From: MATTHEW PAUL KUNDERT (mpkundert@students.wisc.edu)
Date: Sun Oct 12 2003 - 20:43:30 BST
Hey David,
Okay, I think I see what you are saying.
David said:
What I am trying to provoke is a discussion of this strange ability of beings to differentiate between aspects of their experience such as the tiger's food / non-food distinction. Or the moth's mate / non-mate distinction. This implies the kind of meaning-like treatment of perceived aspects of their experience that we usually only associate with language and Derrida's difference. I am starting to think that I am unable to draw a line between the way I handle symbols and the way I handle so-called perceived objects.
Matt:
This is the thick of it, right? What I would say (being the Rortyan pragmatist), is that its no big deal to not be able to draw a line between the handling of symbols and the handling of perceived objects. This is because pragmatists don't think of language as quasi-divine like Derrida seems to think some of the time, which I think he picked up from Heidegger. I think the path you are going down is a good one. Rorty tries to assuage the fears of losing another god (first God, then Reason, then Science, then History, now Language), by redescribing language as a tool for coping with our environment. To ubiquitize this in Pirsigian terms, all static patterns are in the business of coping with their environment. One kind of static pattern (to ad hocly separate it from the rest) evolved a tool called "visual perception". Then, as this static pattern (we'll call it "animals") proliferated and diversified, a static pattern arose that (after ad hocly separating it from the re
st) evolved a tool caled "language" (call them "humans").
You see what I'm doing here. I think when you say "handle symbols" and "handle perceived objects," I think your use of a coping metaphor to be dead on. But when you talk about "non-verbal language," I think it needlessly confusing. I think it better to say "non-verbal tools" and "verbal tools". Don't get me wrong, you can ubiquitize "language" to go all the way down to rocks. Its very easy to do that with Pirsig's talk of static patterns. You just say, "Yeah, rocks have a language that they use to cope with other rocks. We sum up this language in the discipline of physics." Same thing about biological patterns (physiology), social patterns (sociology, political science), and intellectual patterns (literary criticism, history, philosophy). The point that the pragmatist makes is that these languages are tools that the static patterns have evolved to help them deal with other static patterns.
When you ask, "What was our 'experience of a tree' before the word tree?" the pragmatist says that we will probably never know except to extrapolate from the behaviors of other animals who appear to not have created a linguistic tool for coping. The pragmatist's deflationary line on this is that, even if we were somehow to find out, it probably wouldn't tell us anything too important, nothing about "human nature" or "the bounds of possibility" which is what people are typically after when they spend too much time thinking about that question and taking it seriously. The pragmatist says that once you create a tool in your toolbox and keep using it, you can't get rid of it except by a long and torturous process. And as long as you have it, you won't be able to experience anything except through its lens. For instance, take your arm. Its a tool that you use. You can get rid of it (though in this case, it isn't a long process, simply torturous). When you do, you will expe
rience the world much differently because you will be coping with it differently. And you can't find out what it is truly like to experience the world without your arm unless you actually got rid of it. The old adage "You don't know until you've actually been there" is in point here.
Matt
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