Hi Ron,
Don't believe the hype! Though Dave has been trying to portray
Rorty's view of truth as intersubjective agreement, that is not at
all what Rorty means by truth. Rorty just doesn't think that there is
anything that we will learn about truth once we understand how to use
the word and understand how the word functions in sentences like
"'slavery is evil' is true if and only if slavery is evil." He
doesn't want to reduce truth to agreement at all. He just suggests
that we leave truth be. Truth is truth. We don't need any theory of
truth to explain what the essence of truth is such as "correspondence
to reality." Truth is some sort of agreement with reality, but we
won't get anywhere trying to say what that agreement must be like. At
least theories that have tried to do that haven't given us a way of
generating true statements or determining whether a statement is
true, which is the whole purpose of pursuing a theory of truth to
begin with. It seems unlikely that a theory of truth could ever do
that. So Rorty sees the pragmatist tradition not as defining truth as
"warranted assertability" but instead as making the suggestion that
we stop looking for a theory of truth and focus on how we justify our
beliefs. It is only in talking about justification that we start
considering things like "intersubjective agreement" and "warranted
assertibility."
Best,
Steve
On Aug 24, 2009, at 2:46 PM, X Acto wrote:
Hey Dave,
A thought, since I'm in the Plato way at the moment.
I think Rorty makes a similar contention about truth as
Plato does in that truth terms are agreed apon meaning
whereas Pirsig, James ect, are of the ilk that meaning
is grounded in experience.
Where Rorty is content to show that truth is contextual and many,
James and Pirsig anchor that contextuality to experience that the test
of contextual meaning is experience itself. Which totally
eviserates the charge
of linguistic relativity in terms of true-ness and falsity in
meaning and value.
It's what those terms of meaning and value are based on and refer to.
not merely an agreement. Santa claus is an agreement, superman is
an agreement
but are they testable and verifyable in relation to experience?
Rorty makes no distinction between the abstract and the concrete in
his terms
of provisional truths and by that it makes him a relativist for he
treats this
distinction as if it does not exist. Which makes truth or trueness
any idea
that is agreed apon. which is kinda dangerous if you ask me.
-Ron
----- Original Message ----
From: david buchanan <[email protected]>
To: [email protected]
Sent: Monday, August 24, 2009 2:13:25 PM
Subject: Re: [MD] Rorty's Relativism
Steve said to dmb:
Do you see Quality as an essence? If so, I think this issue would
constitute a departure from the tradition of pragmatism, so I
suppose not.
dmb says:
Steve, buddy, dude, you do not have to SUPPOSE that Quality is not
an essence. I've already described such notions as completely off
the table, as something we do not disagree about, as ridiculous and
asinine. And yet you keep coming back with this stuff. WTF?
Steve said:
It is a way of talking about radical empiricism. It is pure
experience. But then, Quality is more descriptive of what pure
experience is like than radical empiricists would be comfortable
with. You'll have some 'splainin to do among the academics anyway.
dmb says:
That splainin won't be very hard because James describes pure
experience as pre-conceptual and Pirsig describes Quality in
exactly the same terms. In fact, they both make the static/dynamic
distinction in exactly those terms. But thanks for your concern.
Steve said:
To say that Rorty is "trapped within...analogues" sets up an
appearance-reality problem that Rorty would deny.
dmb says:
No, it does not set up the appearance-reality distinction. The
appearance-reality distinction is within the analogues. If
experience IS reality, as the radical empiricist says, then
appearance is reality. Of course, it has to be understood that this
claim is not being asserted from within SOM. I mean, this is not a
claim that subjective appearance are the objective reality because
subjects and objects are both seen as derived concepts.
Steve said:Talking about reality won't bring us any closer to or
further from reality. It won't make anyone's immediate experience
any more immediate.
dmb says:
Well, according to Pirsig, talking about reality is exactly what
takes us further away from reality because reality is pre-
conceptual, pre-verbal experience. The immediacy of experience is
known best when we shut the hell up. That's probably THEE major
difference between Pirsig and Rorty. If a guy wanted to obscure
this difference, he'd do well to ignore that fact that Pirsig is a
philosophical mystic and ignore radical empiricism or at least
convert it to panrelationalism, as our fiend Matt does. I mean, if
we "take undescribed reality and put it under a description" we
have already lost the undescribed reality, we have only shown that
we have the wrong idea about what pure experience is, the wrong
idea about what "pre-intellectual reality" means. I agree that
"Rorty wouldn't have seen any use in appealing to undescribed
reality" and I think that's exactly what sets him apart from Pirsig.
Steve said:
I think all we have so far is that you think Rorty was a relativist
because he didn't talk about experience. But you haven't explained
why talking about experience gives you a better foundation for your
ethical or factual assertions than Rorty could claim to have.
dmb says:
Again, did we not already agree that nobody here is looking for a
foundation? (about five times) Why do you keep insisting that
foundationalism is the only way to avoid relativism. Quality is not
a foundation or an essence, an objective reality to which our talk
must conform or anything like that. It's not something behind
experience or the cause of experience or anything like that. It IS
experience and we know it directly as such.
Steve said:
Rorty saw reality as putting causal pressures on our beliefs. I
can't see the difference between saying Quality prevents relativism
and saying that reality simply won't allow us to have certain
beliefs. Neither view is any help in explaining why liberalism is
better than fascism when there are nut jobs out there who believe
that fascism is better. Rorty could make a strong argument for
liberalism and could argue against fascism as well as anyone and
far more effectively than most. What he wouldn't do in such
arguments is point to some ahistorical foundation for liberalism as
was done by the Founding Fathers, but then, neither would you, so I
find it strange for you to be calling him a relativist. Somehow you
must be claiming more of a foundation for your beliefs than Rorty
was willing to claim for his, but unless you are claiming Quality
as an essence, I can't see how it could serve as such a foundation.
dmb says:
There you go with the essences and foundations again. Sigh.
As you probably know (but apparently forgot) Pirsig's claims about
the superiority of liberalism over fascism is almost exactly the
opposite of an ahistorical claim. He makes that claim on the basis
of the evolutionary relationship between social and intellectual
values. Such claims cannot be supported by reference to pre-
intellectual experience. The difference between social and
intellectual values is practically defined by the difference
between fascism and liberalism. That difference is an historical
difference and is asserted from with static reality.
Thanks,
dmb
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