From: Matt the Enraged Endorphin (mpkundert@students.wisc.edu)
Date: Tue Nov 19 2002 - 21:42:07 GMT
Platt, Sam, Marco, Scott,
I've unfortunately been too busy lately to respond to points in a timely
fashion, particularly if the demand some depth. I'll have to be brief, but
hopefully explanatory.
Platt said:
Yes. Again, a non-linguistic "sense" or preconceptual awareness is an
"apprehension" rather than a linguistic-based, symbolic-dependent
"comprehension." I would argue, as does Mortimer Adler and other
philosophers, that such sense is a "special kind of knowing that
eschews all conceptual, linguistic ingredients."
Matt:
The argument between Platt and I is based on intuitions. Platt has an
intuition that there exists a "non-linguistic 'sense' or preconceptual
awareness" of a mind-independent reality. I have an intuition that we
can't get behind our language. Now, the question is: how do we adjudicate
between these two intuitions? Is mine wrong? Is Platt's wrong? The
realist position (that Platt represents for the moment) is that, yes, I'm
wrong. Because how could we have two different intuitions if we are both
directly hooked up to the same mind-independent reality? The pragmatist
position is that we both do have these intuitions, but intuitions do not
arise out of a "special kind of knowing," but rather from the
language-games we've been inculcated to, the culture we've grown up in, our
contingent biographies. The pragmatist tells us that we can change the
kind of intuitions we have by changing the types of metaphors we use,
changing the language games we play. She tells us that we don't have to
account for all our intuitions. Rather, we should suppress those
intuitions which are troublesome (like the one that tells us that there is
a reality "out there" that we can have a "special kind of knowingness" of).
The trouble with Platt's argument is that it begs the important question:
should we continue on with the appearance-reality distinction. Should we
continue on having intuitions of a real reality behind our language. Platt
argues like I don't understand what a pre-linguistic intuition is, or that
I must be pretty ignorant if I don't sense "That's a good dog" before
"That's Basset Hound." The dog example is probably the best
counter-example against Platt. I bet there are a lot of people that will
have the "That's a Basset Hound" intuition before they have the "That's a
good dog" intuition, or any number of other intuitions in any order in an
infinite number of combinations. If you argue that "That's a Basset Hound"
isn't an intuition and "That's a good dog" is, then you've lossed me
because I don't see the difference between the two (hence, our two
different intuitions from before).
So, I understand what you're saying, Platt, I just don't see the utility of it.
Matt
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