Steve said to dmb:
Your concern that Rorty was unable to claim that, say, liberalism is superior
to fascism is unwarranted. He would argue that this is not merely a personal
preference like favoring chocolate to vanilla ice cream but rather that there
is good reason to support liberalism. He is just not going to argue that the
universe is configured in such a way that liberalism is demanded by reality.
Since you also do not see it that way I don't understand your big problem with
Rorty.
dmb says:
Really? You still don't understand why I have a problem with Rorty? So the
quotes from Hickman, Hildebrand, Pirsig and the Stanford Encyclopedia haven't
been helpful? I've used them all to explain why I have a problem with Rorty,
just in the last week or so. Hmmm. How about some help from Hilary Putnam,
then? (By way of Hildebrand) Putnam writes,
"It may be that we will behave better if we become Rortians ...But a fascist
could well agree with Rorty at a very abstract level - Mussolini, let us
recall, supported pragmatism, claiming that it sanctioned unthinking activism."
(RHF 24-25)
"Putnam is disturbed by the fact that though THIS messenger may exemplify our
values, the message itself does not. And the Rortian message, 'No more
Metaphysics', seems a rather ineffective way of promoting positive values.
'Would it not be better', Putnam writes, 'to argue for those directly, rather
than to hope that these will come as a byproduct of a change in our
metaphysical picture?'"
And
"For Rorty, nothing precontextual or prelinguistic can be appealed to as a
justification for assertions - talk is all we've got.The first reason Putnam
rejects this view is that it is unpersuasive and self-refuting. It is
unpersuasive because it is not explicated in a way that distinguishes it from
simplistic and (possibly) fascistic relativisms of the kind 'majority might
makes right'. To set it apart from THAT, Rorty must do more than appeal to his
OPINION that enthnocentrism just SEEMS CLEARLY BETTER. Without a more
substantive reason, why would anyone become an ethnocentrist?Rorty must attach
his appeal to some THING - e.g., the fact that ethnocentrism actually IS better
- if he ever intends to convince anyone. But this is what Putnam thinks
relativists are ACTUALLY doing. Rortyans, Putnam says, 'know very well that the
majority of their cultural peers are not convinced by Relativistic arguments,
but they keep on arguing because they think they are JUSTIFIED (warranted) i
n doing so, and the SHARE THE PICTURE OF WARRANT AS INDEPENDENT OF MAJORITY
OPINION (RHF 22, latter emphasis is Hildebrand's)
...Finally, Rorty's anti-metaphysical conclusion infers the wrong lesson from
classical pragmatism. 'Pragmatism', Putnam writes, 'goes with the criticism of
A CERTAIN STYLE in metaphysics; but the criticism does NOT consist in wielding
some exclusionary principle to GET RID OF metaphysics once and for all'".
(Again, emphasis is Hildebrand's)
And just so you know, Hildebrand's subheading within this chapter are "PUTNAM
ON RORTY; A MENACING RELATIVISM" and "THE ETHICAL DANGER OF EPISTEMOLOGICAL
RELATIVISM"
STEVE CONTINUED:...The difference only seems to me to be about whether you can
get any mileage out of the idea of "middle ground." But as I see things,
asserting pragmatism as middle ground between foundationalism and relativism is
akin to saying that the MOQ is middle ground between saying that Quality is in
the subject and saying that Quality is in the object. The answer isn't "a
little of each" or "half and half" but "mu." Both answers stem from premises
that MOQers and pragmatists do not accept.
dmb says:
I understand what you're trying to do with this analogy but it doesn't hold up.
It begs the question. All these quotes I keep feeding you are supporting
evidence that the answer to the question of a middle ground is definitely not
"mu". Hildebrand and Putnam agree that leaping over this middle ground is
precisely Rorty's mistake. And, apparently, your inability to distinguish
classical pragmatism from what Rorty is saying is predicated on the same
mistake. Hildebrand says that Rorty makes,
"an illegitimate inference from the unintelligibility of metaphysical realism
(especially the idea that words have meaning by virtue of a fixed totality of
things OUTSIDE them) to a total skepticism toward any representation relation
at all. This conclusion is not warranted. ...Putnam speculates that Rorty's
unwitting shortcut back to metaphysical realism (at least at the
metaphilosophical level) is due to his inability to shed the ideological
vestiges of positivism, his philosophical roots. While he no longer shares the
positivists' view that all meaningful statements can be reduced to patterns of
sensation, Rorty nevertheless is so desirous of SOME explanation (of how words
hook up with something outside themselves) that when he cannot get one he feels
compelled to conclude that words don't represent ANYTHING. To avoid the charge
of linguistic idealism, Rorty is spurred on to claim that we are connected to
the world 'causally but not semantically', but for Putnam this only
indicates that Rorty is 'in the grip of the picture that Eliminative
Materialism is true of the Noumenal World, even if he is debarred by the very
logic of his own position from stating that belief." (169)
This is what I meant so long ago in calling Rorty a broken-hearted positivist.
These guys are basically saying that Rorty never really gave up the objective
reality as thing-in-itself but rather simply gave up on ever being able to gain
access. I think that on some level he never escaped the grip of what we call
SOM. By contrast, Dewey was explicit about this.
I'm sure the following quotes from Hildebrand will cause Bo to humbly apologize
for ever suggesting that no intellectual ever rejected SOM and it's relevant
here too.
"An empirical approach to metaphysics need not presuppose a subject/object
dualism - indeed, if experience is perspicuously attended to, it should not.
..Since Dewey will not begin metaphysical inquiries by presupposing a
subject/object dualism, he does not need to ward off the same skeptical demons
that plagued Descartes. ..Dewey hoped that through examples and empirical
observations his distinction between primary and secondary experience would be
patent and its adoption might economize intellectual effort"
Notice that he is not only rejecting SOM here but taking up those two
categories of experience that I like to talk about so often. Primary and
secondary are dynamic and static or preconceptual and reflective. He also calls
them Had and Known. I learned recently that Jose Ortega y Gasset has a name for
this primary empirical reality or pure experience. He calls it "radical
reality". Looks like we can add another name to the list of Pragmatic radical
empiricists. But Rorty is not one of these.
"Rorty is convinced that attempts to systematically describe the world in
general terms are either banal statements of the obvious or the thinly
disguised religious dogma of self-appointed priests. But Dewey showed another
alternative was possible; metaphysics could investigate the world empirically
and hypothetically."
"To understand why Rorty is wrong", Hildebrand writes, "requires that we
briefly revisit and defend the underlying distinction between primary and
secondary experience, a distinction Rorty also rejects as 'bad faith'. (116-7)
I hope you'll ponder this, Steve. These guys are making strong points and I
think they're about as clear as can be expected. At the very least, doesn't it
show that there are reasons to have a problem with Rorty and reasons to
distinguish him from the classical pragmatists.
I mean, the suggestion that all this is just "rhetoric" on my part is a bit
preposterous, don't you think? These critics are peer reviewed pragmatists.
What better textual evidence could there be? Seriously? You're free to disagree
and you can dispute it but no reasonable person could dismiss it as rhetoric.
Besides, in the MOQ, rhetoric is just about the finest thing there ever was.
It's intellectual quality raised to the level of an art form. If that's what
you meant, then I'll apologize for doubting your level of reasonableness and
thank you for huge compliment.
Thanks.
dmb
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