From: MATTHEW PAUL KUNDERT (mpkundert@students.wisc.edu)
Date: Thu Feb 26 2004 - 00:04:03 GMT
Wim,
This last post you've added I've found the most pointed.
First, on vocabularies:
Wim said:
'If you're not content any more with "vocabulary" defined as a "systematic arrangement or organization of your beliefs", please provide another one', as vocabulary appears to be a core concept in your terminology.
Matt:
I think of it as a way of speaking. For instance, as you are right to point out, the concept of a "vocabulary" is important in my vocabulary. Rorty is one of the pioneers of the "'vocabulary' vocabulary" (as Robert Brandom put it). I think of it terms of a conversation. For different conversations, you may use different words. For instance, in Christian conversations the words "God," "Church," and "Jesus" are important, whereas in football (Americana) the words "Quaterback," "Hike," and "Touchdown" are important. If you don't understand what these words mean, then you won't understand much of what those respective conversations are about. And the fact that these conversations don't overlap very much in terms of the purpose, goals, and concepts of the conversation (except the word "Sunday," as in "What's more important for me to do on Sunday?") it becomes possible to make a viable distinction between them as being different conversations and using different vocabularie
s. There is, however, no permanent or fixed distinction between conversations and vocabularies except for the ones that we make. One distinction that William James suggested is a distinction between "science" and "religion." James' "Will to Believe," in this sense, was the dialectical update of Kant's "Religion within the Limits of Reason Alone." He wrote it to balance his scientific, pioneering efforts in psychology and his father's Swedenborgian theology. Another distinction that the Enlightenment thinkers suggested is a distinction between the "public sphere" and the "private sphere."
This turns to the heart of our (apparent) differences. There are two reasons why neo-Enlightenment political thinkers would like a separation between church and state, between the private and the public. One is to protect certain decisions that we think should be left up to the individual. Things like "Should I believe in God?", " What is the meaning of life?", "What should I do with my life?", "What book should I read next?", "Should I have eggs for breakfast or a bagel? Or both...?", etc., etc. The other is for purposes of expediency. As my oft repeated slogan goes, we don't want to re-enact the Republic on the Senate floor.
What I keep dancing away from and you keep trying to get me to admit is that "a Metaphysics of Quality ... DOES have relevance for politics." You want, for instance, "religious truths/insights/inspirations" to have political relevance. The only extent to which I see them as political relevant is the sense in which they motivate _you_, the believer, to make practical suggestions, for doing "social stuff." Here's what it boils down to: if you have a vision from God who tells you that homosexuals should be able to marry within the eyes of the law if they want to, the only part that matters is your belief about homosexuals, not where you got it from. If we start discussing it in terms of God, what am I supposed to say? I don't believe in God. The conversation doesn't go very far because the vocabularies we are using don't overlap enough. More to the point, if you start talking in terms of Quality, where does that leave other people who don't like Pirsig, or more probably,
have never read Pirsig?
I think we have to leave religion and philosophy at the door of the Capital on two counts: one, we don't want to start forcing people to have certain conversations to be able to do certain things and two, if we ever want to get anything done, we might want to leave a 2500+ year old conversation at the door. I say "at the door of the Capital" for a very specific reason. Its because if you and others would like to form a group that uses a "Quality vocabulary" to create a social vision and even to make practical suggestions, then you have every right to do so and I think it would be great. Anything that brings people together to do good stuff can't be bad. My only suggestion is that when your group "goes public," you might want to reformulate the practical suggestions you have and drop the Quality vocabulary to increase the chances of your suggestions' success.
(As a side note, I have never dissuaded anyone (so far as I can remember) from talking about practical things or turning _this_ group towards generating a great social vision. The only things I've said on the subject are: A) count me out and B) I doubt you'll get very far in _this_ group. I have a feeling the group's political differences are too great for one generally agreed upon social vision to emerge. The only times I've ever spoken on the subject are when people have said things to me, in conversation with me or having butted into a conversation I was having ("butting in" is a very fuzzy line on the internet, but it can be drawn sometimes). At most, I've reacted slightly negative because the person was trying to chastise me for only sticking to philosophy. That's when I start talking about the purposes of this forum and private and public and blah, blah. I see this forum as being a private installation that allows for any conversation you would like (within certa
in limits). As such, it can accommodate as many visions of what the purpose of the forum should be as there are people (something that has been a bit of an annoyance to some). So, when I say, "the purpose of this forum is...," I'm really saying that "This is the purpose I have for the forum, and I won't really be straying from it. And unless you know where I live, I don't see how you could stop me from only participating in what I want to.")
Your points about the current political scenes of the West I think are either slightly besides the point or an agreement on the point I would like to make. In the case of "constitutions, democracy and all kinds of checks and balances," these are exactly the practical incarnations of the public/private distinction I'm talking about. The outcome of these incarnations, we neo-Enlightenment political thinkers think, is the secularization of our political conversations. If you are suggesting something different, I'm still not sure what it is. I still don't see how the two of us are going to talk about God and get anything practical done, which is exactly what I'm talking about. It may be a tad ironic that I keep saying that we should leave philosophy aside when talking social stuff, and then refuse to talk social stuff on this list, but I find it a tad ironic that you are talking about incorporating your Quaker beliefs in your talk about social stuff, yet I find so little of
it in our conversation. Essentially, you're meeting me on my secularized ground. And that's just it: for both of us to have this conversation we have to agree on some ground rules. My point about the distinction between public and private is a point about vocabularies. It is a practical suggestion about how to think about things, about how to talk about things, so we don't come to as many major stumbling blocks. It says its okay not to talk about philosophy or religion when we are making policy. "Do not block the road of inquiry" said Peirce and as far as I can see, Plato and God would block our inquiry as to how to solve some of our social problems.
In the case of American politics, you've caught me mixing the real with the ideal, but all good political thoughts, I should say, are just that. It is true, America doesn't always live up to its image, the image handed down by its forefathers, those Enlightenment thinkers, particularly Jefferson. One area it doesn't is in its secularization of politics. Rorty and I both lament that, still to this day, people who are professed atheists won't get elected to public office, certainly not the highest office.
You say that "this thin strip of public opinion making only leads to compromises of the kind that safeguard and promote American material and otherwise short-term interests at the expense of the social and ecological balance in your own society and in global society as a whole." My response is that I don't see how any other society could prevent such a perversion of image. I don't think there is anything perverted with the public/private distinction that would necessarily lead to such a stripmine attitude about the world. The turn taken by America, indeed all nations, is taken by perverted _people_, the greedy oligarchies and kleptocrats. If you are thinking that a nation whose state religion was Christianity and quoted Bible scripture on the Senate floor, not for inspiration, but as a debating point, would be more morally suited than our ostensibly secular one, I have only to point to the Crusades. Good ideas like "do unto others as you would have them do unto you" can
always be perverted by people. Its the people who are the problem. Which is why the West invented democracy.
In the end, you are right, the Quakers were instrumental in America's early moral make-up. But what is important for us secularists is still not that they opposed slavery because of God, but that they opposed slavery. A turning point in my life was when I looked around at my fellows at Church, fellows who believed in God whereas I did not, and noticed that I acted just as morally, if not more so, then they, that I acted like a good Christian, just without the Cosmic Christ bit. What secularists are betting is that you don't have to be religious or philosophical to be moral. We're betting that you can reformulate the good, sound moral intuitions that Christianity gave us, things like "love thy neighbor," and reformulate them in different terms, terms that drop out reference to God or the Bible, and not lose anything. If the _only_ way in which you can formulate your point, if the only way you can defend your political view, is by referring to the Will of God, quoting the
Literal Truth of the Bible, or from your sight of the Form of the Good, then secularists argue that it isn't defensible as a political belief. In this case, it is a religious belief or a philosophical belief, but not a belief that you can debate on the Senate floor. And we are not sure how you can have it any other way. For purposes of politics, we may separate the religious from the political, but that doesn't mean we are suggesting that they don't influence each other. It simply means that the only way we can imagine having Hamilton's pluralistic salad bowl society is if we privatize some of our beliefs and leave them out of the political conversation.
So, do you want a colorful salad, or do you want a grey gruel?
Matt
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