From: MATTHEW PAUL KUNDERT (mpkundert@students.wisc.edu)
Date: Fri Sep 12 2003 - 23:54:43 BST
Platt,
Platt said:
I'm also frustrated because in your own words your are "flexible about definitions." Your Humpty Dumpty approach of "When I use a word it means just what I choose it to mean" isn't useful to mutual understanding.
Matt:
You're begging for this one.
"I simply have no use for Rorty's truisms, like, people need people to define a word."
Okay, I've tried to put my cards on the table. I've tried to be clear. By clarity, here, I mean that in the course of a post or a series of posts on a single subject, I try, like most people, to stick to a single definition of a key word. If I don't, then I'm being ambiguous and vague and people are free to ask me to clarify.
So, when I say "flexible" I mean that I don't think the dictionary somehow gets a word correct. (Hell, the dictionary doesn't even think it gets words correct, otherwise why would there be more then one entry per word?) Mutual understanding involves people getting together and agreeing on definitions of words, or translations of words, or whatever. In other words, when aiming at mutual understanding, "people need people to define a word". When I say, "When I use a word it means just what I choose it to mean," I'm not saying that I never agree to aide in mutual understanding, I'm saying that when people perform tricky-dick sleight-of-hand by substituting their own personal definition of a key word for mine, and then criticizing me for getting something all wrong, I think it poor form. That's just poor argumentation.
Platt said:
In my view, undefineable things have the most depth and greatest value.
Matt:
I would certainly figure as much because you are an essentialist. That means that things like "Good", "Truth", and "Beauty" are objects of inquiry that, once we find out what they really are, we can snap out at people when they get those objects wrong. You have a lot of company with this view of things: Plato, Descartes, Kant, maybe Pirsig. Rorty, however, is performing a reinterpretation, a transvaluation. He's saying that once you make the turn to antiessentialism, "good", "truth", and "beauty" cease to have any argumentative force. The real work done are by more complex, thicker terms like "democracy", "capitalism", and "Jesus". These terms are more valuable in the sense that the way we define them matters. It doesn't matter how you define "good", "truth", and "beauty" because, well, they're undefinable.
I'm waiting with baited breath to see how you (mis)construe this, too.
Platt said:
That which pleases a person is very useful? That's a new one on me.
Matt:
Well, it should be. I openly acknowledged that I was stretching utility out to include stuff that usually isn't included. What I'm trying (and apparently failing) to get you to see is that it isn't an impossible stretch. Think of it this way: Do you relax very well when you are in a sewer? The two key terms are "relax" and "sewer". I'm banking on the fact that being in a sewer is not pleasurable and that it is difficult for people to relax in unpleasurable contexts. The second thing I'm banking on is that it is useful for people to relax. Relaxation allows people to replenish their gumption, to make the connection explicit to Pirsig. And I think Pirsig makes the point clearly that it is quite useful to have a healthy supply of gumption in order to do anything well, to make Quality decisions.
Platt said:
Yes, I know. You've made your Humpty Dumpty philosophy of language clear.
Matt:
So...you're openly acknowledging the fact that you are contradicting yourself simply for the sake of defaming me...?
I've done a lot of writing in the hopes of being clear, but from you I get one-line epithets. I'm trying to persuade people by spilling ink, you're trying to persuade people by ramming me into tiny boxes that you hope people will believe I fit into. So, who isn't helping mutual understanding?
Platt said:
Too bad coherence doesn't seem to matter when it is comes to the meaning of words.
Matt:
Its lucky for anybody else reading that I try and pull arguments out of your one-liners, otherwise everybody else would be as bored as I'm quickly becoming.
Meanings of words are only attained by holistic coherence. Now, you are implying, then, that I'm ambiguous about my words, that I flip-flop on my definitions so fast that at the beginning of a sentence "coherence" means X, and by the end of the sentence "coherence" means Y. That would be poor argumentation and poor communication. That can't be what you mean, else you would've pointed it out by now. You mean something else and as far as I can tell it means, ala DMB, "cohere with the way I speak". Talk about undue priveleging and hidering mutual understanding.
Platt said:
What assumption does Rorty change that makes self-referential paradoxes meaningless?
Matt:
Well, I never said that self-referential paradoxes are meaningless. They have meaning. It means that your beliefs are a tad incoherent and that you should maybe change them to get rid of that annoying little buzz.
As for the specific assumption I'm thinking of, um, let's see. I think for the...86th time, it involves making the contingent turn. I should've said "assumptions", however, because I think there are a number of them that get changed, all in collusion with each other.
Platt said:
Are you denying there is such a true condition as being "naked."
Matt:
Last time I noticed, I was talking about the analogy, not the literal example.
As tediuous as this will be for me, and pointless given the amount that Platt's so far understood of Rorty, I will go further than simply point out the ocular metaphor in the analogy that makes it one that pragmatists don't see the point in. Once we take out the ocular metaphor, once we say with pragmatists that the true is "justified belief", rather than "justified true belief", the example is interpreted like this: nobody would believe that the emperor was wearing clothes because everybody would be able to plainly see, using their eyes, that the emperor was not wearing any clothes. In other words, the belief simply would not be justified by a stranger who was not trying to pull the wool over the emperor's eyes, so to speak.
When I say that the analogy hinges on an ocular metaphor, I mean that the representationalist takes the example and creates the existence of a metaphysical Eye, that recognizes Truth when it sees it, as analoguous to the physical eye we sense things with. That's why representationalists say the truth is "justified _true_ belief": they think that our special Eye tells us when a belief is true and not just justified. Pragmatists have no idea how this is done. They don't accept the analogy between a sensory eye and a metaphysical Eye.
Platt said:
Quality as a consensus of evaluations? Really? I thought Quality was direct experience.
Matt:
Well, Pirsig does offer a lot of different "definitions" of Quality, now, doesn't he?
Does somebody have a copy of Lila's Child who can look up which note the quote I'm referring to appears in? I don't have Lila's Child and I don't have the time to look up the post from long ago that I got it from.
Platt said:
My "angle" is to try to figure out what your and Rorty mean. You perhaps can understand my problem when words mean whatever you want them to mean. If you would stick to common meanings and not "shrug off" questions put to you as irrelevant, it would help.
Matt:
You used to try harder on trying to figure out what Rorty and I mean. In fact, I would be very hard pressed to even count this lastest round of discussion as an attempt by you. Or any of the last 6 months.
And I will not stick to common meanings. I've fought this battle with you, too. Common meanings are created, they aren't sitting out there waiting for people to use. The only way I can interpret this criticism is that you wish I would stick to your meanings. And as for "shrugging off" questions, I recall a certain literary and philosophical icon who does the same thing when he was asked the question, "Is Quality a subject or an object?" He replied "mu". He then tried to explain why he replied with "mu" and some people bought it and some people didn't.
Platt said:
Good. Stay playful. Higher quality. :-)
Matt:
I always new there was a kernel of agreement somwhere.
And for people who think I'm being a dick about Platt's oneliners, especially given the shortness of breath I've given certain people of late, I would reference people to the archives. When I went back to count how many times I've talked about the assumptions that Rorty changes, I found Platt and my original confrontations. If you're interested, go to September, organize by author, and then go to the first post I wrote that month (my handle used to be "Matt the Enraged Endorphin"), under "food for thought". That was the first post of mine that Platt replied to. The first thing you'll notice is how nice we were back then. Well, the niceness didn't last that long, but my patience was extraordinary back then. The second thing you'll notice is the shortness of Platt's interlocutions. Which is fine when they were honest to god questions, he was probing to find out what Rorty was all about. But it didn't take too long for Rorty and myself to be stuck into a box that just d
oesn't fit. And ever since Platt found that box, he hasn't really let go and, I would argue, hasn't really given us any chance for mutual understanding (well, actually, I think I understand Platt perfectly: I just think he's completely wrong). In that month, he did provide a good description of why he disgreed with me. Once, mabye twice. But consider the massive size of my average post back then. You new people think I'm long-winded and boring now--man, you guys missed it. But my patience didn't last. It did last for a long time, but it eventually dwindled in direct relation to my hope for a good interlocution from certain people.
That's why its much more likely to find me responding in a constructive fashion ad nauseum to posts by people like Sam and Scott (and others), rather than people like, well, you can guess.
Matt
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