Ian said: I'd still be really interested where DMB fundamentally disagrees with Matt .... not for the sake of argument, but fundamentally, pragmatically?
dmb says: I've discovered that there is a contemporary debate between classical pragmatists and neopragmatists and I think my disagreement with Matt pretty much draws the same line. Anderson's "Philosophy Americana" describes neopragmatism as a forced merger between anglo-american analytic philosophy and classical pragmatism. To make this work, the classical form has to suffer some amputations, he says, and Rorty's way of sorting good Dewey the social critic from bad Dewey the metaphysician exemplifies this amputation process. Apparently, there is a neo-Peircian school that does the same to him. Like Rorty, these hacks also from a post-positivistic background. More specifically, what's the difference between adopting radical empiricism on one hand and on the other saying that we should change the subject? I haven't forgotten about the common rejection of SOM and all that, but classical emphasizes experience and neoprag emphasizes language and that largely shapes their overall character. Rorty seems more interested in producing a kind of anti-positivism and adopts parts of classical pragmatism to serve that end. Anyway, this difference makes classical and neopragmatism into distinctly different creatures. The terms I'm using here are ones you can find in any book on the topic, apparently. "Classical" and "neo" have popped up in Anderson and in my school textbooks. My emphasis on "pure experience" in particular is just a very specific version of the experience/language difference. Its that same old complaint I've always had, that a Rortyized version takes the metaphysics and the quality out of the metaphysics of quality. But its clearer to me now and comforting to know that our little debate reflects a larger debate among professionals. I like to think it's evidence that we haven't been wasting time. Not all of it, anyway. _________________________________________________________________ Your smile counts. The more smiles you share, the more we donate. Join in. www.windowslive.com/smile?ocid=TXT_TAGLM_Wave2_oprsmilewlhmtagline 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/
