Excellent stuff Matt, As well as "retro-pragmatism" and "obi-philosophy-kenobi" I particularly like this phrasing ... "confusion of causation with justification". Not seen that before, but sounds just like where I'm coming from.
Much food for thought. Must read that Putnam collection; been on and off my "list" for a while. Thanks Matt, Ian On Sun, Mar 29, 2009 at 10:51 PM, Matt Kundert <[email protected]> wrote: > > Quine's "Two Dogmas of Empiricism" is thought of by most analytic > philosophers as the watershed moment in the destruction of logical > positivism. He may have been the first major post-linguistic turn > philosopher to identify themself as a pragmatist (and here I'm not counting > his Harvard colleague Morton White in the equation). Replaying the death > agonies of logical positivism is a good way of seeing where Pirsig's > philosophy ties in with the professional dialectic, and that paper is a must > read in that sense. > > What Quine wanted to do was purify empiricism, which in its post-linguistic > turn phase is what logical positivism was supposed to be a form of. Analytic > philosophers, ever since somebody thought it would be brilliant to turn to > the study of the way we use words (whether mainline positivists like Rudolph > Carnap and A.J. Ayer or Oxford/ordinary-language philosophers like P.F. > Strawson and Gilbert Ryle), thought their job was to study "meaning," to find > the meanings of words, display how meaning was created, etc. "Conceptual > analysis" became what philosophers thought they did, what their special > provenance was in relation to the other disciplines. It promoted the thought > that, since science was the empirical discipline, science would tell us about > the stuff of the world, but philosophy would explain to science what their > words meant. > > How empiricial is that? is roughly the thought that motivated Quine. The > very idea of "conceptual analysis" was of basically an a priori discipline, > an activity where one didn't have to study anything in the world, but could > just sit in your armchair and figure the stuff out--just like Descartes' > problems of other minds and the external world. But wasn't the motivation > behind logical positivism the destruction and avoidance of pointless > metaphysical problems, weird things like whether there was anything going on > outside your door ("leave your office" would have been G.E. Moore's reply), > which are specifically produced by a kind of armchair speculation that > required no input from the world? > > Quine's first dogma was the analytic/synthetic distinction, something Kant > had made up at the spur of the moment in the First Critique as a way of > splitting the difference between the Rationalists and Empiricists (only so > named because of Kant's work). Kant's distinction became the basis of the > distinction between statements whose meaning and truth was derived _only_ in > virtue of their relationship to other statements ("analytic statements" such > as "All bachelors are single") and statements whose meaning and truth one not > only needed other statements, but also participation of the world to figure > out ("rocks fall to the earth," the truth of which can only be determined by > a synthesis of the meanings of each individual word and then looking out into > the world). Science would do the "looking out into the world" bit, but they > would need someone to help them with the other bit, the analytic statements > you don't need experiments for. This, for someone like Quine, basically just > looks like a Rationalist throw-back, a haven for the Cartesian speculation > the sober-minded English Empiricists had wanted to throw cold water over. > > By ditching the first dogma, we eliminate the basis for an armchair, a priori > discipline like "conceptual analysis," thus putting us back on the path of a > thorough-going empiricism. Quine, it is largely thought, didn't quite make > it by himself, however. His second dogma, reductionism, was the pernicious > reduction of knowledge statements to sensations, or "immediate experience." > Pirsigians shouldn't be fooled by the term into thinking that Quine's dogma > swings at Pirsig. Radical empiricism was supposed to be as much a > purification of the terms of empiricism as the post-positivist dialectic was. > Quine, though, didn't in the end mean the end of that dogma was much as he > should have. He erects in his work the idea of "observation sentences" as > opposed other sentences, and the latter end up playing the same role as > before. And then there's Quine's over-bearing scientism, his penchant for > saying that everything can/should be reduced to physics, the only language > that "limns the world." > > Philosophers dissatisfied with Quine's tack at reductionism have increasingly > turned to Wilfrid Sellars, a by comparison neglected figure that I believe > recently has been receiving a substantial reappreciation (primarily motivated > by the rise of Robert Brandom and John McDowell). Sellars' seminal > "Empiricism and Philosophy of Mind" was produced at just about the same time > as Quine's "Two Dogmas," but received much less attention. Sellars' enemy in > that paper is what he calls the Myth of the Given, the idea that there is a > bald experience given to our minds that we simply add the hairplugs of > language to. This was the attack Quine should have made on reductionism, but > didn't. > > Sellars, too though, didn't quite make it to a pure empiricism. He, too, > liked to talk about science as the end all be all, and his way of making the > point was a distinction between our manifest image of the world and the > scientific image of the world. The manifest one was the fake one that, while > not reducible to the scientific one, needed to be dealt with properly in the > face of the true, scientific image--and philosophy could help with its > "conceptual analysis." > > Rorty liked to say that it was almost as if Sellars and Quine were only able > to reject the one dogma of the other, and needed their respective second one > to retain their self-image as analytic philosophers. Donald Davidson, > Quine's greatest pupil, helped ditch the whole damn thing and finally set us > on the path of a fully purified empiricism. He called the third, and > hopefully last, dogma of empiricism the scheme/content distinction. This > distinction underlayed the others and its motivation was to call into > question the idea that language was a kind of scheme we layed on top of > experienced content. This, too, was a Kantian relic, that between what he > called "concepts" and "intuitions," such that one could say, "thoughts > without content are empty, intuitions without concepts are blind." > > This is what Kant meant by the mind constituting the world--the world's > there, sure enough, but its only presentation to us is by virtue of our > mind's constitution of it in our own mind. (Carefully compare to Pirsig's > discussion of Kant in ZMM.) But this raises the Cartesian spectare again, > that we are trapped in our own minds, maybe knowing that there are other ones > out there, but not knowing whether we are constituting the world in just the > same way--if we are using different conceptual schemes, we might be living in > different worlds. Please Obi-philosophy Kenobi--tell us what our conceptual > schemes are and how they constitute. Davidson's ditching of the > scheme/content distinction again destroys the basis for an armchair, > speculative discipline and thrusts us all back into the same world, the one > no one has ever really left. > > The punchline to the story is that whereas Quine wanted to be both an > empiricist and a pragmatist, Davidson isn't sure what's left of either once > we pull the underpinnings out. Rorty and Hilary Putnam, the two most > prominent post-linguistic turn self-identified pragmatists, themselves have > wondered explicitly about what is left of empiricism once one ditches all the > dogmas of positivism, though they think the core insights of James and Dewey > untouched. Even more weird is Brandom calling his Sellarsian inferentialism > a kind of rationalism--a much different sort than the 17th century Europeans, > but the resurrection of the title bearing out how much damage Brandom thinks > Locke's confusion of causation with justification caused philosophy. > > I think it an open question as to whether retro-pragmatists like David > Hildebrand are right about there being an important line to be drawn between > classical pragmatists like James and Dewey and neopragmatists like Rorty and > Putnam, one roughly centering around the "radical empiricism" of the former > set, and supposed lack there-of in the latter. I still tend to think that > there's simply an unimportant line between the classical tendency to talk > about experience and the neo tendency to talk about language, with no further > major philosophical implications. > > Be that as it may, reading Quine or Sellars or Davidson can help one figure > out what kind of empiricist one wants to be by helping see what the > destruction of logical positivism pans out to mean. I've made this > suggestion before, but there is an excellent collection of essays by Putnam > called "The Collapse of the Fact/Value Dichotomy," the first three of which > set out the older Empiricist Background, take you through Quine, and then > address the implications to the positivist doctrine of emotivism, that values > are somehow less real--the primary concern of Pirsigians. It is a great way > into Quine and these related issues, whatever one ultimately thinks about the > linguistic turn. > > Matt > > _________________________________________________________________ > Hotmail® is up to 70% faster. Now good news travels really fast. > http://windowslive.com/online/hotmail?ocid=TXT_TAGLM_WL_HM_70faster_032009 > 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/ > 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/
