From: MATTHEW PAUL KUNDERT (mpkundert@students.wisc.edu)
Date: Wed Sep 17 2003 - 18:43:30 BST
DMB said:
How do my repeated pleas for ordinary language make me look arrogant? I think Matt is so tangled up in linguistic philosophy that he's forgotten how to talk in a way that reaches out. Should I really have to read a set of books simply to carry on a conversation? No, that's not reasonable.
Matt:
Is it reasonable that an adult trying to carry on an adult conversation about basketball should have to repeatedly, over and over again, explain in simplistic terms the rules of basketball to a child because the child wants to participate? Is it reasonable that the adult should keep having to explain his statements, which are comprehensible to other adult, basketball fans, over and over again to the child?
Is that an over-the-top analogy? You bet. But let me explain the point in laymen terms: you agree that you have to be familiar with Pirsig here to converse. Is that the only thing you need to be familiar with? No, of course not. First, there's the english language. And after that, you have to be familiar with whatever angle you are going at Pirsig: American culture or history, Zen Buddhism, freshman English, literature, philosophy. And each one of these broad categories expands into smaller categories. In philosophy, you might have read Barfield or Wilber or Rorty or Dummett or Habermas or Derrida, but you might never become familiar with the others because their conversations do not overlap.
I have tried to explain myself to people. But I do require a basic language of philosophy, which means that you need to have read certain books to understand it. If you don't, it doesn't matter. You just don't take part in the conversation. Nobody's loss, really. This is all just for fun, extra, something we do in our spare time. But you can't do that because you are so serious.
I've tried to play the teacher. And I have it from many people that I've quite good. But you have to start from a common point in some things and, like I've quipped before, I'm just not offering Phil 101 this semester.
I'm willing to chalk the reason you don't understand Rorty up to lack of common reading and not willful arrogance. Are you?
Matt
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