From: MATTHEW PAUL KUNDERT (mpkundert@students.wisc.edu)
Date: Sat Mar 06 2004 - 21:55:19 GMT
Chris,
Alas, I am not working on Lessing anymore. It would be interesting to go back to it someday, though. When it comes to extracurricular projects, I have my hands full with Pirsig.
Chris said:
Nice subtle statement there, the difference between finding and inventing (or finding and making as you express it) is of great importance in stripping metaphysics in general and the MOQ in particular. After not reading the distinctions in the stars however I want to take it a step further and say that we not only must bring them back to earth; we have to be even more attentive that we do not project these eternal ideas into our earth, into our language. What I mean to say is that we not only have to get rid of 'transcendental ontology' but even more we need to get rid of 'transcendent epistemology' (notice the dialectic: transcendental - transcendent - (you say utility) I will leave it to: ?????(gna)) as displayed in Kant's work and where we see the sad remains from in contemporary philosophy. These sad remains nowadays is called logic; what else is a logical rule but a transcendent i_dont_know_what - form perhaps?
Matt:
I certainly have sympathy with getting rid of epistemology. However, I'm not sure I understand the difference between "reading the distinctions in the stars" and "project[ing] these eternal ideas into our earth, into our language." I see them as the same and all the steps taken. Language is built on distinctions, without them language would be meaningless. What we are left with, so goes the pragmatist line, is language as a tool for coping. Logic, for instance, is a tool. On the pragmatist view, logical rules and principles in general are, as Peirce said, habits of action. It is true, Kantians found a safehouse in symbolic logic at the beginning of this century (like with Russell) and from there moved to the philosophy of language (like with Dummett). But Analytics have slowly been getting over such fascinations be reading Quine, Sellars, Goodman, Davidson, Putnam, and Rorty (to name a handy few). I still think we are both left on the same pragmatist page.
Chris said:
I think that what i just said is actually the same as you are trying to say with your example of the fall of "logocentrism" into "the play of binary oppositions" though I must admit I am not familiar at all with either Derrida or post-Derridians, please enlighten me on that matter. For now I assume this fall is something like the transition from the early to the late Wittgenstein; though a 'fall' seems to me a highly inapropriate expression; how about an ascent?
Matt:
It is the same as I see it. The only thing to get with Derrida is that for him "logocentrism" is a common thematic of metaphysicians. Logocentrism is the type of philosophy where some term is central, some term is originary, some term has everything emmanating out from it. Logocentrism also leans heavily on the play between two binary oppositions. One opposition is always priveleged over the other, either analogized as at the center with the other at the margins in a horizontal manner (like the sun with the earth revolving around it) or as above the other in a vertical manner.
You can see why I find Pirsig so very ambiguous on the subject.
This is all pretty much the same as the transition from early to late Wittgenstein. The reason I said "fall" is because I was talking about the "logos" being pushed off its pedestal. It is an ascent for us in the sense that we have a better understanding of such things now.
Chris said:
I still have great problems with SOT though and I have very strong doubts that SOT is useful to differentiate yourself from others because language does not differentiate us from others; au contraire. There is a link here to consciousness which seems to have has a quite similar structure and just as there is no such thing as an individuated consciousness - it is a "net of communication" in Nietzsche's words - by the same token there is no individuated subject that by saying certain words differentiate him or herself from others. Language is not a tool that a subject uses freely to his or her benefit, we cannot step out of it. By your assumptions we have to use a historical social construction to express our individuality; doesn't that sound terribly contradictive?
Matt:
Ya' know, I'm not quite sure what you mean by SOT and I'm not even sure what I mean by SOT. I think it is best to just drop the damn locution. I very much understand and agree with your point about the "publicness" of language, something both Nietzsche and Wittgenstein agreed on. However, I think to grasp what Nietzsche was further saying we need to look at his "ubermensch". Nietzsche, along with his hero Emerson, were very big on self-made men, on self-creation. This is why I love Rorty's use of Wittgenstein, Nietzsche, and Harold Bloom. Rorty brings out strongly, I think, how we can still conceptually have individuals and the great _agon_ in the actual practice of doing so. It may sound contradictive to "use a historical social construction to express our individuality," but that is exactly what happens. It is difficult and agonizing to become differentiated (in a strong sense of having completely original beliefs, or even one original belief) because philosophers
like Nietzsche recognize the radical contingency of our beliefs, that we _recieve_ the beliefs we do based on when and where we are born. Part of Rorty's vision of how language changes is the role of the heroic genius, like Nietzsche and Freud. These creators, "strong poets," take the literalized words around them and _create_ new ones, create metaphors with which to say things that had never been said before. That is how language grows and how these strong poets earn the right to say with Nietzsche's ubermensch, "Thus I willed it." We do not steop out of language and we do not wield it freely, but we can struggle to use it as it has never been used before. It is only if we view language as a Platonist, as something already there, that we run into trouble. For Platonists and Kantians, the language we use has determinate meanings, the logical space in which we make inferences does not grow over time, but simply remains static. It is the idea that all philosophical posit
ions existed at the beginning of time and we are simply cycling through them.
In one sense, the self is dissolved into a web of beliefs that has no center. However, it is still convenient to differentiate between _my_ beliefs and _your_ beliefs. As long as it remains so, until we become like Orson Scott Card's "buggers" (or "Formics" in the later novels), we can differentiate between individuals. As long as we can say, "I believe this and you do not," we can differentiate ourselves in at least a weak sense.
Chris said:
As for the other part, the usefulness as you call it there also rises some problems because it is a hard to say what indeed is useful - maybe it is 'the most calamitious stupidity of which we shall perish some day' as the Plato of modern times said, who knows.
Matt:
Ah, but Wittgensteinians like us aren't phased by the skeptic anymore. We may not "know" in any Kantian sense whether what we call useful is really useful, but for the pragmatist, there's no reason to differentiate between "useful" and "actually useful." Things are useful based on our projects and purposes. Usefulness is determined by _us_ and the only way we decide such issues is by hashing it out between ourselves, arguing for different viewpoints and experimenting with different habits and proposals. Usefulness is decided, in this way, the same way Dynamic Quality is: by history. By being able to look back with 20/20 hindsight and say, "That was a good idea," or "Ooh, that sucked." You said it before as a good post-Darwinian: cultural evolution, like biological evolution, is decided by the winners. There is no transcendental viewpoint, no "God's-eye view" as Putnam said, no "skyhook" as Dennett said, and contra Nagel, no "view from nowhere."
Matt
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