Matt said: Here's a distinction: when Johnny raises his hand in class.... DMB said:
What are you saying here? Is Johnny and his fart joke an analogy for James and his doctrine of pure experience?.... Matt: No, I was responding to your umbrage about pigeon-holes and my use of "ignoring experience." I was simply trying to clarify that I was using a very commonsensical notion, one that I think we should return to our discussion of experience because I think it underscores a part of the Jamesian/Pirsigian rhetorical tact I don't think is very handy in pursuing the pragmatist agenda. DMB said: Okay, it seems we agree that radical empiricism collapses the subject-object divide. We also agree that the world is known through language. And I think we agree that an important question then has to be asked: What role does pure experience play? In effect, this question asks what role does Quality play in Pirsig's Metaphysics of Quality. Are we agreed as to the content of the topic, at least? Matt: No, but I think this latest attempt on your part to see where we are may zero us in closer. The reason is that I think this may be the first time you've agreed that "the world is known through language." When I've previously posited that understanding of language and knowledge, you've suspected foul play and rejected it (much as I suspect foul play with other locutions and idioms). However, if we are both in agreement on the collapse of SOM (which as Pirsigians we always have; the new part is that we've agreed that whoever does so successfully counts as a "radical empiricist," which I consider a significant stride in bridge-building) and that knowledge is a linguistic tool (where there is no language, there is no thing called "knowledge"; I'm mainly restating the points to regain your assent on variations I would accept), then as I see it, we've accepted much, if not all, of what goes into Pirsig's concept of Quality and Rorty's "linguistified" version of Deweyan pragmatism. The reason I say "if not all" is because I take the other points, particularly the value-ladenness of reality, to follow from the rejection (e.g., Dewey saying that reality is an evaluative term). I said "no" at the very beginning here more so I could take the opportunity to restate where we are. More accurately I should've said, "sort of, under certain qualification." The qualification is that I'm not wondering what role pure experience plays, in the sense of what role do rocks play, i.e. we know what rocks are, what role do they play? I'm wondering what role "pure" plays in describing the concept of experience. I don't know how to identify "pure experience," which is why I have difficulty getting a grasp on it, which is what I would need to first to affirm _or_ reject. All I have now is a preference for not using the locution (because I wouldn't know how to use it). So, I'm not saying that we should ignore pure experience. I don't know what it is, so I can't suggest ignoring it. I'm not sure what the concept is referring to. You bring up the train and hot stove analogies to unpack the notion, but I remain suspicious of those analogies. The way I read them, I'm not sure how you unpack them without the notion of "directness" that seems to me Platonic. You went back to Dewey to unpack the analogies, and I can agree with the Deweyan spin, the distinction between having and knowing. I consider this distinction to be the same as the one Rorty deploys between being caused to think something and having a reason to think something. We have experiences, we are caused to think something has happened. And then, on further reflection, we generate a linguistic pattern around the happening. What I think Rorty (after Quine, Sellars, and Davidson) has helped clarify is how that distinction works. The experience that happens is not bereft of linguistic attachment, not in the way Platonists have construed as the Given--a pure content that we apply a linguistic scheme to after the fact. The experience that happens is given linguistic enunciation by whatever linguistic patterning (or programming or acculturation or education) we already have at hand. So my view is this: you have two requirements in play to determine whether Rorty is a radical empiricist or not—1) reject SOM and 2) have a place for “pure experience.” We finally agree that Rorty rejects SOM, but you think this leaves us floating free without “pure experience” (you and many other professionals; professionals, I should add, that I have no doubt you can find many to back you up—I could even, and have on occasion, point the way to some of them—it is just that I have disagreements with them, too). However, on the construal of “pure experience” I’m seeing you use, I doubt that Rorty lacks such a component. If it counts as pure experience to think that there is a difference between causal chains and inferential chains, then Rorty has such a component. The way Rorty puts the point is that we could never become unanchored from experience/the world/reality because the distinction between anchored/unanchored is a Cartesian distinction—created when Descartes said that we might be radically wrong about the world because of the radical disconnect between subject and object. In other words, I have no doubt that you protested when you read earlier that we agree that to reject SOM makes you count as a radical empiricist. It is more than that, I suspect you thinking. And you’d be right, but I think that after a thorough rejection of SOM, everything else falls into place. I think a thorough pragmatism is a thorough rejection, which makes for a radical empiricist, and you are right, a thorough rejection would require a place for the distinction between causal and inferential chains. Some philosophers have conflated the two, but Rorty has spent some time untying them. The gist is that, once you reject the distinction between experience and reality, as Dewey did, you get to say that you could never be out of touch with reality as Descartes thought, and saying that has the force of meaning you never could swing free from the world and what’s in it. And that means that Rorty’s slogan of solidarity has the virtues of rejecting Objectivity while reaffirming the fact that every person themselves has their own connection to reality—and calling something true is what falls out when we mix everybody’s opinion together: no opinion is _dis_connected, as the Cartesian/realist tradition thinks, it’s just that not all opinions are true. My purpose in bringing up “ignoring” and its possible uses in the real world was to point out that, since we don’t have to worry about swinging free of the world as Descartes conceived (because we are Deweyans), there are actual uses of ignoring that the kind of philosophical rhetoric you were using seems to gloss over (much as Pirsig accused the logical positivists of ignoring a part of experience they shouldn’t). That’s the overview. However, I’d like to take up all four different avenues of assuaging your fears of Rorty (mainly because I haven’t read my way through Rorty’s corpus in a while and I’m writing about this exact thing in my ever-forthcoming paper in response to the paper you wrote last year). Doing so, however, will take the form of a brief, though fifty-some yearlong, reconstruction of Rorty’s evolution. Why? Because the way Rorty has talked about things has changed, though most of Rorty’s philosophy has remained the same (on my view). I think it’ll help elucidate many of the red flags you find in Rorty—the rejection of empiricism, epistemology, metaphysics, his taking the linguistic turn. Rorty begins his career talking explicitly about the difference between pre- and post- linguistic turn philosophy and what empiricism means. By tracing the line from beginning to end in Rorty’s career, hopefully I might give a general indication of how I see the line between classical pragmatism and Rorty’s late pragmatism. Since I can’t realistically expect you or anyone else to stay tuned in the whole time (even if I promise to be as concise as possible), here are my quick answers, which can be used as a grid to interpret the history of Rorty I will give. 1) “How Rorty escapes this charge [of free-floating conversation]”: Rorty escapes because the only way to think “free-floating” is an option is if you think there’s a distinction between experience and reality, knower and known. What Rorty rejects is the idea that there is an independent conception of reality (Bernard Williams’ phrase), not that there is a causally independent reality. As long as you acknowledge that, then I’m not sure what else we need because of this rhetorical question—how could we float free from our causal connection? (A good paper to look at is “Non-Reductive Physicalism” in ORT because it gives a description of what a non-idealistic, non-representationalist description of reality might look like.) 2) “Why Rorty rejects pure experience”: Rorty, as far as I remember, never addresses the locution “pure experience.” I have been extrapolating in my responses on behalf of Rorty. In my little rendition of Rorty’s history, I shall be trying to connect some of these dots. What Rorty rejects are Cartesian construals of concepts. So I shall be highlighting what he rejects (which will be by and large what you reject) and some of his redescriptions of things. 3) “How the realism/anti-realism debate ISN'T just an extension of the debates spawned by SOM”: Under one description, the realism/anti-realism debate is an extension of the debates spawned by SOM—as Rorty has tried pointing out. Of course, that doesn’t stop people from still painting Rorty and others as still being anti-realists. Rorty has taken time on occasion to differentiate versions of what others lump all together as anti-realism. I shall spend a little time on this during the rendition. (A good paper is his introduction to ORT where he explicitly takes this up.) 4) “What you think of the role played by pure experience or Quality”: Again, it depends. If “pure experience” means “causally independent,” then it plays that role. It refers to how we can’t think the tiger from hurting us, at least without getting our hands into it. And in this case, I question the use of “pure.” Why not just “experience”? In the case of what role is played by Pirsig’s concept of Quality, that’s a much larger question because it plays many roles in Pirsig’s philosophy. But how about this: Quality is reality, there’s no difference, we couldn’t swing free of it if we tried, and we are constantly involved in valuing some parts more or less than others (“less” being the broader label under which the act of ignoring Johnny and mirages would fall under). Consider the following posts on Rorty to be like a classic “literature review.” Maybe some of it will prove useful, maybe not.Matt _________________________________________________________________ Boo! Scare away worms, viruses and so much more! 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