From: Wim Nusselder (wim.nusselder@antenna.nl)
Date: Tue Dec 10 2002 - 14:19:33 GMT
Dear Matt K.,
You maintain (30 Nov 2002 18:01:03 -0600) that a rehabilitated metaphysics
is not useful. We have other concepts enough to do its job. Therefore you
'leave metaphysics to mean a systemization using the appearance-reality
distinction.'
That's a respectable and clear position. I'll take that into account when
I'm corresponding with you.
You wrote:
'I must say, though, I would've never have guessed you to partake in the
Platt School of Inferences. The Platt School says that the more amusing
(infuriating?) an inference is, the more reason to say it, context be
damned. Sometimes you hit the mark, most of the time not, but hey, when its
funny, who cares, right?'
If I use that type of inferences, I don't think I ever do so ONLY to amuse
or infuriate, but also to make a point that I didn't manage to convey
otherwise.
You wrote 29/10 16:03 -0600 (and I agreed 30/11 0:20 +0100)
'in the historicist rendering of philosophy, questions are created by the
language we use. As such, they can be dissolved by changing our language'.
My point was that changing OUR language is not that easy. We depend on for
communication that keeps a specific group together. MoQ.org might not
survive if we try to change it into PoQ.org.
I don't understand you when you wrote:
'Seeing the foundation metaphor as "the relation between ^helping to
understand final vocabularies^ or ^dissolving questions created by language^
[on the one hand] and ^solving practical problems^ [on the other]," isn't
quite useful because it doesn't quite do justice to foundationalists who
think the metaphor is closer to what I said it was.'
Isn't 'using this metaphor for that relation is not useful' quite another
type of argument than 'using this metaphor for that relation doesn't do
justice to others using this metaphor for quite different relations'?
I still think that 'helping to understand final vocabularies' or 'dissolving
questions created by language' may be useful as a basis for 'solving
practical problems'. Simply because it facilitates communication and thus
co-operation and because with co-operation more practical problems can be
solved than without.
I agree that 'it doesn't really matter for the actual day-to-day workings of
normal science whether scientists eschew or don't eschew the
appearance-reality distinction'. It is only where normal science reaches its
limits (when trying to understand the very basis of reality or when trying
to understand phenomena that are too closely related to our partly illusory
self-understanding of being autonomously acting subjects) that eschewment of
the appearance-reality distinction becomes important.
With friendly greetings,
Wim
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