Hi DMB, Gav, John, Bo,
I waited for Matt to weigh in, but it looks like he's staying out of
this one.
Steve said:
What we would need to adopt any of these systems and what no one has
ever invented is a method that stands outside of metaphysics that
tells us how to choose between such systems. I think the recognition
of the shortcomings of the project of creating a metaphysical system
is what Rorty means by ironism. To be ironist about a metaphysical
system is to use it for whatever purposes it is useful for without
thinking of it as closer to the one true account of the way things
really are than any other since the ironist when it comes to
metaphysics doesn't think of metaphysics as the project of getting
past some Kantian barrier between language and reality as it really
is--that we can get more or less in touch with reality by coming up
with the right sentences to describe reality and holding them to be
true. So my question about whether Pirsig is an ironist is concerned
with whether Pirsig sees the MOQ getting us in touch with reality as
it really is...Or something like that. I'm s
till hoping that Matt or someone will jump in and tell me what it is
I want to ask.
dmb says:
Okay, thanks. Here I can see a similarity with what Pirsig is saying
but there also seems to be a very importance difference. Both of them
would deny that they have crossed that Kantian barrier and both of
them would deny that our sentences correspond to reality as it really
is. In other words, they are both rejecting the notion of a single
objective truth or the correspondence theory of truth. Although this
description doesn't use the terms "subjective" or "objective", we can
still see that this would be Rorty's way of rejecting SOM. I strongly
suspect that this is the sort of thing Paul Turner had in mind when he
said that Rorty's view of things is about 90% the same as Pirsig's
view. But I want to talk about where that remaining 10% resides.
Steve:
I'm glad you see it that way. I think the "paintings in a gallery"
image shows Pirisg's ironist side. I think this term might be a good
way of talking about Bo's use of metaphysics and Pirsig and Rorty's
ironism.
DMB:
It seems to me that the ironist has to be ironic because he denies
that the Kantian barrier could ever be crossed but the MOQ's attack on
SOM has a way of getting unstuck. It says the Kantian barrier is a
product of the underlying metaphysical assumptions, not a schism in
nature of things as they really are. Further, the MOQ says there are
no "things" as they really are, no Kantian things-in-themselves.
Steve:
My reading of Rorty is that he would completely agree. His
anti-essentialism denies that there is an intrinsic nature of a thing
that we need to worry about. To know a thing is to me able to use a
thing or put it in relation to some other thing rather than to develop
a relationship with some essence of the thing as it really is beyond
appearances.
DMB:
I mean, I think Pirsig DOES see the MOQ as a way of getting us in
touch with reality as it really is but, because of the concept of pure
experience, the primary empirical reality is not composed of "things"
or any other kind of objective, pre-existing reality. In the MOQ,
experience is reality and so there is no such barrier to cross in the
first place.
Steve:
Though Rorty doesn't talk experiences and thinks of knowledge as a
linguistic activity, he also doesn't see anyway for language to be a
barrier between us and reality. It is instead a way of using reality to
get what we want or predict what others will do.
DMB
But I still like to know what it means to have a "final vocabulary" or
a "metavocabulary". I always understood the word to mean the total
body of words either in the language as a whole or the total body of
words knows to a particular user. It seems pretty clear that Rorty's
terms refer to subsets within the total body (final) and to something
beyond that total body of words (meta). This doesn't make sense in
such a way that there must be some big idea missing that would make
sense of it. It might seem like a flippant question, but in what sense
can a person have more than one vocabulary? Is he talking about the
various kinds of jargon used in various fields or is he talking about
the examination of metaphysical assumptions as such? The use of such
terms really needs some context, you know? Where is Rorty coming from
with these terms and what's he trying to do with them?
Steve:
I haven't read enough yet to try to unpack these terms.
Best,
Steve
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