Hey DMB,
Matt said: 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. DMB said: 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. Matt: When you say that you don't see how the pragmatist collapse of the SOM gap puts an end to epistemology, that's why I framed Rorty's intercession into pragmatism as a matter of rhetorical choices. If one stipulates that epistemology is possible only if there is an epistemic gap, then its easy to see how collapsing the gap shoves the area aside. What Rorty's usually criticized for is ignoring other things that people want to call epistemology. Which is fine, we can redefine the term, there are no authorities dictating how we have to use them (unless you're taking an exam). The trouble for Rorty is that his argument isn't so much that epistemology is only possible if there's an epistemic gap, but that the area is only _interesting_ if there is an epistemic gap, there is only work for people distinctively known as philosophers, as opposed to other inquirers like scientists and literary critics, if there is an epistemic gap. Rorty wrote a little while ago, when pressed on this kind of point by Michael Williams, that he wished he'd never written PMN with reference to things like "metaphysics" and "epistemology." If he had to do it all over again, he'd have stuck to dominating metaphors, and the problems they engender, rather than getting bogged down in haggling over what metaphysics or epistemology is. That's one reason why he advocated ignoring the terms, because everybody just defines them the way they want anyways, so everybody who advances a theory leaves themselves open to ignoring such-and-such from somebody defining the terms another way. So, my answer to "Why should we think [epistemology, or metaphysics for that matter] is dead rather than just moving in a different direction?", is that it doesn't exactly matter that much between the two of us which we think because they both amount to the same thing for us: moving in a different direction. The questions I have about what you fill the gap with are about what it actually amounts to and how interesting that different direction is. Like methods of inquiry. Why would philosophers be better at investigating the methods of science than scientists, who are the ones actually using them? It seems to me that whatever that inquiry would be, it would be more like sociology than either what philosophy has traditionally composed itself as or even, say, physics. Or "legitimate knowledge". Why would a philosopher know more about what makes up a legitimate piece of science or literary criticism than a scientist or literary critic? Particularly when it comes to this one, I think legitimation is entirely a matter for people in the actual discipline than those from without. That being said, an investigation into things like methods and what counts as legitimate knowledge in physics or literary criticism would be interesting (and, from experience, is indeed interesting), but when people suggest successors to epistemology (particularly people who are philosophers) I always wonder whether they're thinking more like Quine, who thought a philosophy of science would limn the true structure of reality, or more like Kuhn, who essentially birthed the sociology of science. Quine bad, Kuhn good. But Kuhn's more like intellectual history. 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/
