Matt: Would you give it another try, cause I don't get it. Its clear that Dewey and James thought SOM created a gap and an epistemolgy industry rose up to try to fill it. I'm with you that far. But I still don't see how this puts an end to epistemology altogether. Seems to me that it only puts an end to the impossible kind and opens up the way for a more successful kind of empiricism. Same thing with truth. We can reject the quest for absolute certainty and still be very interested in methods of inquiry, legitimate knowledge and such. Dewey and James were doing exactly that, no? I'm guessing its the Rortys that would give up on all that sort of thing. I don't see why it has to be all or nothing. I mean, killing SOM doesn't kill epistemolgy so much as show the reasons for its lack of success in the past. Killing SOM makes epistemology possible for the first time, or so it seems to me. I guess that's the question. Why should we think its dead rather than just moving in a different direction? And I'd say its a much more modest direction that doesn't have anything to do with Kant or "philosophy as super-science", whatever that is.
dmb P.S. Have you seen my Essence lately? I may have accidentially sent it as an attachment in my last e-mail. Its no big deal. I was getting a little tired of it anyway. Its only worth mentioning because if you step on it your shoes will probably be ruined. ----------------------------------------> From: [EMAIL PROTECTED]> To: [EMAIL PROTECTED]> Date: Sun, 14 Oct 2007 23:59:48 -0500> Subject: Re: [MD] subject/object: pragmatism>>>>>>> Matt said:> ...Radical empiricism says experience IS the world. I want people to notice how the verb "to know" appears in the first, but not the second. The difference is that in traditional empiricism, you had to do epistemology, you had to study how we know things. In the second, you don't because it is assumed that we already know things about the world because we already are always connected to the world. This is why, if empiricism is an epistemological doctrine, pragmatists find themselves in the strange position of asserting a position that denies the problem area (much like their offering of a "theory of truth" that isn't a theory at all).>> DMB said:> Hmmm. I don't think I follow you here. How does the switch to radical empiricism mean we're now longer doing epistemology? Our last reading for class was Dewey's "the Pattern of Inquiry" and it seems pretty clear that he's redefining knowledge and truth along these new lines, not to mention radical empiricism itself. Is there some sense in which these are not epistiemological? I mean, "we are already connected to the world" and so there is no longer an unbridgable epistemic gap, but there is still the task of sorting out different kinds of knowledge, the methods of inquiry and what counts as truth or warranted assertions, as Dewey'd put it.>> Matt:> As you said, Dewey's process of reconstructing philosophy included redefining many of the key terms and projects, experience, reality, metaphysics, epistemology, etc. Rorty's trajectory from Dewey and James mainly involves the rhetorical choices in which terms we are going to bother haggling over with the traditionalists. I agree, Dewey is redefining knowledge and truth along new lines, and the sense in which they are not epistemological is the sense in which they don't answer any of the questions that Descartes and Kant built into the subject area of epistemology--they deny the questions (like, how do we get the subject and object back together?), which is why Dewey sometimes derisively referred to contemporary philosophers as being involved in the "epistemology industry".>> What Rorty argued in Philosophy and the Mirror of Nature is that once one gets rid of the epistemic gap, then nothing really remains in the area to form a suitable subject. All you have left to do is find suitable redefinitions of things like truth and knowledge so as not to repopulate that area. As an example of trying not to repopulate the area, take one of your examples of what philosophers would still be employed to do: "what counts as truth or warranted assertions". Would philosophers really be involved in that? Why would a scientist ask a philosopher if he's making a warranted assertion? Doesn't he already know if he's making a warranted assertion given the context of his scientific work, his hypothesis, experiments, evidence, etc.? I see most of the candidates you listed as repopulating the should-be-evacuated area because they sound like Kant's notion of philosophy as a super-science. I think pragmatists should be wary of that.>> Don't get me wrong: this doesn't spell the death of philosophy. There are things for philosophers to do, principally of the sorting kind of thing, getting things to hang together, as Sellars said. But I think we need to be wary of continuing old projects, and I don't think we should be too attached to old rhetorical flourishes, like "the study of knowledge.">> Matt>> _________________________________________________________________> Peek-a-boo FREE Tricks & Treats for You!> http://www.reallivemoms.com?ocid=TXT_TAGHM&loc=us> Moq_Discuss mailing list> Listinfo, Unsubscribing etc.> http://lists.moqtalk.org/listinfo.cgi/moq_discuss-moqtalk.org> Archives:> http://lists.moqtalk.org/pipermail/moq_discuss-moqtalk.org/> http://moq.org.uk/pipermail/moq_discuss_archive/ _________________________________________________________________ Windows Live Hotmail and Microsoft Office Outlook – together at last. Get it now. http://office.microsoft.com/en-us/outlook/HA102225181033.aspx?pid=CL100626971033 Moq_Discuss mailing list Listinfo, Unsubscribing etc. http://lists.moqtalk.org/listinfo.cgi/moq_discuss-moqtalk.org Archives: http://lists.moqtalk.org/pipermail/moq_discuss-moqtalk.org/ http://moq.org.uk/pipermail/moq_discuss_archive/
