From: Matt the Enraged Endorphin (mpkundert@students.wisc.edu)
Date: Tue Mar 04 2003 - 17:49:57 GMT
Matt, Platt,
A long while ago, I once said that Anthony McWatt was right to claim, in
his critique of John Beasley's essay "Understanding Quality," that there is
a difference between viewing the MoQ from a MoQ perspective and viewing it
from an SOM perspective. I would also go on to claim that there is a
difference between viewing SOM from an SOM perspective and viewing it from
a MoQ perspective. I don't think the two can be reasonably argued for, one
way or the other, because the shift is an entire shift in thinking, they
share too few premises in common for a reasonable debate to occur.
The same thing occurs when debating modern philosophy and post-modern
philosophy. The two share too few premises in common to be able to
adjudicate neutrally between the two, as Platt wishes to do. By
post-modern lights, Platt is hopelessly modern, caught in a timewarp that
began to see the beginning of the end with Hegel. By modern lights,
post-moderns like Matt and myself are hopelessly degenerate, caught in a
fad that began with Hegel. What somebody like Rorty argues is that one
can't decide between modern and post-modern vocabularies by using a modern
or a post-modern vocabulary. As soon as you switch, you beg the question
against the other. We can only point out therapeutic things to grasp onto
to make the switch seem less devastating. One such mode of therapy is
noting that paradox is the mother of intellectual progress. By
Aristotellian lights, Copernican astronomy is paradoxical. It goes against
the grain of too many assumptions and tenets of Aristotellian astronomy and
mechanics. But by Copernican lights, Aristotellian astronomy is
paradoxical. It just doesn't make sense to those of us who made the switch
from geocentrism to heliocentrism. What first seemed like paradox
eventually became conventional. And we consider it progress because we are
able to do and cope with more of the word because of that paradigm shift.
So, Platt will continue to note the self-referential paradoxes that arise
in post-modern philosophy, denouncing it as irrational and contradictory
and degenerate. And us post-moderns will continue to be unphased and
insouciant. We will shrug our shoulders and continue to claim, "Once
you've danced with contingency, you simply won't talk the way you talk."
Matt
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