From: MATTHEW PAUL KUNDERT (mpkundert@students.wisc.edu)
Date: Tue Feb 03 2004 - 21:14:36 GMT
Paul,
My apologies for sounding petulant. I was trying to simply sound exasperated. I have been around the block, but not all that longer than you, I think. My point was that we all understand the standard Pirsigian answers, I'm just trying to clarify what they actually mean. But, you are right, that takes more space than this simple interlocution and I would never expect anything less than a great, big, wonderful essay.
But no, I'm not bored by our conversation. Only sometimes, as I'm guessing everybody gets a little bored from time to time. If this were the 14th time I'd been through this with you, as I've been through some things with others here, then maybe. But things are still being said that, I think, are clarificatory.
Paul said:
I think this is a mistake made by pragmatists, how can all awareness be a linguistic affair? What about the fairly common existence of pre-lingual infants?
Matt:
I think this is a common misunderstanding. Pragmatists are not claiming that there are no prelinguistic affairs, or that infants or animals have no awareness. I suggested a year ago that one way of understanding the Quality redescription is as positing awareness at the root of existence. The point of these types of descriptions is that they are only useful for certain purposes. They are useful for getting rid of philosophical problems. Sellars' "all awareness is a linguistic affair" is analogous to Pirsig's "preconditional valuation." Pirsig isn't suggesting that we get rid of the notion of causation, he's suggesting that for certain purposes we can get rid of philosophical problems by thinking of causation in this way.
Paul said:
I can only be certain of what beliefs are of high value to me. As for knowledge in general, it can be described as an aggregate of what is of high value for everyone in the way of belief.
[and]
I know that it (value as primary empirical reality) is better than any other explanation of experience I've heard of but can offer no more "proof" than that.
Matt:
These are the types of answers that Descartes, who originally posed the question, would not have accepted. They are non-answers, the type of answers he was running away from, the type of answers that brought about the Skeptical Crisis. Your first answer is the intersubjective answer that pragmatists give. I'm just trying to get you to see that its not an answer that counts. Its the type of answer that is a "mu" answer.
Though we don't have to deal with Descartes anymore, those answers won't fly for contemporary epistemologists either because they are still holding on to the Cartesian dream that those questions are answerable and will help.
Paul said:
In this respect, "epistemology" and "ontology" are useful philosophic terms I used to try and help clear up the differences in our understanding of the static hierarchy employed by the MOQ system. Unfortunately, you find these terms upsetting and pointless and so we ended up "here," again.
Matt:
Its not that I find your use of them upsetting, its that I'm not at all sure how you would use them outside of their former, traditional sense. I don't find them useful because I think they breed confusion, they make people think you are doing something you are not. Instead of the very funny "diet-epistemology" and "ontology-lite" attempts to recoup the words, pragmatists suggest just dropping the terms. We're not really sure what would be lost.
Paul said:
One simple question, and it's a genuine one - you've spelled out what you think is pointless and what neo-pragmatism *doesn't* do, so rather than waiting for metaphysicians to "accuse" you of something, what would you say neo-pragmatism *does* do, in terms of philosophy and in terms of this forum?
Matt:
Pragmatism is mainly a negative enterprise. The way I almost universally employ it here is as Locke envisaged philosophy, as clearing away the conceptual debris. In terms of philosophy in general, pragmatism is attempting to pop the bubble of traditional metaphysicians. In terms of this forum, I'm trying to steer people away from reading Pirsig as a metaphysician (as strange as that first appears) and instead as a pragmatic philosopher. I mainly do this by setting up the two ways of reading him, with reference to the text, and drawing out the consequences of these readings and asking people to own up to them, one way or the other.
Matt
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