Matt said:
...And with this other missing half of radical empiricism, "where we aren't
allowed to ignore any kind of experience in our accounts," ...Rorty said, "As
in the case of other infallible pronouncements, the price of retaining one's
epistemological authority is a decent respect for the opinions of mankind."
("Mind-Body Identity, Privacy, and Categories") Rorty said that, and kept
repeating that riff throughout his career, because it may be true that from
your point of view you experienced God's voice, the harmony of the universe, or
the sight of water. We'll give you your experience, you just have to allow for
the fact that you might have been wrong,... When you say that we aren't
allowed to ignore any kind of experience, you're taking off from Pirsig's
denunciation of the logical positivists, that the positivists didn't think
values were real. (Lila, 113) Pirsig, however, is not only wrong about the
positivists here, he's also not facing up fully to the problems of radically
different worldviews/philosophies/paradigms. The first truth to realize about
life is that if we didn't ignore certain elements in our experience, thereby
highlighting other elements, we wouldn't be able to make it through the day ...
we should of course ignore some kinds of experience, like the kid in class
who's annoying you or the cold weather that's depressing you. Ignoring things
is a useful tool sometimes. ... The positivists thought values were real--they
just didn't think they were verifiable in the way that rocks were, and were
emotive responses, not rational like physics. They don't ignore values--they
have a pigeon-hole for them. A philosopher that can't place something is just
incompetent.
dmb says:
Okay, now I see that we have very different ideas about what radical empiricism
is. And its not just Pirsig's "rhetoric". I'm talking about James's prohibition
against exactly the kind of pigeon holes that puts certain kinds of experience
into a box called "distracting", annoying" or "emotive and unverifiable". As I
understand it, this is a problem that James, Dewey and Pirsig are all
addressing and that's what I'm talking about. This is not about "infallible
pronouncements", which are in fact seen as part of the same problem. I mean,
its the quest for certainty that puts the felt quality of things into a box
called "unimportant". I realize that nobody is going to deny that feelings and
such exist per se, but they have traditionally been left out of philosophical
accounts. This is a move against the same Platonic tradition, no? Isn't it true
that Plato and most every philosopher since has denigrated empirical reality as
untrustworthy. It is a class thing, you know? The farmers and craftsmen know
empirical reality, which is temporaty and contingent while we upper crust
educated types know the ideal, eternal reality by way of our expensive
concepts. As I understand it, the pragmatists are saying hey man, that's crazy.
Why should we decide in advance what's philosophically important? Are we so
sure about what counts and what doesn't that we can simply dismiss whatever
seems sloppy or difficult. This is supposed to be an antidote to the quest for
infallible pronouncements, a shift in the very opposite direction.
I don't have the time to give this a proper treatment right now, but I'll look
forward to it.
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