From: Matt the Enraged Endorphin (mpkundert@students.wisc.edu)
Date: Wed Oct 16 2002 - 16:46:43 BST
Platt,
I think we're having some definition issues. You want to say that SOM is
our language. I do not. I really don't think Pirsig does either because,
otherwise, we can't really get rid of it, now can we? And I thought that
was why Pirsig was writing....
But, so as we don't get caught into a "No, you're in SOM" fight, maybe I
need to clarify:
I'm talking about the reality-appearance, inner-outer, and subject-object
distinctions. I want to call them SOM. You do not. Fine. Let's not call
them SOM. Let's call them the Platonic dualisms. I think part of Pirsig's
project was to shrug off these Platonic dualisms. I am saying that
sometimes it looks like he's failed and not crawled out from underneath them.
Oh, in clarification, the statement "Rorty suggests ... we discard the
mirror metaphor that says that "we" stand over here and "reality" stands
over there and that we must try and correspond correctly, mirror correctly,
reality using this third entity, language," is what Rorty's trying to
discard in its entirety. The "we must try..." is not what he suggests we
do "on the other hand," but a continuation of the mirror metaphor he wants
to get rid of.
PLATT: "Can you gives us a demonstration of discarding SOM vocabulary?"
Well, I can, but according to your definition it won't succeed because
anything we say is SOM (which I find, in itself, presupposing the question
of escaping the mirror metaphor). However, I will give an example of how
Rorty suggests we get out from under the Platonic dualisms. This is from a
post a short while back:
Rorty's pragmatism and antiessentialism hopes to alter this conception of
language [that we need to mirror reality]. He suggests we conceive of
language as a tool to deal with our causal pressures, just as a monkey
might use a stick to fish for ants to deal with his. He suggests that we
become post-Darwinian, that we view cultural evolution as continuous with
biological evolution. That the only difference between humans and the rest
of the animal kingdom is that we use a highly complex language to deal with
our causal pressures and other animals (so we know of) do not.
Rorty develops his Davidsonian picture of language like so:
"...Davidson tries to undermine the notion of languages as entities [read:
mediums between us and reality] by developing the notion of what he calls
"a passing theory" about the noises and inscriptions presently being
produced by a fellow human. Think of such a theory as part of a larger
"passing theory" about this person's total behavior--a set of guesses about
what she will do under what conditions. Such a theory is "passing" because
it must constantly be corrected to allow for mumbles, stumbles,
malapropisms, metaphors, tics, seizures, psychotic symptoms, egregious
stupidity, strokes of genius, and the like. To make things easier, imagine
that I am forming such a theory about the current behavior of a native of
an exotic culture into which I have unexpectedly parachuted. This strange
person, who presumably finds me equally strange, will simultaneously be
busy forming a theory about my behavior. If we ever succeed in
communicating easily and happily, it will be because her guesses about what
I am going to do next, including what noises I am going to make next, and
my own expectations about what I shall do or say under certain
circumstances, come more or less to coincide, and because the converse is
also true. She and I are coping with each other as we might cope with
mangoes or boa constrictors--we are trying not to be taken by surprise. To
say that we come to speak the same language is to say, as Davidson puts it,
that "we tend to converge on passing theories." Davidson's point is that
all "two people need, if they are to understand one another through speech,
is the ability to converge on passing theories from utterance to
utterance."" (from Contingency, Irony, and Solidarity)
This is one example of how Rorty wants to help us get out from under the
spectare of Platonic dualisms. Under this conception, I think you're
perfectly right to say "We are Quality" and "this accurately states the
omnipresence of Quality." This is exactly the point. The pragmatist way
of looking at things is holistic. It accepts these because there is no
difference between the inner and outer in any metaphysical sense. That we
use these in everyday language to distinguish ourselves from the mountain
lion charging at us is a useful tool. What I'm suggesting is that Pirsig's
use of the inner-outer distinction is tipping us off to the use of an
appearance-reality distinction that is metaphysical (if not his own usage
of inner-outer).
So when you say, "Our interpretation of Quality doesn't depend so much on
how we speak as on our static patterns, beginning at the inorganic level,
up through the biological (genetic), social (personal history) and
intellectual (cognitive skills). "Speaking" merely reflects the lens of
interpretation," I am going to claim you are speaking from under Platonic
dualisms. Your interpretation of the intellectual level as "cognitive
skill" and language as being this unfortunate lens we have to use is a fair
description of a mystic using the mirror metaphor. The pragmatist would
come back an offer an un-Platonic interpretation like this:
"Our interpretation of Quality [does] depend on how we speak as much as on
our static patterns, beginning at the inorganic level, up through the
biological (genetic), social (personal history), and intellectual
(language). "Speaking" refers to some of the tools with which we cope with
reality."
This is why I find taking the linguistic turn so important. We begin to
interpret the intellectual level as language, rather than some left over
from "mind" like cognitive skill. "Mind" as something man has and animals
do not is something that pragmatists suggest we get rid of because its
caused more problems than its dissolved.
Matt
MOQ.ORG - http://www.moq.org
Mail Archive - http://alt.venus.co.uk/hypermail/moq_discuss/
MD Queries - horse@darkstar.uk.net
To unsubscribe from moq_discuss follow the instructions at:
http://www.moq.org/md/subscribe.html
This archive was generated by hypermail 2.1.5 : Fri Nov 01 2002 - 10:37:58 GMT