Steve said:
It is interesting that you bring up two different senses of the term
metaphysics. I just wrote a letter to Pirsig on that exact topic to see if he
would offer any clarification. The letter I wrote is posted on my blog here:
http://www.atheistichope.com/2010/01/i-recently-sent-this-letter-to-robert-m.html
dmb says:
I saw your letter to Pirsig the other day. Please let me know if he answers and
how he answers.
Among other things, Larry Hickman compares Rorty's stance toward metaphysics to
Dewey's stance in his "Pragmatism as Post-Postmodernism: Lessons from John
Dewey" (Hickman is Director of the Center for Dewey Studies and Professor of
Philosophy at Southern Illinois University.) He makes a case that Dewey
reformed metaphysics along naturalistic lines whereas Rorty (and many
postmodern thinkers) think metaphysics is dead. He also makes a case that
Pragmatism is "a precise theory of meaning, truth, and inquiry, or perhaps
better put, it is a closely related family of precise theories of meaning truth
and inquiry", most of which Rorty (and postmodernism) also take for dead. He
explains how Dewey can reject SOM, Cartesian dualism, foundationalism,
essentialism, supernaturalism, reifications and all that other bad Modern
stuff, just like Rorty and the postmodernists, while avoiding the problems of
postmodernism (such as relativism and the other forms of intellectual paralysis
it causes).
"Dewey's post-postmodernist metaphysics, then, constitutes an attempt to
reconstruct that enterprise along naturalistic lines. In EXPERIENCE AND NATURE
he works out what he had tentatively advanced ten years earlier, in 1915, in
his essay "The Subject Matter of Metaphysical Inquiry." He continues to eschew
speculation about first and last things, he continues his attempt to undercut
reliance on unwarranted hypostatized entities, and he treats inquiry into Being
qua Being as a historical curiosity.
He also denies the claims of those who argue that there is no longer any place
for metaphysics. He attempts to take account of the fact that the generic
traits of existence are too complex to be the subject of common-sense
observation and too general to be the subject of scientific experimentation. ...
,,,Dewey gave up the word, but not the enterprise. As for the enterprise, or
what he had accomplished in terms of reconstructing the traditional discipline
of metaphysics, he happily stood by that. And why? Simply because the point of
recognizing generic traits, as he put it, 'lies in their application in the
conduct of life: that is, in their MORAL bearing provided MORAL be taken in its
basic broad human sense' (LW 16.389)."
This attitude is compared to Rorty's. Hickman quotes him saying, "Liberals have
come to expect philosophy to do a certain job - namely, answering questions
like 'Why not be cruel?' and 'Why be kind?' - and they feel that any philosophy
which refuses this assignment must be heartless. But that is a result of a
metaphysical upbringing. If we could get rid of the expectation, liberals would
not ask ironist philosophy to do a job it cannot do, and which it defines
itself as unable to do." Hickman adds,...
"Of course there is an irony that Rorty may not have fully appreciated. The
positivism he dislikes and the postmodernism he apparently likes, share an
interesting trait: they both hold the position that philosophy is incapable of
addressing ethical issues such as the ones that Rorty raised in the passage
just quoted. In the case of positivism it is because such issues are consigned
to the jam-packed realm of everything that is noncognitive. In the case of
Rortian postmodernism, it is because there is no adequate common denominator
for human experience."
In the Dewey quote above, the emphasis on the term "moral" is emphasized in the
original. By contrast, Rorty thinks our hands are tied morally and the best we
can have is "groundless social hope". So which version of metaphysics do you
suppose the MOQ is? As I see it, Dewey and Pirsig both expose the positivist's
anti-metaphysical stance as itself based on metaphysical assumptions and they
both see that kind of scientistic amorality as a pretty serious problem, as one
of the central targets in their criticisms of modernity. In that sense, I
think, they'd view Rorty's stance as part of the problem, as a particular
version of the problem. In both cases, radical empiricism is part of the
solution, the pragmatic theory of truth is part of the solution, reintegration
of the affective domain is part of the solution and all of this is grounded in
experience. Experience becomes the common denominator in this reconstructed
naturalistic metaphysics.
Now if you go down to the New Age "Metaphysical" book store, they'll tell you
something else entirely. There, metaphysics means that transparent rocks can
heal you and the universe WANTS you to have a new car and a rockin girlfriend.
I'm pretty sure all the pragmatists would disapprove of that meaning for the
term.
I think metaphysical assumptions are the sort of thing you always have whether
you think about it explicitly or not. They're like opinions. Everybody has them
and most are just unexamined inheritances. For a pragmatist, the question is
not about whether or not our assumptions correspond to the way reality really
is but rather how well do our assumptions work in experience. How well do the
ideas function in explaining the past and guiding the future? As the moral
concerns discussed above show, pragmatic truth is not just about bald
expediency of course. But we really do need ideas that don't paralyze us with
respect to basic things like promoting kindness and preventing cruelty. As I
see it, if your stance won't allow that, then it isn't any good and it's time
to get a new idea.
Thanks,dmb
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