[Wittrs] Re: Clarity is Arising
- From: "SWM" <SWMirsky@xxxxxxx>
- To: wittrsamr@xxxxxxxxxxxxx
- Date: Sun, 01 Nov 2009 05:32:56 -0000
--- In Wittrs@xxxxxxxxxxxxxxx, Joseph Polanik <jPolanik@...> wrote:
>
<snip>
>
> you're fond of saying that the purpose of philosophy is to get 'clear on
> things'.
I am.
> well, the point of these questions is to become clear about
> certain bedrock issues by unlearning language related confusions.
>
Yes, but sometimes the fact that we go round in circles is evidence that we are
not making things clearer but the opposite, as I think is the case here. I
don't believe you and Cayuse can resolve your dispute over this because
language allows you each to justly claim being right -- in a sense, and that
the other is wrong, in a different sense. Does this mean seeing that you are
not really at loggerheads except linguistically is the key to clarity. Failing
to see it, is a reason to keep arguing the issue. It's up to you and Cayuse to
see it or not. All I can do is point out this problem.
> >the points you and Cayuse have been making are not really
> >contradictory, they are just different.
>
> I am saying that, in a sentence like 'I am experiencing an afterimage',
> 'I' is a referring word; and, Cayuse is saying that 'I' is not a
> referring word in such a sentence.
>
It's a language issue. You both share a roughly similar sense of the
phenomenological dimension of things. You two just can't agree on how to talk
about it. I have discussed this and similar issues with both of you at various
times and I am not surprised that neither of you can come round to seeing the
validity of how the other wants to speak while realizing it doesn't really
impinge on your own position. But you would both do better to see that and get
on with more substantive issues. But I don't expect that to occur.
> these sound like contradictory positions to me; they can't both be true.
>
They can if it's just a matter of how one chooses to phrase things. By the way
and for the record, I am much more comfortable with your form of phrasing here
than with that of Cayuse's which I think is more radical and outside the pale
of ordinary language. But I think we can all agree that there is something it
is like to be a bat without imagining that this implies that we are not
subjects (experiencers experiencing). But then Cayuse doesn't deny that we
experience, only that it's the wrong way to speak about it, offering instead a
highly artificial locutionary replacement. Why bother?
Grasping the point is enough. There's no need to restructure our language, too.
> >You are only at loggerheads in the ways you speak about this. And that
> >is of little account in terms of the substantive issues, such as those
> >that engage the sciences.
>
> you and I are not scientists; and, philosophy is what happens when
> thinkers converse while waiting for scientists to discover more facts
> that might be relevant to the topic of conversation.
>
There's good and bad philosophy like everything else. Just philosophically
discussing something doesn't imply wisdom or insight. The point is to see the
point and move on, not gnaw the bone forever.
> on the other hand, we are both language users and we are both
> experiencers; so, there is no reason to suppose that we are at any
> disadvantage when it comes to philosophical inquiry.
>
> Joe
>
I have no idea what that means.
SWM
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