From: MATTHEW PAUL KUNDERT (mpkundert@students.wisc.edu)
Date: Thu Oct 30 2003 - 01:02:53 GMT
Hey Paul,
Matt said:
Like I said before, if there are established reference points then you can weed out certain things that are obviously wrong. My reference points were Rorty's writings and I can quote him.
Paul said:
Fair enough. What qualifies as an "established reference point"? Is it the same thing as a "fact"? If we disagree about the meaning of a piece of writing [as you and David M do], is the writing still an established reference point?
Matt:
Actually, yeah, in a pragmatist culture, where the fact/value dichotomy doesn't exist, one way to redescribe "facts" are as "established reference points." Now, as for a piece of writing, quoting Rorty would be an established reference point. The next step, interpreting meaning, is a little less established and more open. As for David and I, I'm not sure that we disagree yet about any particular piece of Rorty's writing (neither of us have gone back for any reference points), just about the general implications of his corpus.
The point of having the word "established" in there is to point out that all "reference points" are contingent and change according to communities of interpreters. When you come across a "fact" that you disagree with, you move behind the fact to a whole host of other facts and try and show that, arranging these other facts just so, the fact in question isn't so much a fact as it is wrong. This process is what Rorty calls recontextualization. Another thing we can call "facts" are "assumptions". When call something a "fact" we assume it is true through no argument. We don't argue about the fact that we should minimize cruelty done to other people. All the applicable persuasion has already been done.
Matt said:
And I'm not trying to establish Rorty's essence, just what he thinks about judging different cultures. If on this point he displays a stunning display of complexity and seeming contradiction, then perhaps interpretation of him would be a bit more up for grabs.
Paul said:
I thought that, as "authentic readings are pointless," that all reading is interpretation, and as such, is always up for grabs. It appears that, actually, authentic readings are possible, depending on the scope/purpose of the reading and on the simplicity and consistency of the writing.
Matt:
All reading is interpretation, but that does not mean it is always up for grabs. Again, it depends upon the standards and purposes of the audience with which you are in conversation with. A literary critic is going to have different standards and purposes when reading Pirsig then a historian. When a physicist is judging how fast a rock is moving, in a general sense he's doing the same thing a literary critic is doing, its just that in the physicist's community (the scientific community) there are strict rules and guidelines for telling whether the physicist is right or wrong.
I oppose "authenticity" and "essence" with "spirit". To take away a "spirit of the letter," I think, is to reconstitute the letter in a changed environment or context. Authenticity and essence are supposed to be unchanging no matter what context or environment, whereas the spirit will always depend on the reader and his context. Authenticity can be disconnected from essence, however. When this is done, we can be seen to be doing what a historian does: trying to reconstruct the meaning of a text given the context from where the text originated from. I've called this doing "biography" or "reading the text the way the author would have". When I see Rorty saying things like "authentic readings are pointless," I see him as saying that he's bored by them, he's looking for interesting things to be said about his favorite authors. They might be possible, but for a reader like Rorty, they just seem to not be worth much. For historians, on the other hand, maybe they are worth
more.
Paul said:
Does this mean that e.g. there is such a thing as a wrong [and by virtue of that, a right] reading of Pirsig? Furthermore, if you can be right or wrong about something, what decides?
Matt:
Sure. Nobody will agree that Pirsig discovered an old alchemy book called "Quality" that allows him to turn gold into hash brownies. But, I don't think the words "right" and "wrong" quite allow for the range that appears in the interpretation of a text. I would prefer "better" and "worse". The rightness or betterness of an interpretation is decided by a community of interpreters, of which the interpreter is apart of, and all in relation to the text. This is what Donald Davidson has called "triangulation," and Rorty calls "a suitable balance between respect for the opinions of one's fellows and respect for the stubbornness of sensation." ("Method, Social Science, and Social Hope")
Paul said:
In accord with the statement above [my attempt to persuade others that I'm right], I would have guessed that a pragmatist would say that "right" is only ever a compliment one pays one's own understanding or interpretation.
Matt:
Not a bad way of putting it. And then when enough people compliment the same interpretation as being "right" or "better," then it becomes more like a "standard interpretation" and begins being taught in textbooks and high school. That difference, between one person paying the interpretation the compliment and a whole community of people paying the interpretation the compliment, is the difference between "thinking you are right" and "being right". The reason pragmatists are generally thought to deny such a distinction is because pragmatists don't think it is a hard and fast distinction--like most distinctions under pragmatist guise, it operates on a continuum, between one person on the one hand and a number of people throughout history approaching infinity on the other. Pragmatists do this because they don't think "being right" means you will always be, and always have been, right.
Paul said:
Pragmatists don't make assumptions about "Reality." [Big R, meaning, as per Matt to Steve 13/10/03: Remember, pragmatists don't make assumptions about the way the world really is]
Pragmatists reject an appearance/reality distinction.
Pragmatists point out that all logical reasoning begins with assumptions.
When a pragmatist reasons logically, what does he/she make his/her assumptions about?
If it is not about Reality does that not mean that, as Reality is nevertheless being acknowledged, assumptions are being made about something "other" than Reality? Is this something "other" not then appearance [or similar term]?
Matt:
As soon as I read your first line, I had a strong feeling about what your concern was. Pragmatists don't make assumptions about big "R" Reality, which you correctly pulled from me as "the way the world really is". Your question is about what pragmatists are making assumptions about, if not Reality. Now, you've actually pulled out all the applicable stuff I need to unpack what I mean, so bravo to you on that. Pragmatists capitalize the "R" in "Reality" to differentiate it from "reality," that general stuff we experience, what's all around us. You get a big R Reality by making the appearance/reality split. What the split means is that some of the stuff we experience is "appearance" and some of it "Reality" (the reason why I nor Rorty capitalize the "reality" in the "appearance/reality" split is because when "reality" is opposed "appearance" it already receives the distinctiveness it needs, whereas when we just have the word "reality" hanging about, we use the big R for a
quick and easy differentiation). When we don't make the distinction, none of our experience is either closer or farther away from Reality--its all just reality. Distance becomes a poor metaphor (so does "mediation" for that matter).
So, pragmatists make assumptions about reality, not Reality. It may seem to be splitting hairs, but I think its quite the opposite. When we drop the dichotomy that gives us Platonic metaphysics, we drop the entire tradition of trying to get our descriptions of reality closer and closer to the Correct Description of Reality. Pragmatists don't like this tradition because, for one reason, they have no idea how we would decide when we have a Correct Description of Reality. Locke pointed that out a long time ago and philosophers skeptical about the idea of metaphysics have been playing on that same theme ever since. Instead, pragmatists simply forward description of reality and whichever ones work better, we use.
Paul said:
As you've probably been through all of this before, Matt, I'm sorry to be a pain!
Matt:
Honestly, no worries. Unlike some of my other interlocuters, you seem to be genuine in your attempt to figure out what I keep going on and on about. I've never needed people to agree with me or pragmatism, but I can tell when people are trying to grasp it, whether or not they end up loving it or then trying to kill it. And I've been able to put a few ideas together that I haven't done before, so I think I've progressed a little, too, thanks to you.
Matt
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