Hi DMB,
> dmb says: > > I'm trying to explain that this is NOT how James defined "the true". Rorty is > leaving out experience, which is central to James's theory of truth. I've > dished up many James quotes to show you that. As you can see from the > redacted Rorty quote, he puts all the emphasis on sentences and language and > says true is just a normative notion, a compliment paid to sentences. Rorty > has linguisticized James in such a way that it no longer has that central > empirical dimension. Steve: I understand completely that James used the word experience and Rorty did not in talking about truth. What I keep asking you is in what sort of situations could it make any practical difference to use or not use the word. Are you going to win any arguments that Rorty will lose because of your definition of truth? Is Rorty going to be forced to believe things that are false because of his refusal to try to get past the notion that true beliefs lead to successful action? [from Stanford's article on Rorty] "Rorty suggests, that "we see knowledge as a matter of conversation and of social practice, rather than as an attempt to mirror nature." (PMN 171) Rorty provides this view with a label: "Explaining rationality and epistemic authority by reference to what society lets us say, rather than the latter by the former, is the essence of what I shall call ‘epistemological behaviorism,’ an attitude common to Dewey and Wittgenstein." (PMN 174) ... Indeed, many who share Rorty's historicist scepticism toward the transcending ambitions of epistemology—friendly critics like Hilary Putnam, John McDowell and Daniel Dennett—balk at the idea that there are no constraints on knowledge save conversational ones. Yet this is a central part of Rorty's position, repeated and elaborated as recently as in TP and PCP." I find it pretty strange that you object to Rorty dropping epistemology while quoting a passage describing what Rorty calls his "epistemological behaviorism." > > > dmb says: > C'mon Steve. Look at the substance and the meaning of the quote. It is a very > succinct explanation of what Rorty is missing. It seems the answer to the > question only prompts you to ask the question. "Epistemological behaviorism", > despite the name, refers to Rorty's anti-empirical stance. It refers to the > view that knowledge is "a matter of conversation and of social practice, > rather than as an attempt to mirror nature". That's the whole thing in a > nutshell. That is Rorty giving up on epistemology because, for him, > epistemology is defined as the attempt to mirror nature. This is where I > point out that his criticism of attempts to mirror nature cannot be applied > to radical empiricism simply because it is equally critical of that same > attempt. Because Rorty defines the question in terms of that failed answer, > he thinks we should give up on the question altogether. Steve: Here we go agin. "THEE question." What is THEE question has Rorty given up on that you think is still important? You say that he has "given up on truth" and yet he still talks about truth. You say he has given up on epistemology yet you take him to have an anti-empirical stance on the very same matter. That "nutshell" you mentioned is supposed to represent his epistemology, isn't it? It is only "giving up on epistemology" if you don't count it as epistemology. What, according to the whole quote, that Rorty is missing is constraints on our beliefs provided by "the way reality actually is." Yet, like Rorty, you reject the notion of The Way Things Really Are. So again, what is THEE question that you need answered but Rorty has dropped? > > > Steve said: > > What is it that you think Pirsig and James say about knowledge that Rorty > doesn't agree with? > > > dmb says: > > That it is grounded in experience, that experience is the test of truth and > defines our range of knowledge. They don't call it radical empiricism for > nothing. It is an explicitly epistemological position. Rorty's refusal to > have such a position means he doesn't agree. That's pretty obvious, isn't it? Steve: Good. Now, what mileage can you get in practice from this notion that truth is grounded in experience? How does it help us get beyond Rorty's ability to say true things or determine which statements are true or not be forced to believe things that are false? What is the pragmatic value in all this? > Steve said: > Just in case you may want to choose to answer any of the questions I asked > previously, I'll re-post the following from my last post to you where I > complained that you still hadn't answered my questions from the previous > post... > > > dmb says: > > To be honest, I saw your questions as evidence of confusion because you asked > them in response to answers already supplied. Or sometimes they seemed to > answer themselves. This one, for example: "How does your talk about empirical > reality add anything to saying that true beliefs lead to successful action?" > I don't understand this question because "action" IS "empirical reality". Steve: Then why is in the H-E-double-hockey-sticks would you fault Rorty for saying that truth leads to successful action and leaving the matter at that? DMB: And then there are the questions that I've been answering the whole time in lots of different ways, like this one: "What tools do you have for justifying beliefs to others that Rorty could not use?" Seriously, isn't it completely obvious by now? James and Pirsig have an empiricism and a theory of truth. That's what he does not have for justifying beliefs. Steve: Ok, and exactly what does that empiricism and theory of truth do for them in practice that Rorty cannot do? DMB: For him, the only constraint is conversation within what society allows us to say. > > Honestly, now. You don't see that? Steve: He doesn't mean that we can just assert anything we want and others have to believe it. It just means that our justificatory practices are cultural constructs. What else could they be? They aren't handed to us by Nature or anything. Any pragmatist ought to agree. > > Steve said: > I understand completely that you think that Rorty has left something > important out by not talking about empirical reality. I'm still wondering > what that something is. What is the practical difference between James > saying that true beliefs lead to successful action and saying that true > beliefs lead to successful action IN EXPERIENCE? Does that last bit add some > explanatory power? Does it keep us from getting fooled or keep us from being > able to fool others? > > dmb says: > > Well, "action" counts as experience but it doesn't make for a theory of truth > all by itself. That's makes a practical difference. Rorty is refusing to do > epistemology while Pirsig and James have an epistemology based on experience > and a theory of truth based on agreement with experience. For Rorty, truth is > verbal, is a matter of a sentence's ability to fit in with other sentences. > This is where the concerns about relativism come into the argument because > that has practical consequences. For a pragmatist, talking about empirical > reality makes a practical difference because empirical reality IS practical > reality. Steve: Talking about empirical reality is still talking. It is one of those linguistic practices. Do you think Rorty can't talk about his experiences in justifying his beliefs to others? That's just one of those conversational practices that doesn't have any way of trumping all other practices such as deciding whether a person's account of his personal practices are generally trustworthy and appealing to culturally constructed standards of evidence and critiquing our culturally constructed standards of evidence. DMB: Truth is what happens to an idea in the course of experience. It is made true by events, not by mirroring objective reality or revealing the essence of truth, whatever that is. This is what it means for truth to lead to successful action. If we can ride an idea into the future then it proves itself true. Steve: This common sense notion that an idea either "proves itself to be true" or not in the course of experience is fine by anyone. (The "made true" bit gets James into trouble with some.) For a philosopher interested in theories of truth, however, the next questions are about how exactly that works. How do we compare an idea to our experiences? Before we can say that philosophy has added anything to this common sense notion, you'll need to explain the microstructure of how a proper relationship ought to be between an idea and our experiences before we ought to say that an idea is true. DMB: If "action" means conversation or intersubjective agreement, well then you're talking about something very much more narrow than James or Pirsig. We can't persuade a motorcycle to fix itself by using the right vocabularies or the right rhetorical strategies. Your ideas about the machine are going to lead you through the process of repairing it or they are not. Trying to fix it with the wrong ideas in mind is probably going to teach you something about what's true and what isn't. I think Pirsig chose a practical, hands-on analogy to explain the scientific process AND Zen meditation for a reason. Think about that. Think about how non-verbal that second one is and how empirical they both are. That's what Rorty ain't got. Steve: What you keep getting wrong is that Rorty actually accepts this common sense notion of truth. He doesn't reject truth. He rejects so-called "theories of truth" when they don't do add to our ability to do any of the things for which anyone would bother to pursue a philosophical theory of truth in the first place. His objection and mine here is that you haven't added anything to it with your talk about radical empiricism that we didn't already have. You are just talking about the dormitive power of opium as an explanation of how it helps people sleep. James and Pirsig didn't try to do what you are trying to do here by the way. James, according to Pirsig, thought radical empiricism was separate from his pragmatism. Pirsig liked James's notion of truth as what is good to believe probably in part because it puts aside all this "theory of truth" business. It is simply undefined Quality where beliefs are concerned. He didn't get into what MAKES a belief true or what truth is supposed to consist in and only gave vague criteria such as agreement with experience, parsimony, and logical coherence. He offered us a paintings in an art gallery view of truth rather than any static method or theory for deciding between true and false beliefs. Best, Steve Moq_Discuss mailing list Listinfo, Unsubscribing etc. http://lists.moqtalk.org/listinfo.cgi/moq_discuss-moqtalk.org Archives: http://lists.moqtalk.org/pipermail/moq_discuss-moqtalk.org/ http://moq.org/md/archives.html
