tag:blogger.com,1999:blog-24152639.comments2023-07-04T03:53:40.171-07:00Matt Kundert's Friday ExperimentMatt Khttp://www.blogger.com/profile/05304261355315746372noreply@blogger.comBlogger408125tag:blogger.com,1999:blog-24152639.post-20530687360077780342022-06-05T11:07:18.115-07:002022-06-05T11:07:18.115-07:00Thank you for shariingThank you for shariingTara Ehttps://www.taraeaton.com/noreply@blogger.comtag:blogger.com,1999:blog-24152639.post-68559825594256076652019-08-24T11:58:26.435-07:002019-08-24T11:58:26.435-07:00Interesting. The Lanka Sutra stresses the problems...Interesting. The Lanka Sutra stresses the problems of language and does say that "beer" is not the same as beer, but also insists that, without the scriptures, the teachings wouldn't have been transmitted, and thus states that there must be some middle way between total distrust of words, and blind trust in words.proulx michelhttps://www.blogger.com/profile/05645099426704673816noreply@blogger.comtag:blogger.com,1999:blog-24152639.post-87370827920176619372018-08-02T20:46:14.552-07:002018-08-02T20:46:14.552-07:00I'm liking what's in your brain and how it...I'm liking what's in your brain and how it's extruded out. thx Matt _mAnonymoushttps://www.blogger.com/profile/14483466956049008884noreply@blogger.comtag:blogger.com,1999:blog-24152639.post-5530924228099165402017-07-08T08:17:37.298-07:002017-07-08T08:17:37.298-07:00“I have no theory” is really code for “you are goi... “I have no theory” is really code for “you are going to be really disappointed when I tell you what it is…,” <br /><br />Yep, that's Rorty alright! Lol. He's amazing and unsettling and completely unsatisfying. Anonymousnoreply@blogger.comtag:blogger.com,1999:blog-24152639.post-88839971361199661372015-11-28T12:49:09.159-07:002015-11-28T12:49:09.159-07:00I have not read Booth's book, but it is one of...I have not read Booth's book, but it is one of several on my shelf that I wish I could get to. I keep getting pushed around by "professional" demands. I think I found my way to Booth because of his relationship to the Chicago critics (which had its own resonance for me because of Pirsig's relationship to Chicago), and then through Martha Nussbaum, who championed Booth's book and whose work I've read a little of. I've always been wary of Nussbaum because of her somewhat fierce stance toward my favorite neopragmatists (esp. my spirit-father, Rorty, and Fish), but I've also found her work quite easy to coopt for my pragmatist purposes. The more daring I get in wedding her and other of my spirit-father's adversaries, like Bernard Williams and Stanley Cavell, together with my personal pantheon, the more often I look over at <i>The Company We Keep</i> and sigh. One might look at my relatively recent <a href="http://pirsigaffliction.blogspot.com/2014/07/touchstones.html" rel="nofollow">"Touchstones"</a> (especially section 3) and see why--like Booth's figure, I've turned toward thinking about our relationship to books in terms of personal relationships. My struggle, which has become a struggle in working out the project of my dissertation, has been to remain foxy in my appreciation of the variety of ways in which we read. Becoming a professional, it seems to me, has seemed to imply that the future academic make hedgehog-like claims of "This is the one, true way of reading!!!" Everyone I talk to, of course, says no, no one doesn't have to, but adds that it does make it easier to sell yourself to the academy. It just feels like it's hard to be a fox of modest skills in today's professional environment.<br /><br />I get the feeling that we work in a similar area. I originally wanted to write something about the ethical dimensions of fictional narrative, and then just <i>narrative</i>, but now I find myself all the way back around to what really turns me on, which is nonfictional prose. I find myself deeply in the reading of <i>Moby-Dick</i> and Dickinson's stanzas, but not as deeply as when I'm writing about them. It seems perverse for a literary critic to say that, and perhaps it should since it is at root egotism, but such navel-gazing is what always leads me back to the forms of criticism I and others I love deploy. And that's just philosophy, really. What are the appropriate terms of criticism, in Cavell's phrase, for what we do, and what are the ethics of controversy, in a phrase I learned from Rorty (though he likely picked it up from Sidney Hook, or maybe Richard McKeon)? Maybe it's...maybe what fascinates me most, we could say, are the ways in which we relate to each other about how we relate to things deeply personal. So, if you have a personal relationship with Isabel Archer, how do you carry out a discussion with other people about it? How, more to the point, does one <i>argue</i> about it? On what terms do we kibitz with each other about our loves?<br /><br />I'll have to look for that Booth book on the amateur. The more professionalization fails to take with me, the more I think beyond.Matt Khttps://www.blogger.com/profile/05304261355315746372noreply@blogger.comtag:blogger.com,1999:blog-24152639.post-88079364008415197542015-11-25T17:55:06.286-07:002015-11-25T17:55:06.286-07:00Have you read The Company We Keep by Wayne C. Boot...Have you read The Company We Keep by Wayne C. Booth? I think you'd like it given your interests. I, too, read ZMM when I was young, and it certainly sparked in me an interest in philosophy. <br /><br />Kerouac, however, was the author who influenced me the most because his passion for reading and writing led me to become an English major (and eventually an English professor). <br /><br />But, like you, I am still much enamored of philosophy, particularly moral philosophy, epistemology, and rhetoric. In fact, my area of specialty is Ethics and Fictional Narrative, an approach that is based on Wayne Booth's work, particularly The Company We Keep. (Booth, for a short time, was even on my dissertation, but I let him off the hook when I realized that he was too busy, particularly given his age. But somewhere I've got his signature on my dissertation prospectus!). <br /><br />I also noticed your discussion about writing for an amateur audience, and I like what you said. I wish more people acknowledged the importance of being a life-long amateur, of writing for amateurs, and of having pride in trying to learn something new as an amateur. <br /><br />I just realized while writing my last sentence that Booth has a book on being an amateur (I think it's called For the Love of It). Well, I'll end with that strange circle from Booth to Booth.<br /><br />Best wishes and keep up the good work.<br /><br />Brad<br /><br />bhawley@emory.edu Brad Hawleyhttps://www.blogger.com/profile/13305175857466169702noreply@blogger.comtag:blogger.com,1999:blog-24152639.post-15900013300816166012015-08-02T10:32:19.904-07:002015-08-02T10:32:19.904-07:00Thanks for the post. Here are a few quotes from We...Thanks for the post. Here are a few quotes from We Have Never Been Modern:<br /><a href="https://researchquotes.wordpress.com/tag/we-have-never-been-modern/" rel="nofollow">Quotes from We Have Never Been Modern</a>Fredrikhttps://www.blogger.com/profile/06316007861739436647noreply@blogger.comtag:blogger.com,1999:blog-24152639.post-16477350410446263552015-06-06T08:27:10.938-07:002015-06-06T08:27:10.938-07:00Matt,
This is why I love having the chance to dis...Matt,<br /><br />This is why I love having the chance to discuss these things with you, you just have such a depth of understanding and a willingness to more fully explore these topics. Thanks so much for so fully answering my question and I feel like I have a much better understanding of this position. I don't think it's necessarily the way you presented Rorty that led me to any confusion I might have had, because I had also been developing these thoughts based on my own readings of his works as well. I guess my thinking is more in line with his ideas than I first realized.<br /><br />Thanks for all your time and effort,<br />NathanNathanKnoreply@blogger.comtag:blogger.com,1999:blog-24152639.post-87598541447772536322015-06-01T17:07:31.928-07:002015-06-01T17:07:31.928-07:00I have one comment about your note about the desir...I have one comment about your note about the desire for "transcendence" being satisfied through the act of writing as being in part because of the physicality of a piece of writing. I was more referring to, following Rorty and Nehamas, a Nietzschean desire for self-creation enacted in writing, which bares some relationship to the fact that a piece of writing is external to our fluctuating minds. The relationship between writing and thinking is, however, interestingly complex, and tying Nietzsche's very modern notion of self-creation to it seems dangerous ahead of more thought. But, ya' know, the idea of "literary immortality" is very old, as well as Plato's attack on writing in the <i>Phaedrus</i>. While Rorty, I don't think, had writing as a technology (that usurped primary oral cultures and all that) in mind, it's very useful to think about in considering how we use our thoughts on paper (or really nowadays, FacePage) to reflect back at us a self, one we don't always find very pleasing.Matt Khttps://www.blogger.com/profile/05304261355315746372noreply@blogger.comtag:blogger.com,1999:blog-24152639.post-40643035960377985862015-06-01T16:50:12.811-07:002015-06-01T16:50:12.811-07:00...continued
Because cultures aren’t monolithic, ......continued<br /><br />Because cultures aren’t monolithic, the kind of case you’re asking about is, I think, something like the case of Christians who have the Creation Story of Genesis, on the one hand, and Darwin’s explanation of how humans got here, on the other. It’s not about cultures at that large of a level, but about two tools that are each to be applied in the same set of circumstances (i.e. “Where did we come from?”). How do they move forward? Pragmatically, as in, Which tool/belief violates the least of what you don’t want violated? You’ll notice you can’t even begin to approach an answer to that question until you actually feel the two tools come into conflict. So, Rorty’s practical/philosophical advice is to urge polyvocality—don’t worry about it until you feel a <i>real conflict</i>. Don’t get caught up into thinking that you can have only one voice for all situations. Be a Christian on Sunday, a democratic liberal on Saturday, and an evolutionary biologist 9-5, Monday through Friday. A loving, soft-spoken father in the mornings, a caring husband when you pick your wife up from work and she needs to unload about the jerk in her department, and a cussing poker player on Wednesday nights. That’s the image you were advocating, and it’s one Rorty endorses. Since most of what you’d like to suggest as against Rorty I sense as things Rorty would love, this is why I began by saying I must have created a false impression.<br /><br />What Foucault said sounds like an “empty toolbox” because of the image of <i>creatio ex nihilo</i> standing behind his denial of imagining a “we.” However, it’s not really a polemic Rorty would’ve wanted (or I want) to press very long against Foucault. (You’ll notice I switched to talking about right-wing libertarians—they’re the difficult problem because they’re explicit about the empty toolbox image. Foucault just happened to have stumbled into it because of his suspicion of real world politics. It’s an irony friendly polemicists like Rorty take advantage of to say to their friend, “Hey, see? You don’t want to be found agreeing with <i>these</i> people, do you?”) All Rorty ever wanted was the image of “intertwining, multiple toolboxes to create something new.” The reason, however, I say one begins with one’s “own” tools (whatever you were socialized with, which is to say, whatever entangled, polyglot mishmash of tools your box of a self finds itself with) is because it seems strange to completely abdicate your own sense of right and wrong <i>simply</i> to create something new. We’ve never had sharia law in the U.S., but it seems a mistake to start stoning people just because we’re trying to intertwine ourselves. One isn’t restricted to one’s own tools; it’s just where anyone begins.Matt Khttps://www.blogger.com/profile/05304261355315746372noreply@blogger.comtag:blogger.com,1999:blog-24152639.post-75041396170859062912015-06-01T16:49:29.038-07:002015-06-01T16:49:29.038-07:00...continued
Another way to put this is that, whe......continued<br /><br />Another way to put this is that, when you suggest that some people have a “‘personality’ that leads to a quest for certainty or clarity or coherence,” my instinct is to put the breaks on assimilating “a quest for certainty”—the phrase Dewey used to demarcate Platonism’s foundationalist mark on the history of philosophy—to pedestrian attempts to live our lives. I don’t mean anything so inflated as a <i>Quest</i>—the kind of coherence-making, or consistency, that I’m trying to leave in play for accounting for how we live our lives shouldn’t be assimilated to terms of quest-romance, the knights-and-dragons stories that Don Quixote lampooned. If one deflates those ideas, then one can still have personalities that don’t care much for being certain, clear, or coherent. But they’ll take on a different coloring if there isn’t a bare minimum of it—call them the Bullshitter, the Unintelligible, and the Quixotic. Of the three, I certainly enjoy the latter the most. But, perhaps I should also add, that the coherence Rorty is talking about is certainly not <i>sameness across all spheres of life</i>. The fundamental position needed to even make a private/public distinction is that we can have as many social roles as we have spheres of action, and that there’s no need to reduce oneself to a single role. And that seems like what you’re talking about with polyvocality.<br /><br />In (4) you ask about the case of someone living “equally in two or more cultures,” who “therefore wasn’t acculturated with a single vocabulary/toolbox regarding something.” This is tricky to respond to, because when it comes to it, Rorty doesn’t want to suggest that there’s a monolithic notion of “an American vocabulary” that is homogenous. “Vocabulary” is as much as a posit as belief, or coherence as a structure. The first footnote of CIS, in fact, is a response to no doubt his early uses of the concept of vocabulary: “I have no criterion of individuation for distinct languages or vocabularies to offer, but I am not sure that we need one. Philosophers have used phrases like ‘in the language <i>L</i>’ for a long time without worrying too much about how one can tell where one natural language ends and another begins, nor about when ‘the scientific vocabulary of the sixteenth century’ ends and ‘the vocabulary of the New Science’ begins. Roughly, a break of this sort occurs when we start using ‘translation’ rather than ‘explanation’ in talking about geographical or chronological differences. This will happen whenever we find it handy to start mentioning words rather than using them – to highlight the difference between two sets of human practices by putting quotation marks around elements of those practices.” (Does more need to be said here? Probably. But it’s a good starting point.)<br /><br />continued...Matt Khttps://www.blogger.com/profile/05304261355315746372noreply@blogger.comtag:blogger.com,1999:blog-24152639.post-13179675323245503762015-06-01T16:48:21.442-07:002015-06-01T16:48:21.442-07:00Hi Nathan,
Reading your last response, I feel lik...Hi Nathan,<br /><br />Reading your last response, I feel like I’ve misrepresented Rorty’s philosophy. The first section’s construal of coherence/transcendence as <i>static</i> is repeated in the third section’s juxtaposition of Lyotard’s notion of paralogy with what you call Rorty’s “mostly static view of self and beliefs that seem to bang into each other but remain mostly distinct and unaffected by those collisions (i.e. ‘willingness to HEAR the other side,’ ‘stick to their guns,’ ‘stick to one’s deepest convictions’).” I’m not sure where the material in the parenthetical comes from, but I haven’t meant to create that image of how Rorty pictures the self, or how he thinks of conversation. I can’t see that Rorty would disagree with anything in how you’ve characterized Lyotard (especially about consensus being a stage).<br /><br />Your sec. (1) shows why I’m chary to use the language of “transcendence” in the first place. I’m not a fan of it because it has been exposed too long to the fire of Kant’s universalist side. (And that’s not to mention the larger cultural forms of Victorian imperialism that put Enlightenment universalism to work in the world.) This has irradiated the concept with this staticness that you make explicit well in posing the two alternatives of coherence/transcendent vs polyvocal/transient. To understand what Rorty wants to mean by “irony,” however, one has to conceive of the self with both of the concepts of coherence and transience. Here’s Rorty’s definition of an ironist:<br /><br />(1) She has radical and continuing doubts about the final vocabulary she currently uses, because she has been impressed by other vocabularies, vocabularies taken as final by people or books she has encountered; (2) she realizes that arguments phrased in her present vocabulary can neither underwrite nor dissolve these doubts; (3) insofar as she philosophizes about her situation, she does not think that her vocabulary is closer to reality than others, that it is in touch with a power not herself. (CIS 73)<br /><br />Rorty then uses Sartre’s term “meta-stable” to describe what kind of self ironists have because they are “always aware of the contingency and fragility of their final vocabularies, and thus of their selves” (74). Transience by itself, to my mind, snubs too badly the (important) role of trying to make one’s self coherent has in achieving meta-stability. Think about it this way: have you ever talked to a contrarian? Someone who is so transient they will take up and abdicate positions and arguments for whatever reason they feel like?<br /><br />Whatever we are going to mean by “coherence,” it is not anything static. What I wanted to suggest by my use of “ideal” was a <i>projection</i>, not a Platonic Form. The “ideal we live up to” is not like a static, crystalline sphere, but rather a movie image projected on screen in front of us. It’s made out of the parts behind us, and it coaxes us forward, but it is as dynamic as it needs to be. Whatever I mean by “ideal,” “coherence,” and “transcendence,” they are as fluid and flexible as we need. Which is to say, those <i>concepts</i> are not where we should be looking for the enemy to fluidity and polyvocality (a good concept)—the pernicious staticness we find in life is created somewhere else (and perhaps not concepts at all). That’s my bet, at least. (One example: I have no use for the Romantic diction of “a ‘self’ that we must always be true to.’”)<br /><br />continued...Matt Khttps://www.blogger.com/profile/05304261355315746372noreply@blogger.comtag:blogger.com,1999:blog-24152639.post-67522398278681081022015-05-29T11:56:29.628-07:002015-05-29T11:56:29.628-07:00...continued
3) After reading this piece, I think......continued<br /><br />3) After reading this piece, I think I have always been more of a Foucaultian in the sense presented in this article (what I took to be “not imposing beliefs and values on others”). This has often led me to a place of being unable to articulate any position for fear of imposing a “we” group so to speak (this is a big part of what I referred to as postmodern paralysis in the other thread). This article has given me a different way to look at this predicament and I think it will be some time before I’ve fully digested all that is presented here. It has inspired me to at least reread some Emerson (just reread "Self-Reliance") and perhaps try “Shame and Necessity” too, if I have the time. At the moment, what I will take away from it is a partial solution to a joke I made earlier about a couple of postmodernists sitting around undermining each others’ positions and then just sitting in silence with nothing to say (I imagine the same thing with a group of Foucaultian’s now too).<br /><br />The solution I see presented here is that the only way to move forward is if someone actually does say something and starts the ball rolling (“Somebody has got to speak for we” and “Emersonian need for everyone to act their own part”). “Who knows?—we will all only know when each of us looks inside and speaks what we find there” fits in great with our earlier discussion of "think as hard as you can and try to get others to think as hard as they can,” but share your voice in the mix. Lyotard had this idea of paralogy which is "the ongoing creation of meaning. You say something and it inspires me to say something in return. Consensus, Lyotard tells us, is merely a stage in our conversation. What conversation can give us can be much more valuable than that. It can bond us to the process of a dialogue that requires both our parts, and when it works successfully it can awaken our minds to an unending expansion of new ideas." While I like the Emersonian/Rortian idea of each person speaking their mind, I like this idea of paralogy more than what Rorty seems to offer. Rorty seems to present a mostly static view of self and beliefs that seem to bang into each other but remain mostly distinct and unaffected by those collisions (ie “willingness to HEAR the other side,” “stick to their guns,” “stick to one’s deepest convictions”). I guess I prefer to see people and beliefs as more dynamic and malleable than Rorty does? I think a vocabulary that is more change oriented (or sees change more positively) or is at least more explicitly open to the possibility of change is more useful?<br /><br />4) All of this leads me to a question I have about “Foucault’s response is just a little too decisionistic, the meta-ethical stance that suggests that you are an empty toolbox that should look around and put the good stuff in” and "you have to use the tools you were acculturated with. Why? Because there is no you until you’ve been acculturated." What if a person lived equally in two or more cultures (like our current pluralist society?) and therefore wasn’t acculturated with a single vocabulary/toolbox regarding something? How does this person move forward? If reason is not itself the arbiter of truth between two equally held premises sitting side-by-side in the same person, then what happens? (here is my postmodern paralysis again) Why is it felt that what he’s saying is an “empty toolbox?” Why is someone restricted to using YOUR "acculturated" tools? Could it be seen more as the intertwining of multiple toolboxes (yours and others) to create something new? Not an empty toolbox, but not a fixed toolbox either?<br /><br />Thanks again for such stimulating discussions!!!NathanKnoreply@blogger.comtag:blogger.com,1999:blog-24152639.post-81940445403612029972015-05-29T11:55:02.642-07:002015-05-29T11:55:02.642-07:00...continued
(“I think it’s hard for us, and phil......continued<br /><br />(“I think it’s hard for us, and philosophers in particular, to think in terms of what may be, especially about ourselves. It’s hard to find our way to those points at which we feel genuinely, and maybe should feel genuinely, ambi-valent.“ I think this fits in here too. Maybe some of us just have a “personality” that leads to a quest for certainty or clarity or coherence? In my experience, I’ve also found that there is a strong professional expectation and pressure for professionals to develop(select?) and hold onto a particular theoretical position or identity in their work, which makes it harder to move freely in their work and thinking. It’s like a professional “acculturation” which crystallizes a person into a particular position that is difficult to escape from)<br /><br />2) (I had a few pages of thoughts about Rorty’s politics, but after reading “Trotsky and the Wild Orchids” I’ll spare us both. Hopefully the rest of the comments still make sense.)NathanKnoreply@blogger.comtag:blogger.com,1999:blog-24152639.post-44193283523096785852015-05-29T11:54:11.937-07:002015-05-29T11:54:11.937-07:00Matt,
This is a really fascinating piece. Honest...Matt,<br /><br />This is a really fascinating piece. Honestly it gave me goosebumps! :) I've brought together thoughts from several of our discussions here, so it's a little long :(<br /><br />1) I'm deeply conflicted on the Rorty vs Foucoult positions you present here and I think I have been for many years. I think this is another manifestation of the situation you described elsewhere as "one of the most interesting moral issues at work in our lives." Let me try to connect this with our discussion on "The Legacy of Group Thinking.” From our discussion over there and this essay I started thinking about the individual and society as a reflection of each other, in that they have the same battles, tensions, and moral questions just on a micro vs macro level. (It's been a long time since I read The Invisible Man, so this might have been a theme already covered there.) On the macro/societal level we have solidarity vs fragmentation/pluralism while on the micro/individual level we have the "coherent” or “transcendent” self vs what I'll call a "polyvocal" or "transient" self. In the other thread you seemed to agree about the apparent transience and seeming impossibility of an actual "coherent-self" ("coherence can only be an ideal striven for, not an actuality," "the structure, like belief itself, is a posit, an image or metaphor we use to try to manage our actions (including our sayings) in the world," "an ideal we try to live up to," "pedestrian ideal of being consistent"). So the connection I drew is that just like there is a choice to be made between solidarity and fragmentation/pluralism at the social level in order to achieve our goals, so is there a choice to be made at the individual level between a “coherent” self and a "polyvocal" self to achieve our goals.<br /><br />For Rorty, "solidarity [in the public sphere] was necessary for thinking in terms of getting stuff done," but he would allow for individuals to be idiosyncratic when separate from that public sphere. Could one say of the self that "coherence [when interacting with others] is necessary for thinking in terms of getting stuff done," but that individuals themselves have no need for achieving such coherent selves beyond those interactions? In other words, is the belief/vocabulary/habit of a coherent and transcendent self something we need(want?) to keep for the purposes of achieving our liberal society? Or does it perhaps confine us and hinder us as individuals in an increasingly global, cosmopolitan, pluralistic, integrated, democratic society to have a “self” that we must always be true to? If we saw ourselves as playing many roles in many relationships and stopped worrying about our commitment to a “transcendent” self, maybe it would help to achieve the goal of having more positive interactions with others (aka cause less suffering, previously caused by our prior commitments to a transcendent self)? Another way of looking at it might be to ask if the story(stories) we tell about ourselves serves us better or worse if we see that story as static or dynamic, as singular or plural? What if we just saw the self as the temporary creation of our interactions with others and left it at that?<br /><br />continued...NathanKnoreply@blogger.comtag:blogger.com,1999:blog-24152639.post-58334139604967177382015-05-29T11:52:43.260-07:002015-05-29T11:52:43.260-07:00Matt,
---Sorry these responses took so long. Two...Matt,<br /><br />---Sorry these responses took so long. Two days after your last reply a large part of my life was turned upside down and I'm still picking-up the pieces. I'd already put together some thoughts which I've tried to complete, but "scattered" is my middle name at the moment. Hopefully I'm still making sense (here and in my comments on your essay "Two Uses of "We".").<br /><br />Very conservative and status quo! BLeh. ...<br /><br />---Haha, I thought you might feel that way. I wasn't thinking of violence or the elimination of democracy though. He just seemed a little too comfortable with the way things were. Thanks for the suggestion of "Trotsky and the Wild Orchids.” It has clarified even more my political differences with Rorty and has saved us both from a multipage political response I was putting together in response to you both here and in your essay "Two Uses of "We"." :) I’ll just leave it as a difference of opinion and move on.<br /><br />In reply to (5-7)...<br /><br />---I had no idea about the Kantian connection (never read him), I was just trying to put it all into words. Interesting that "the desire is satisfied through the act of writing (that self)." Besides the actual thinking required to write/create a coherent self, I imagine this is also in part due to something physically written having a considerable level of permanence that can be referred back to and that helps to give the illusion(?) of transcendent coherence due to that permanence? Even these discussions have forced me to clarify my own thinking while at the same time providing a record of that thinking which I can look back on to provide clarity later on and which allows me to believe/claim that I have some kind of personal coherence as a result of putting these words to paper and claiming they are “me.”<br /><br />You’ve culled some good material to consider...<br /><br />---See my comments on your essay "Two Uses of "We"."<br /><br />I think there are at least two tensions in what you’ve put your finger on...<br /><br />---I like this. I'd never viewed “Two Dogmas of Empiricism” in this light and it's been A LONG time since I read it anyways. I address this more in my comments on your essay "Two Uses of "We"."<br /><br />That’s one tension, but the second is what you mainly focus on...<br /><br />---This is definitely along the lines of what I'm thinking. I have some more thoughts in "Two Uses of "We"."<br /><br />Thanks,<br />NathanKNathanKnoreply@blogger.comtag:blogger.com,1999:blog-24152639.post-41966587390820633382015-05-13T10:36:04.459-07:002015-05-13T10:36:04.459-07:00Hi Nathan,
In reply to (5-7), you are again perce...Hi Nathan,<br /><br />In reply to (5-7), you are again perceptive. I don’t know if you’re aware, but you use a Kantian vocabulary to talk about it, too. Your distinction between the two selves mirrors in language a Kantian distinction between the “empirical self” and the “transcendental self.” The former is contingent and historical, whereas the latter is where (properly) moral claims come from. You’ve given a nice spin to it, so that the desire to be a unified self across the moments of your life can be given a Nietzschean answer: the desire is satisfied through the act of writing (that self). That’s where Rorty’s sympathies lie. (As well as Alexander Nehamas, in his fascinating <i>The Art of Living</i>.) It cannot, however, be a final answer. Since most of us are not writers, we need a more flexible description of these two selves.<br /><br />You’ve culled some good material to consider in trying to give this description, but I’m not sure I’m ready to give it. I don’t know how to describe yet all the layers you’ve brought to the fore. I’ve been working on it, in part you might say, via my work on Emerson. When you say, “the immediacy of belief at any moment,” I match that with Emerson’s “Our moods do not believe in each other,” which I believe is the key to understanding what Emerson really meant when he said, “A foolish consistency is the hobgoblin of small minds.”<br /><br />I think there are at least two tensions in what you’ve put your finger on. One is the tension between the “immediacy of belief” that is a self in action and the “structure of belief” that is a self. The image of belief I outlined in <a href="pirsigaffliction.blogspot.com/2009/07/spatial-model-of-belief-change.html" rel="nofollow">“A Spatial Model of Belief Change”</a> supplies an understanding of the structure side, but it needs to be modified by a sense of how beliefs are but posits to understand habits, and habits do not fit together in a structure. Not only that, but sometimes you “forget what you really believe,” which is to say, in a moment of action a relevant habit did not rise to the surface and cause you to behave in a certain way (i.e. in a way that observers who know you would’ve expected you to behave). <br /><br />A version of these two selves come together was given by Quine, in a description of the “web of belief” <i>avant la lettre</i> that might be a good place to build off of: “The totality of our so-called knowledge or beliefs . . . is a man-made fabric which impinges on experience only along the edges. Or, to change the figure, total science is like a field of force whose boundary conditions are experience. A conflict with experience at the periphery occasions readjustments in the interior of the field.” For “total science” substitute “self” and I think we have a good starting point. And as Quine points out in “Two Dogmas of Empiricism,” where this passage comes from, one of the consequences of this holism is that what adjustments are made to the interior are underdetermined by the impingements of experience at the exterior.<br /><br />That’s one tension, but the second is what you mainly focus on: the idea of an ideal self that we try to make over our empirical self to match. This, I think, is the way we need to think of “a coherent self”—given the nature of beliefs-as-habits, <i>coherence</i> can only be an ideal striven for, not an actuality. And this isn’t because we are conflicting, contradictory kinds of beings (though that is true)—it’s because the <i>structure</i>, like <i>belief itself</i>, is a posit, an image or metaphor we use to try to manage our actions (including our sayings) in the world. That’s why I like your substitution of “transcends” for “maintained”—it registers the family resemblance between the “ought” of an ideal we try to live up to (like a person we admire, or just being “good” or “ethical”) and the more pedestrian ideal of being consistent.<br /><br />And, that’s about all I can muster at the moment. There’s a lot to think through here.Matt Khttps://www.blogger.com/profile/05304261355315746372noreply@blogger.comtag:blogger.com,1999:blog-24152639.post-54616674050697260182015-05-13T09:38:16.644-07:002015-05-13T09:38:16.644-07:00Hi Nathan: I have a quick initial reply to (9) tha...Hi Nathan: I have a quick initial reply to (9) that doesn't matter much, before I want to give some considered thought to (5-7):<br /><br />Very conservative and status quo! BLeh. (Hold on, let me compose my face.) I have three comments to that: 1) after CIS, Rorty was attacked by the right and left, and by the left for pretty much the reason you've stated (perhaps why I'm disgruntled); 2) I don't think you can call the rejection of revolution "politically conservative," not just because violence has been used by everyone on the political spectrum, but more because violence is the rejection of the premise of democratic politics; 3) more generally, I really think the left has got to stop flagellating itself by ranking leftists' <i>conservatism</i> when the question is about means, not ends. The left really needs a better vocabulary for talking about why, e.g., we should praise Elizabeth Warren and Bernie Sanders and be critical of Hillary Clinton and the TPP.<br /><br />Since you've shown interest in how Rorty fits his political views together with his philosophy, you really should read his autobiographical "Trotsky and the Wild Orchids." Not only is it one of the finest of its genre, it also pretty much summarizes his whole career--it charts his trajectory to CIS, and it also is pretty much a summary of what he says in <i>Achieving Our Country</i>. And hey, I found it online (with typos like "post-modem" for "post-modern"): http://cdclv.unlv.edu/pragmatism/rorty_orchids.htmlMatt Khttps://www.blogger.com/profile/05304261355315746372noreply@blogger.comtag:blogger.com,1999:blog-24152639.post-68310551586240772672015-05-12T14:26:50.351-07:002015-05-12T14:26:50.351-07:00Matt,
As I mentioned in the other thread, your re...Matt,<br /><br />As I mentioned in the other thread, your reply is well put.<br /><br />NathanNathanKnoreply@blogger.comtag:blogger.com,1999:blog-24152639.post-5622259336353721042015-05-12T13:55:51.434-07:002015-05-12T13:55:51.434-07:00...continued
5,6,7) Great comments in these sect......continued<br /><br />5,6,7) Great comments in these sections. However, I want to respond to them all together because I see a theme running through all three of them, something I've noticed in Rorty (unspoken though?) and others too and wanted to ask about. In your comments there seems to be a tension between the immediacy of belief (self?) at any moment ("there are so many possible (hidden) habit/belief/premises that condition a person’s thought that might come up at any moment" and "an explicit belief only comes into being when we are forced to account for something in our immediate environment—after that, it submerges itself back into the roiling mass of our habits" and "a rule needs a fresh interpretation every time you apply it") and a belief system (self?) that is separate/transcendent from that immediate moment ("those points at which we feel genuinely, and maybe should feel genuinely" and "you should be who you are" and "adulthood needs to be some sort of normative endorsement of ourselves" and "this is the way I should be" and "you should be who you are"). I see the tension arising between a contingent/historical self that comes into being, exists, and changes from moment to moment and the desire for (belief in?) a coherent self that is maintained (transcends) across all moments? (I have more thoughts about this, but want to see your response before possibly drowning what might be an obvious point.)<br /><br />9) OK, that all sounds consistent with his position. It does strike me as humorously ironic that he takes such a philosophically revolutionary and anti-establishment position and then politically offers a very conservative and status quo position, but I do understand his reasoning and your comments that "there’s something good to be said about either bet" and that "bloody revolutions, as history has shown, are crapshoots."NathanKnoreply@blogger.comtag:blogger.com,1999:blog-24152639.post-36058771432969018332015-05-12T13:54:53.203-07:002015-05-12T13:54:53.203-07:00Hi Matt,
Thanks so much for your replies! If thi...Hi Matt,<br /><br />Thanks so much for your replies! If this is becoming too drawn out though, please feel free to cut me off :)<br /><br />1) Thoughts on “inside baseball.” OK, I see what you were saying now. I’ve sometimes seen it referred to as “keeping up with the literature.” I’m not an academic, so I can take or leave whatever I want from the literature but even following a few research areas or journals and reading contents and abstracts is quickly overwhelming (sometimes I have to remind myself I’m not being paid to do it so I can let some of it go :) As an academic, that must be incredibly frustrating and I can see what you mean by “people who, even if encouraging and enthusiastic, suffer a comprehension gap.” It sounds very isolating.<br /><br />3) "“So, let’s distinguish, first, between being “in an argument”—like a fight—and “using an argument,” like an instrument.” “If we think of the instrument of argument on the model of a syllogism, then I think we’ll want to say that “explication,” as you outlined, is itself done in part by argument—to directly explicate what you believe and why is to show all the premises and inferences related to each other in the right way, i.e. in a way that avoids contradiction or bad inferences.”" ***Looking at "argument" as an instrument along the lines of a syllogism makes sense. This also ties into my other comment on the other thread and your response about "irrationalism." Basically, if you do have the "right" premises, but then your faulty reasoning leads to an incorrect conclusion, then you arrive at a "bad" outcome anyways despite your "right" starting point. And this would also connect to the means and ends of "immanent criticism." Interesting.<br /><br />4)"“concrete” as it relates to “shared premises” is a function of how many more premises one has to actually articulate to get a discussion off the ground. If you have to articulate too many (and thus maybe ruin the possibility of having “shared premises”), then the issue was perhaps not concrete enough. (Notice: what’s startling is that, by my definition, one can have a concrete debate about “abstract” philosophical issues.)" ***I like that way of putting it and it IS startling, but makes complete sense in this context. I can see how the concrete/abstract division would collapse.<br /><br />continued ...NathanKnoreply@blogger.comtag:blogger.com,1999:blog-24152639.post-13970155129120282722015-05-08T15:23:59.764-07:002015-05-08T15:23:59.764-07:00Hi Nathan:
Yes, one could easily make that case. ...Hi Nathan:<br />Yes, one could easily make that case. The Germans, especially, enjoyed doing that at the beginning of this century. The two most prominent, though different, stories of this type is the second-wave Marxists of the Frankfurt School (most especially, Horkheimer and Adorno's <i>Dialectic of Enlightenment</i>) and Heidegger's story, mainly later Heidegger (paradigmatically, in "The Letter on Humanism"). Those two kinds of stories have fit well with stories about the evils of imperialism and/or colonialism, as well as consumerism.<br /><br />But, I don't think <i>rationality</i> led to these bad things, exactly. Those stories are premised on the same Enlightenment myth that convinced us that something substantive called "rationality" will banish superstition and improve our material well-being. (What did I call it the other day? The "Enlightenment bias"?) It is about, as you say, what initial premises the reasoning is based on, but I don't think we can just count out the "practice of reasoning"--if you are bad at it, you will make bad inferences based on your "correct" premises. Better to think that rationality is a practice, and that good premises and good reasoning come together in an evolving lump (like holism suggests).<br /><br />If you want a short version of the story against "rationality," and a Rortyan perspective on it, you could see the close of <a href="http://pirsigaffliction.blogspot.com/2013/07/posthumanism-and-depersonalization.html" rel="nofollow">Posthumanism, Antiessentialism, and Depersonalization,"</a>esp. sec. 6.Matt Khttps://www.blogger.com/profile/05304261355315746372noreply@blogger.comtag:blogger.com,1999:blog-24152639.post-34203872855423385802015-05-08T15:10:00.863-07:002015-05-08T15:10:00.863-07:00...continued
9) “I am kind of curious about how ......continued<br /><br />9) “I am kind of curious about how [Rorty] would take a side and what it would look like and how he would justify it, considering his philosophical points.” Do you mean how Rorty would take a side <i>against the separatists</i>, like against people like Elijah Muhammad who have given up on the possibility that America might be made better for everyone? Ah, that he did frequently because he viewed the post-Marxist cultural left as having given up on America. That’s what AOC is all about, so that’s the book you would want. You presented the question this way: “Does [Rorty] just change the subject when challenged by the separatists or does he actually engage them in their own terms for example?” I think the way to think about his quarrel with them is to think of him as denying the premise of the question, that those are the only two options. As I think of it, he was saying in the bit I quoted in “Legacy” above that there <i>are no terms</i> in which to engage over the question of whether to have hope. He’s not changing the subject, though. For example, someone who has given up hope on America will say, “look at the terrible things it has done, and the terrible things it still does.” Rorty will say, “Yep.” He concedes all of it where it’s true. They will say, “to reform the system is to just keep with the status quo, and to buy into reform means you are just being duped by the American dream.” Rorty will say, “Maybe, but do you have any other options?” (That’s a genuine “maybe.”) They will say, “the only way to change these terrible things is through a revolution of the system.” Rorty will say, “That’s unrealistic, or bloody and undesirable.” We could keep on like this, but it will just go around in circles, though I’m not sure it changes the subject. It’s ultimately just a bet on what will more likely produce the vision of an egalitarian society that the Enlightenment gave us hope for. There’s something good to be said about either bet. The problem, perhaps, was that Rorty couldn’t imagine a bloodless revolution of institutions (let alone a successful one in thought, whatever that might mean), nor that a bloody revolution of the United States was likely to produce anything better. Bloody revolutions, as history has shown, are crapshoots. America already got pretty lucky, especially when compared to the French Revolution, so why risk all those lives? And what would a bloodless revolution even look like, if not some long, painful process of reform? So, if reform is the only real option, then hopelessness is counter-productive. That’s what he says in AOC, in the third chapter, basically. It makes perfect sense to feel hopeless. It’s just a terrible feeling that probably won’t help your situation.Matt Khttps://www.blogger.com/profile/05304261355315746372noreply@blogger.comtag:blogger.com,1999:blog-24152639.post-37629524579303884782015-05-08T15:09:25.926-07:002015-05-08T15:09:25.926-07:00…continued
7) “That’s section sounds funny, as y...…continued<br /><br />7) “That’s section sounds funny, as you try not to fall into one bias and then another to justify your position, I often find myself in the same boat :) (is this an example of what might be called postmodern paralysis in action?)” Heh, I should hope not. I don’t know what to call what I was doing there, stylistically, psychologically, or philosophically. Whatever it was, though, must be all three at once. I think it owes a lot to Stanley Cavell’s mode of philosophical introspection, though any number of my favorite writers display attitudes and written modes that contribute. I think what sounds weirdest is the “maybe”—that’s something I’ve tried harder and harder to deploy when I really mean it. I think it’s hard for us, and philosophers in particular, to think in terms of what may be, <i>especially</i> about ourselves. It’s hard to find our way to those points at which we feel genuinely, and maybe <i>should</i> feel genuinely, ambi-valent (as Kenneth Burke would’ve emphasized the word). But those might be the most philosophically important points. (Notice, you’re right: if you’re genuinely ambivalent, then that produces paralysis in action, and as you say, <i>is</i>, oxymoronically, paralysis <i>in action</i>.)<br /><br />8) “If I understand you correctly, would Richard Dawkins be a ‘poster boy’ of [intellectual arrogance]?” Oh, yeah. I don’t care much for Dawkins. He’s lately the worst of what Dewey derided as “militant atheism.” I don’t see much cause for it. One can point to the wars and cruelty clothed in religion all one wants—it’s still just clothing. Take care of power and religion will take care of itself.<br /><br />continued...Matt Khttps://www.blogger.com/profile/05304261355315746372noreply@blogger.comtag:blogger.com,1999:blog-24152639.post-7547144879766163632015-05-08T15:08:36.061-07:002015-05-08T15:08:36.061-07:00…continued
5) “…it seems like most of what is co...…continued<br /><br />5) “…it seems like most of what is commonly thought of as ‘argument’ is really just establishing and defining premises (aka propaganda)? ... Once all those ‘premise ducks’ are in a row, it seems like the conclusions and agreements would be fairly apparent.” Yeah, I think this is what gives the lie to our usage of “argument,” what punches up the obscurity in it I suggested above. I’m not sure it’s useful to narrow down what we call “argument” to such a point that it almost vanishes. That’s why I redescribed “explication” above. But also, there’s the obvious irreality of “if we could just get our premises right, then everything else will follow….” But let me redescribe the consequence of this irreality from your quasi-paranoid so-to-speak of “my cultural enemies are all around me!” You’re right, and also that this isn’t initially obvious, but all this is is a function of <i>our lives being poorly described in terms of “premises.”</i> As pragmatists, we can’t forget that in the background is the Great Defining Premise of Philosophical Pragmatism: beliefs are habits of action. As I say somewhere else, our beliefs are not like marbles in the bag of our “self.” A belief should be thought of as a point-mass, which is to say a hypothetical construct we make up in order to do apply math to physics (or here, logic to life). We might say that an explicit belief only comes into being when we are forced to account for something in our immediate environment—after that, it submerges itself back into the roiling mass of our habits. (Compare: you aren’t always aware of your habit of scratching your nose when you have four aces—principally because you aren’t always playing poker.) This means that the reason agreement can be so difficult sometimes is because there are so many possible (hidden) habit/belief/premises that condition a person’s thought that might come up at any moment. Take your example of “if we all agreed on what ‘decency’ <i>meant</i>…”—that is a perfect example of something not <i>concrete</i> enough, as I defined concreteness above. Because as Wittgenstein points out about all rules, a rule needs a fresh interpretation every time you apply it, and there’s no controlling what that interpretation will be except another rule, but then that rule would need a rule controlling <i>its</i> interpretation…. Here the point becomes: there are so many intervening habits that can come into play when applying a principle/premise upon one’s action that discussion of what to do about this might not be best done in terms of <i>principles</i> (like “be decent”). And maybe this is why your inclination toward “explication” in discussions with fraught natures (like political discussion) makes sense—it’s a way of showing your habits and how they fit together and how they lead to actions you want to convince others are a good idea.<br /><br />6) “So the purpose of reasoning towards a justification (or what was previously called a foundation) for your contingent beliefs is to demonstrate to yourself and others why those beliefs should be held.” Yeah; I like “demonstrate to yourself and others.” It’s important, I think, that we sometimes stop ourselves from saying “this is the way I am” to wonder if this is the way I should be. Or, to put it in a weirder way, to not just be who you are, but that you <i>should</i> be who you are. That can be weird because we often treat it as a fact that we are who we are. But adulthood needs to be some sort of normative endorsement of ourselves as we take responsibility for who we are from our parents.<br /><br />Continued…Matt Khttps://www.blogger.com/profile/05304261355315746372noreply@blogger.com