping, 
inertia, and evisceration first have to calmly deal with the 
implications of that distinction in a conceptual account.

(With regards to Rorty, we'd only have to say that there's no such 
thing as "pre-conceptual knowledge," and that because the concept 
"knowledge" has been gerrymandered as a concept, in such 
accounts, to be coextensive with linguistic-conceptual capabilities, i.e 
knowing-that.  "Experience," on the other hand, is still free to play 
other roles, including elaboration of other, non-gerrymandered uses 
of "know," such as in "know-how" (which, on these Rortyan accounts, 
is prior to knowing-that).)

Matt