dmb said to Steve and Matt:
...I tried to show how the assumptions of subject-object metaphysics could be
seen in Rorty's position, even as he was denying the possibility of objective
knowledge. [Stanley Fish's idea of pragmatism]
"They believe with Richard Rorty that 'things in space and time are the effects
of causes which do not include mental states' - the world, in short, is 'out
there' - but they also believe that the knowledge we have of the world is not
give by it [the world], but by men and women who are hazarding descriptions
within the vocabularies and paradigms that are in place and in force in their
cultures. Those descriptions are judged to be true or false, accurate and
inaccurate, according to measures and procedures that currently have epistemic
authority, and not according to their fit with the world as it exists
independently of any description." "While there surely is such a world, our
only access to it, Rorty and Margolis say, is through our own efforts to
apprehend it. Margolis: 'The real world ... is not a construction of mind or
Mind ... but the paradigm of knowledge or science is certainly confined to the
discursive power of the human.'" (Stanley Fish quoting Rorty and Margolis and
explaining their neopragmatic position.)
Steve responded to the quote:
That "the world is out there" bit doesn't sound like Rorty. I've only read him
to use "out there" to poke fun at Platonists. ... Do you oppose the common
sense notion that you are in the world? I think we can keep that notion without
falling back into SOM so long as this notion isn't used as metaphysics. If it
is a tool for using reality rather than a way of getting at what reality really
is there is nothing wrong with saying the above as a denial of idealism as well
as scientific realism. ... I'm asking you if you disagree with what Rorty said.
Do you disagree with Rorty that you, DMB, are in the world? ... I don't think
Rorty is playing metaphysics here anymore than you will be when you finally
admit that you agree with the common sense notion that you exist in the world.
... if doing philosophy is a linguistic practice, then broadening this practice
to include the nonverbal can't be done. That's probably not what you mean doing
nonverbal philosophy. You mean that philosophy is not just a linguistic
practice. It is words *about* things that are not words and things that are not
things. It is words about experience, whereas the linguistic folks like Rorty
are fine with the common sense notion that words are about experience, they
don't want to make a big metaphysical deal about that common sense notion.
Matt responded to the Fish, Rorty, Margolis quotes too:
What Rorty was trying to wipe off was this idea of him as a "linguistic
idealist," which is how you frame him half the time, as a solipsist. "It seems
[Rorty's] not just giving us a reason to be comfortable with subjectivity. He’s
saying that it’s all we can have." (paragraph 8 of Buchanan's "Clash of the
Pragmatists") But now he's trying to articulate that there is a world out
there. He just can't win with you, can he Dave? ... It might be more profitable
for you, Dave, to articulate the specific reasons of why Rorty seems like he's
working with SOM assumptions, the things he says you wouldn't say, because
anybody can look at a block of text, pick out the use of words like "subject,
object, mind, world, in there, out there, etc." and claim the person's a
SOMist. We can do it to Pirsig. I hope that's not what you thought I've been
doing all these years. I hope I've been a little more articulate and
forthcoming about what the difference is between the external manifestation of
linguistic tokenings (i.e. "the words one uses") and what the words mean (i.e.
"the assumptions undergirding theoretical positions").
dmb says:
Well, I certainly am trying to articulate the specific reasons and the present
argument I'm making based on these Fish quotes from the New York Times is just
one example of this specificity. I'm certainly trying to bring this case to you
in your terms, using your guys. But the argument isn't that Rorty is a SOMer.
Not exactly, anyway. It's a little more subtle than that. In fact, the
accusation of linguistic idealism is very much connected to the accusation that
he's assuming a world "out there", a world of "causes that do not include
mental states". As the Fish article explains, this kind of pragmatism maintains
that we can't have access to this world, that our knowledge is limited to the
vocabularies and paradigms of our culture. Hildebrand explains this about as
clearly as it can be explained.
"His urge toward dismissal of 'antecedent objects' is complicated by the same
contradictions attending his discussions of 'causality'. Rorty asserts that
'aboutness is not a matter of pointing outside the web' yet insists that 'the
objects are there before minds come along and remain what they were while being
known.' Rorty applauds Nietzsche for his perspectivism and yet somehow manages
to occupy a sufficiently elevated standpoint to judge that 'Aristotle and
Galileo and Darwin were presented with EXACTLY THE SAME objects.I do not think
these are slips of the tongue or cases of 'irony' meant to stir the complacent
reader. Rather, they are consistent with his anti-realism, which needs to give
a nod to the reality of objective things so that it may then argue that access
to them is not just impracticable, but IMPOSSIBLE. Realizing that we are always
confined to SOME language game, a Rortian pragmatist is relieved of the
fruitless and timeworn task of inquiry into the 'real' character of objects and
can just talk about HOW WE TALK and what else WE MIGHT TALK ABOUT." (Beyond
Realism and Anti-Realism, p111, emphasis is Hildebrand's.)
dmb continues:
Here Hildebrand explains what it means to call Rorty a broken-hearted
positivist. Rorty's linguistic stance is a direct result of DENYING the claims
and goals of positivism. Once you conclude that there is no way to get at the
objective world independently of our culture's paradigms, talking about how we
talk is all that's left. This is what's behind the distaste for talk about
"experience". The positivists thought they could use sensory experience to get
at the objective world if it was undertaken carefully enough and this is
exactly what the post-positivist analytic philosophers are denying. But I think
this denial takes place within the same basic metaphysical assumptions of the
positivists, namely SOM. Notice what Steve's response was, for example. He
seems to be doing the same thing even as he was denying that any metaphysical
claims were being made. For example, Steve said,...
"Do you oppose the common sense notion that you are in the world? I think we
can keep that notion without falling back into SOM so long as this notion isn't
used as metaphysics. If it is a tool for using reality rather than a way of
getting at what reality really is there is nothing wrong... Do you disagree
with Rorty that you, DMB, are in the world? ... admit that you agree with the
common sense notion that you exist in the world."
The thing is, the world of pure experience is nothing like the world of
objects. So, yes, at this level of analysis I oppose the common sense notion
that I'm in the world. See, the radical empiricist does not claim that access
to this common sense world of objects is impossible. She's says the whole idea
that there is some epistemic gap to be crossed is itself a fake philosophical
problem. Radical empiricism begins by rejecting that premise in the first
place. A lot of the quotes from Pirsig and James that I posted yesterday were
about this attack on these assumptions. As you know, attacking SOM is central
to Pirsig's work in general but here it's crucial. Notice how radical
empiricism asserts "experience" as the way to eliminate SOM as "an artificial
conception of the relations" between "discontinuous entities". When you get rid
of that, there is no epistemic gap between subject and object and experience is
no longer conceived in terms of subjective experience in an objective reality.
Or rather you take that SOM picture as secondary to the lived experience from
which that conception, and all such conceptions, are derived.
"The first great pitfall from which such a radical standing by experience will
save us is an artificial conception of the relations between knower and known.
Throughout the history of philosophy the subject and its object have been
treated as absolutely discontinuous entities; and thereupon the presence of the
latter to the former, or the 'apprehension' by the former of the latter, has
assumed a paradoxical character which all sorts of theories had to be invented
to overcome. All the while, in the very bosom of the finite experience, every
conjunction required to make the relation intelligible is given in full."
(James, WPE, p27)
Matt said to dmb:
It's perfectly reasonable to be suspicious of Rorty for backsliding, even for
vague reasons like "he learned philosophy during the years positivism dominated
academic philosophy." Though, I can promise you, my vague reasons are a little
more specific then the corresponding shadow you keep attributing to me,
something like "because James calls it 'radical empiricism' Matt thinks it is
just like traditional empiricism."
dmb says:
Hopefully you can see that my case is not all that vague. It doesn't just hinge
on his background influences because I'm talking about how he comes to the
conclusions he does, how he comes to be a neopragmatist as it's described in
the Fish article and as it's represented here by you and Steve. It doesn't even
hinge on whether or not Rorty retains the assumptions of SOM, although a case
could be made for that too. I'm only interested to show that SOM is the
framework in which he denies the possibility of objectivity, in which he levels
his critique of traditional empiricism. As Hildebrand put it above, Rorty
"needs to give a nod to the reality of objective things so that it may then
argue that access to them is not just impracticable, but IMPOSSIBLE."
And the problem as I see it is not exactly that you think radical empiricism is
just like traditional empiricism. The problem is that you repeatedly use the
neopragmatist's critique of traditional empiricism to justify your dismissal of
radical empiricism. So I'm trying to explain exactly how and why that critique
is not even relevant to radical empiricism. SOM has to be addressed in the
making of this case because that's the framework in which the positivists were
making claims, it's the framework in which Rorty and friends are denying the
positivists' claims and it is the framework which James and Pirsig identify as
a problematic and artificial metaphysical arrangement.
"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 positivist's 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." (Emphasis and
parenthetical remarks are Hildebrand's, p169)
By contrast, radical empiricism maintains that experience and reality are the
same thing and so there is no noumenal world only the phenomenal world, a world
of pure experience. There are no things in themselves and there is no world in
itself and so there is no epistemic gap between us and what's "out there". The
"the world" and "out there" and "in here" are part of a huge pile of analogies
derived from experience. So when radical empiricists talk about "experience" in
the "world" it's just a whole different deal.
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