From: Matt Kundert (pirsigaffliction@hotmail.com)
Date: Wed Feb 02 2005 - 18:39:23 GMT
Hi Scott,
Scott said:
I realize that where you're unsure if we agree or not is because I have been
inconsistent in the vocabularies I use. In particular, I sometimes use a
vocabulary I don't really like just to make some point in a discussion that
is using that vocabulary. (Though I am also sometimes just plain
inconsistent.)
Matt:
I’m not sure that it has completely to do with the variances in the
vocabularies we are using (as I tried to allude to at the end of that last
post). I know exactly what you mean by using a vocabulary you dislike to
“make some point in a discussion that is using that vocabulary.” Often that
is what we have to do to show why we should drop that particular vocabulary.
I think your latest use of the “empirical vocabulary” (to call it that) is
entirely in point and I’m glad you did it (though I fumbled around with what
to call it and how to refer to your use of it). It makes perfect sense to
me and I hadn’t thought of it. The parts I’m unsure about are the ones
we’ve tangled on before, in the past, and I can’t remember where we’ve left
things (not to mention how we’ve changed since then).
And certainly we are all just plain inconsistent from time to time ;-)
So, here we go:
Matt said:
I think Sam and Scott are essentially right (though, predictably enough, I
think Scott's characterization of pragmatism is a little off).
Scott said:
You're probably right, but I'd like to know what you mean specifically.
Matt:
I was referring to your description of Rorty’s motivation for pragmatism.
You’ve said on occasion that it has to do with his “materialism” whereas I
see it as connected to his concern with epistemology. In PMN, Rorty
comments in Jamesian fashion that, once we adopt a pragmatic attitude
towards philosophy, the see-saw between materialism and dualism, or
materialism and idealism, or materialism and religion, is pointless. I see
him as not trying to clear the way for materialism, but in trying to clear
the way for whatever vocabulary we need for our particular purposes. His
enemy is not whatever is opposed to materialism, but reductionism, hence his
later self-description as a “non-reductive physicalist.” When we want to
predict and control our environment, we can be materialists. When we want
to give sense, meaning, and purpose to our lives, we can be other things
(religious, philosophical, literary, football fans, etc.).
For instance, you said, "the point (among others) of Rortian pragmatism
(more accurately, his materialism) is to get rid of the last traces of
religion in public discourse, and in particular, in philosophy." I would
maintain that, in philosophy, he wants to get rid of epistemological
controversy because, in his view, the only good thing lately to come out of
it is idea that it is pointless. In public discourse, however, his argument
is slightly different. He privatizes religion and philosophy, i.e. keeps it
out of policy battles on the Senate floor, because he doesn't see how people
of widely ranging and different religious and philosophical views would be
able to conduct an argument in an expedient manner using those kinds of
discourse. He doesn't want to _trvialize_ religion or philosophy, he wants
to make sure 1) we can get things done on the Senate floor and 2) that the
Senate stays out of the way when we decide how to give sense, meaning, and
purpose to our lives. Just one example is the "evolution controversy"
currently going on in various states in America. The government shouldn't
be legislating what science does (or what religion or philosophy or
literature does), but that is exactly what seems to be at stake.
Matt said:
However, there is another option for determining whether Quality is what
experience really is, and Scott comes close to suggesting it, though he
doesn't for an important reason. That option is the option Pirsig takes:
our critieria are its (philosophical) consequences. This, however, is a
pragmatist set of criteria: truth is what is good in the way of belief.
Scott said:
You're right that I didn't suggest it, but I think I have in the past, so
I'm wondering what my "important reason" is.
Matt:
Well, maybe I should’ve been more careful. It isn’t really your reason, but
my reason. I’m not sure what your reason was (outside of space
constraints), but the reason I was alluding to was my claim that a
pragmatist answer erodes the stability of the question. As I hoped to show
after that selection, because of the pragmatist answer, the original
question (“Is Quality what experience really is?”) is destroyed, or at least
relieved of any force or relevance.
Scott said:
I agree with Rorty's statement that you quoted a while back: "[philosophy
being] the greatest game of all precisely because it is the game of changing
the rules." [where is this from, BTW?] So philosophy in general proceeds by
coming up with new rules (new ways of using existing words, mainly) and then
seeing how one's understanding is improved, with no attempt to define
"improved" -- one just likes where one has gotten to in conceptual space.
Or is what I just said metaphilosophy, while when one does attempt to define
"improved", one has moved into philosophy proper? That is one thing I'd like
your take on, namely, where the boundary is between metaphilosophy and
philosophy. In particular, do you consider metaphilosophy to be, so to
speak, included within philosophy or not.
Matt:
Yeah, the meta-/philosophy distinction is trouble sometimes. There is no
general clear, definite line between the one and the other, but sometimes it
can help to deploy it. So when you ask if I consider metaphilosophy to be
included in philosophy, I would certainly answer yes. Part of philosophy is
clarifying what you are doing when you do philosophy (as one of the first
“Problems of Philosophy” they teach you about in Phil 101 is “What is
Philosophy?”). Stanley Cavell, a philosopher I admire, wrote in the late
60’s, during the time of “metaphilosophy’s” hey-day as a term, that he
didn’t see the point in the distinction. The way Rorty uses it, though, I
think retains some usefulness in keeping track of the conversation you are
having. (The essay that the Rorty quote comes from is from one of his first
essays, “Recent Metaphilosophy,” in 1961. Most of Rorty’s early essays were
about “metaphilosophy” or had metaphilosophical reflection in them. I think
it shows a lot of what his motivations were in philosophy reading them.)
I thought it might be useful to deploy because the main point I wanted to
clarify to people is that you, Sam, and I have several outstanding
disagreements that we’ve never come to terms on, but that doesn’t mean we
can’t come together on this criticism of received Pirsigian wisdom. When I
was constructing that passage I had to think a long time on where I wanted
to place our disagreements and agreements and I’m not sure I placed them
very well. It might be better the other way around.
So, as for what I take “metaphilosophy” to be, I think it’s where we decide
what it means to be “philosophical.” Metaphilosophy is about communicating
between philosophers of very different stripes. You start talking about the
assumptions with which you are using to do philosophy and then have a
conversation about those assumptions and whether they are any good. This
process can keep leading you further and further back, as the only way to
have a conversation is to have a working set of assumptions you aren’t
currently questioning, but it is the process of communication that is key.
Just keep the conversation going.
Scott said:
In particular, do you see the rejection of metaphysics as a
metaphilosophical move or a philosophical move?
Matt:
I’m not really sure, but I think it makes the most sense as a
metaphilosophical move. If we take metaphilosophy to be answering the
question of “What counts as philosophy?”, the pragmatist is saying that
Plato wrapped the bad appearance/reality distinction into the very core of
what it meant to be philosophical—getting past appearances to reality. The
pragmatist wants to rescind that move, unwrap philosophy from that
distinction.
Scott said:
For me, "experience" is pretty much another word for "consciousness", and
since that is what most intrigues me, I do not see experience as the basis
for collecting data on which I will philosophize, but as the thing on which
my inquiry is directed. And just to complicate things further, I think (that
is, the hypothesis I am working with is) that all experience is semiotic. As
to how I go about philosophizing, I think it is mostly a matter of working
on linguistic formulations. But in my case, I am seeking formulations that
flesh out the hypothesis, rather than working toward removing
pseudo-problems. In some cases the two overlap, though.
Matt:
I’m not sure what to do about the notion of “consciousness.” As far as I
can see the notion of “consciousness” is wrapped up in notions of a
Cartesian “mind.” And once you start trailing down that way, all sorts of
bullcrap arises (from my perspective, at least ;-). And this is where you
confuse me. I see “consciousness” as wrapped up with “mind” and so pretty
much floating in league with Cartesian dualisms and problems, but to say
that “experience is semiotic” is to put yourself in league with one of
Rorty’s heroes, Wilfrid Sellars: “all awareness is a linguistic affair.” To
say that philosophy is “mostly a matter of working on linguistic
formulations” is perfectly in line post-linguistic turn, but I’m not sure
how working on our linguistic formulations could say anything about your
working hypothesis, that experience is semiotic, how it could “flesh it
out.”
To see what I mean, I would take the difference between science and
philosophy. I would take an adequate description of doing science as taking
a hypothesis, constructing relevant experiments, and then gaining evidence
to prove your hypothesis. This I can see as “fleshing out.” But evidence
is exactly what we can’t have for philosophy (if I understand the line you
were taking before, that I was commenting on). If philosophy is about our
linguistic formulations, philosophy is all about ironing out the problems of
our linguistic formulations, what you call “pseudo-problems.” I not sure
that it is at all clear what relevant evidence would look like for a
philosophy. If philosophy is the game of changing the rules, than relevance
would be up for grabs much of the time between philosophers. Evidence is
something all parties can agree on, something that occurs in Kuhn’s “normal
science.” However, I think philosophy is largely a matter of shifting
patterns of discourse, which makes philosophy more like “paradigm shifts”
and in paradigm shifts the term “evidence” is out of place because nobody
can agree. In the broad metaphilosophical conversation where most of the
rules are up for grabs, I think focusing on our linguistic formulations is
exactly what is called for and the skill there is to smooth out problems as
they arise.
Scott said:
But I do see the need for two distinctions that have been called A/R
distinctions. One is in quantum physics, where one needs to be able to refer
to the unmeasured. The whole philosophical problem with QM is that we cannot
fit what is going on subatomically into the categories of sense phenomena.
Matt:
I’m not sure why we need an appearance/reality distinction to grasp quantum
physics. Why not just have a measured/unmeasured distinction? Part of why
I’m not sure is because I’ve never been able to understand what “the whole
philosophical problem with QM” is. I would think any problem with fitting
“what is going on subatomically into the categories of sense phenomena”
would go away once we stop basing knowledge on the metaphor of sight (and
sense generally).
Scott said:
The other distinction needed is in the philosophy of mysticism. Somehow one
needs to refer to the difference between "what it is like to be the Buddha"
and "what it is like to be me". To make this distinction, I would give up on
both appearance and reality, and I don't think that "illusion" works very
well either. Merrell-Wolff uses "absolute consciousness" versus "relative
consciousness", and I think one can go places with that, though not without
the logic of contradictory identity, in which the absolute is not other than
the relative, and the relative is not other than the absolute. Otherwise,
one ends up reifying the absolute, and one has an A/R distinction again, or
dualism.
Matt:
Well, I definitely see the historical roots of the appearance/reality
distinction in mysticism, but I’m not at all sure that we need a kind of
mysticism that banks on it. I think we can rehabilitate the notion of
“mysticism” sans appearance/reality distinction, or at least give sense to
it. For instance, your very nice distinction between “what it is like to be
the Buddha” and “what it is like to be me.” It definitely seems as though
we need that distinction for mysticism and its notions of enlightenment to
work. But the way you phrase it, “What it is like to be the Buddha,”
reminds me of an old, very influential paper by Thomas Nagel, “What is it
like to be a bat?” In Nagel’s view, there is something which it is like to
be a bat that goes beyond behavior. In the pragmatist view, we have no idea
what this something could be besides behavior. I think this is part of
Sam’s reconstruction of mysticism sans experience and based in a tradition.
A tradition would have ways of verifying a mystic, though I’m not sure what
these would be besides behavioral ways. And this leads to the difficult
problem (that I’m currently constructing) which we might call, “How do we
know she’s saying shibboleth?” How do we know she’s the real deal?
And to confess, I’ve never understood what the “logic of contradictory
identity” is or does.
Scott said:
I say "mystical experience" a lot because I don't want to get sidetracked
with qualifying it. I would like to have an X-out key to express that it
should be "under erasure". But, then, how does one refer to a time period in
someone's life about which they say "it was timeless", or in some way
indicate that it was completely out of the ordinary?
Matt:
I’m not sure if this last part was just a toss off, or if it had anything to
do with the stuff before, but I think it does in a way. Just as, following
Sam, I think mystics gain intelligibility only within a tradition, saying a
time period was “timeless” doesn’t raise any philosophical problems (as some
have claimed in the past) because it is embedded in a language game where
the rules of that particular language game tell you how to interpret the
meaning of the phrase. I think the same thing with mysticism and religion
and philosophy and everything else. They are all embedded in a context, or
a language, or a linguistic formulation, or social practices, or traditions,
or forms of life, or whatever else they’ve been called. I think your toss
off musing about the clash of “timelessness” with a specific (timely) event
is a good way into the view which Sam and I are promulgating.
Matt
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