Hi DMB,
DMB:
Like I've been trying to explain, the radical empiricist thinks there
is another way to support or purposes and intuitions, namely
experience. Experience is the test of truth, not conversation. This
doesn't give us any kind of absolute truth and here truth is just an
intellectual pattern that works in terms of guiding our experience.
You know, it's a species of the good. It is subordinate to Quality,
subordinate to experience but that doesn't mean it's not real or that
it's not important. It can't give us any ultimate foundations
(absolutism) but it can give us provisional "platforms" from which we
can push back against the nonsense, lies and bullshit. ...I mean, Iraq
had weapons of mass destruction or they did not. This is not going to
be settled by conversation. It's gonna be settled by finding the
weapons or by not finding the weapons. (They didn't.)
Steve:
What sorts of arguments do you think you can make as a radical
empiricist that Rorty could not make? (Rorty could say as well as you
could that no WMDs were found.)
When you say "Experience is the test of truth, not conversation" it
sounds like you are using correspondence to undescribed reality as a
criteria or a description of truth. But don't you need to describe
reality to use it as an explanation or criteria? It seems to me that
the radical empiricist is in no better epistemological position than
the neo-pragmatist.
It sounds like it may be a work in progress, but can you explain more
about your "provisional platforms" idea?
Best,
Steve
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