Matt said:I'd been trying for a while to think of a way of grouping people like DMB and Hildebrand who both identify as pragmatists and want to turn back the linguistic turn. As I understand it, there's a significant movement of people, not just pragmatists, who want to turn that clock back. But, on the other hand, they can't just be "pragmatists" because they've lived and learned through the rage of language-obsession that marks at least 75 years of American philosophy. You have to mark the range of wisdom learned between James and Dewey and Hildebrand and Barry Allen with something.
dmb replies:I'm very naughty for doing this instead of my homework. Oh well.I really don't know where you got the idea that classical pragmatists could or would turn back the linguistic turn. Pirsig's assertion that its analogies all the way down just about says it all. And radical empiricism is quite specific and explicit about the secondary nature of our conceptual categories. In both cases, we have a version of the basic postmodern idea that reality is socially constructed, that meaning is contextual and evolving. I mean, even James, in his own way, saw that language and meaning didn't map onto an objective reality. Even more importantly, I think, Radical Empiricism opens the door to all kinds of experience and thereby expands the very meaning of the word "empirical". It's important to incorporate the linguistic turn, but that's just a start. It seems to me that contemporary empiricism also needs to incorporate ideas from anthropology, religion, psychology, mythology, sociology and of course all kinds of cultural history. (Don't tell Krimel, but neurology and the biological sciences wouldn't hurt either.)I mean, what happens to epistemology when your motto is "man is the measure of all things"? It becomes central. Experience is the whole game, the basis and the goal. Okay, maybe that's an exaggeration but you get the point. _________________________________________________________________ Windows Live™: Keep your life in sync. http://windowslive.com/explore?ocid=TXT_TAGLM_WL_allup_1a_explore_042009 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/
