Hi DMB,
Steve said to dmb:
The sorts of things that such philosophers who want to engage Rorty
often say is that Rorty "leaves himself open" to the charge of
relativism rather than arguing that Rorty is actually endorsing
relativism. I would think that any pragmatist shouldn't be
interested in making such a charge personally though they may want
to note that philosophers of the SOMish persuasion will call him
that. The thing is, those sorts of philosophers will say the same
thing about Putnam and Hildebrand and Rosenthal and Pirsig because
from the SOM perspective that is exactly what they are.
dmb says:
Well, I'm talking about the way Rorty (and Putnam) is criticized
within the world of pragmatism. Like I said, most pragmatists will
belong to one of the two schools of thought; classical pragmatism
and neopragmatism. The classical pragmatists like Rosenthal, Stuhr
and Hildebrand tend to think that radical empiricism is an
essential ingredient and so they are actually a lot more explicit
about their rejection of SOM than is Rorty. I mean, these people do
NOT take subject and objects for granted precisely because of the
way radical empiricism attacks it.
Steve:
I don't know how to settle a pissing match between the contemporary
classical pragmatists' radical empiricism, Rorty's panrelationalism,
and Pirsig's Quality to see who has rejected SOM most flamboyantly,
and I don't think it matters. None of these are SOMists which means
to me that none of these should be interested in accusing the others
of relativism since buying into absolutism-relativism is a just
another way of clinging to SOM.
Steve said:
I really don't see how there could be a debate among pragmatists
about relativism unless it is about Rorty "leaving himself open" to
such criticism by others. How can relativism be described in
pragmatic terms as something to be concerned about? Can you give a
definition of relativism as you see pragmatists applying to Rorty?
dmb says:
Like the article in the Stanford encyclopedia of Philosophy says,
"it is not surprising that Rorty's commitment to epistemological
behaviorism should lead to charges of relativism or subjectivism"
because his critics "balk at the idea that there are no constraints
on knowledge save conversational ones. Yet this is a central part
of Rorty's position, repeated and elaborated as recently as in TP
and PCP" and "Rorty's conversationalist view of truth and knowledge
leaves us entirely unable to account for the notion that a
reasonable view of how things are is a view suitably constrained by
how the world actually is". This "conversationalists view of truth"
is what I referred to earlier. That is to say, he construes truth
as intersubjective agreement.
Steve:
This is a misunderstanding of Rorty. I don't think I've ever read him
using the term, and if so I would think that it was only done in the
context of describing justification rather than truth. Since he is
criticized for not having a theory of truth it wouldn't make sense
for him to have a "conversational theory of truth." Rorty pretty much
says "truth is truth, let's leave it at that," because theories of
truth don't help us distinguish between true and false statements
anyway which is the only reason that we would want to pursue such a
theory.
DMB:
I think you're quite right to say that "pragmatists want to drop
the notion of 'how the world actually is' but that's because the
phrase refers to a single objective reality. And I think you're
quite right to think "that SOM philosphers would criticize what
he's doing" in order to maintain their belief in such an objective
reality. But I'm not talking about those critics and in fact I'm
not even aware of any such critics. The radical empiricist would
not oppose Rorty on those grounds but they still think that his
"conversationalist view of truth" or his linguisticized pragmatism
still makes them balk at the idea that there are no constraints on
knowledge except conversation. Instead of saying that our claims
are constrained by objective reality, they insist that our claims
are constrained by experience. Conversation would count as
experience but that's hardly the only kind that counts. More
specifically, in Pirsig's case, "conversation" is always going to
be a secondary thing that relies on concepts derived from a more
primary kind of experience. You know, for Pirsig dialectic is the
great usurper whereas Rorty has pretty much put it on the throne.
Steve:
Note that he is talking about knowledge rather than truth. He is NOT
saying that truth is only constrained by conversation. He sees truth
in the usual way. A statement is true or false independently of who
believes it or who makes a stronger case for their position.
Knowledge refers to claims to holding a "justified true belief" by
Plato's formulation. He is saying that the constraints on such claims
are conversational which is one more way of saying that no theory of
truth will ever help us settle the matter of whether what someone
claims to know is true. Such questions are always settled in
conversation. Knowledge is not merely believing the truth but also
being justified in believing the truth. Only in conversation can we
deal with justification.
Steve:
It's not that Rorty isn't open to criticism by smart people. It's
just that I can't see how a pragmatist or anyone not taking the
subject-object picture for granted could make the particular
criticism of relativism with respect to Rorty. I'm sure that
professional philosophers mean something more than what people
generally seem to be doing with the word relativism, but I also
can't tell what that is.
dmb says:
Let me put it this way. As I understand it, the "middle way"
rejects both sides. It rejects the notion of absolute values and
just as vigorously it rejects the notion that there are no values
at all. It is neither nihilistic nor absolutist. You seem to be
saying that pragmatist reject absolutism and therefore should have
no problem with relativism. I'm saying they're both equally
objectionable and that rejecting one doesn't have to mean an
endorsement of the other.
Steve:
No, I'm saying that someone who really has rejected SOM has by
definition lost interest in asking the question "is it objective or
subjective?" And no one who has stopped asking "is it objective or
subjective" would want to ask "is it absolute or relative?" So how
could a non-SOMer ever accuse someone of relativism?
This makes me wonder what you or the contemporary classical
pragmatists could mean by a relativist. What does it mean to you?
Let me put the issue another way. What sorts of things do you think
that Rorty needs to say before you or classical pragmatists in
general would be convinced that he is NOT a relativist?
Best,
Steve
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