[MF] the way forward for MoQ discussion lists

[david buchanan]

Matt and all y'all:

>DMB said:
>...if Matt is talking then Rorty is the topic...
>
>Matt replied:
>That's just plain wrong and I can provide many examples.  (But the point of
>course wasn't factual efficacy, but something more like slander.)  ...

dmb says:
My aim was not factual efficacy or slander. I'm criticizing your pronounced 
tendency to discuss every topic in terms of a Rortian critique. Correct me 
if I'm wrong here, but have we ever had a conversation about anything that 
did NOT somehow involve same old bag of tricks? If there ever was such an 
exchange, then it would be the exception that proves the rule. Exhibit "A" 
is the conversation we've been having for months in the "Rhetoric" thread. I 
will take this opportunity to point out that we stopped talking about 
rhetoric a long time ago. Seems my efforts to steer the conversation back 
toward the original topic have been met with more of the same Rortian 
critque. Recontextualizations and vocabularies, the non-reductive reductions 
and everything except the mysticism of the sophists or the language that 
they used. Apparently, this is the jargon of your Rortian critique and its 
all you got. Finally, when pressed repeatedly, after a dozen weeks or so, 
you finally, admit that you don't really know about or care about the topic. 
Thanks for wasting my time, Mister one-trick pony.

I realize this criticism is unpleasant for you, but does that really make it 
slander? Please consider the possibility that I actually have a point here, 
will you?

Matt continued:
I think it is only the inability to distinguish between when a person is 
excavating their own thoughts from when they are excavating Pirsig's 
thoughts (the difference between philosophy and biography) that causes 
misguided "priests" or "purists" or "defenders" to balk whenever something 
other than Pirsig is brought up. I think a little sensitivity and agility in 
reading is all that is needed here, but there's not a lot the writer can do 
to facilitate such sensitivity.  Afterall, I can tell the difference between 
when you are talking about what Campbell or Wilber thinks and when you are 
talking about what Pirsig thinks, even when you go back and forth in the 
same post.  It boggles my mind that you can't make that distinction in other 
people.

dmb replies:
Maybe you could help me make this distinction? Maybe you could help me see 
why you think it matters, because this strikes me as a pretty good example 
of how this topic-switching process works. My charge is that you're always 
talking Rorty no matter what the topic is. But have you really addressed the 
charge? No. Instead you've quickly and vaguely changed the subject. Like a 
slight of hand card trick, you've switched the topic to something else, to 
making this distinction and my alleged inability to do so. But what's the 
point, except to obfuscate the original charge by changing the subject? If 
you're always talking in Rortyisms, does it matter who's thoughts you're 
"excavating". And if you're constantly changing the topic to so that it 
serves your project, does it really matter what I can and can't distinquish?

You are always talking Rorty or not. That's the question. Can I have a 
witness?

I guess this evasion by tangents tactic is pretty effective. Usually, after 
a person goes through all the trouble of addressing this or that tanget, the 
original point has been all but forgotten. This is how topics get switched. 
You almost have to be on guard against like we are toward drunk drivers. I'm 
sure the aim was to evade the criticism and the unpleasant feelings that go 
with facing criticism, to make it all hinge on something in the critic's 
corner and take the heat off the critee, but the effect is to corrupt the 
dialogue, to send it off in a direction that takes us farther and farther 
from the issue at hand.

Again, does Matt rarely deviate from talking Rorty, or not?

And more generally, do the pet peevers really rob the rest of us this way? 
Is there enough validity to the complaint that we should do something about 
it? That's the case I'm making here. This criticism is just one speciific 
example of the constant highjacking that goes on around here.

Thanks.
dmb

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