Apropos Steve's patient defense and refocusing of topics
away from red herrings, I ran into two pithy remarks from
Rorty in a Reply to Molly Cochran (an international relations
theory person) in Richard Rorty: Critical Dialogues (ed.
Festenstein and Thompson) 201-202:
On anti-foundationalism: "Cochran treats anti-foundationalism
as an 'approach' to ethics and to international relations--as
a possibly constructive suggestion. I think of it as just a
way of setting certain issues aside. Thus when Cochran
says that 'it is interesting that Rorty's anti-foundationalism
does not prevent him from suggesting a concept of the
person,' I am inclined to remark that it doesn't prevent
anybody from doing anything except trying to answer some
bad questions--questions about how to get more
conclusive justification than we have ever been able to
obtain. There is no such thing as a specifically
'anti-foundationalist ethics.' An ethics is just a set of
views about what people should do, and no position within
epistemology or ontology or metaphilosophy could, or
should, stop anybody from having such views."
On truth-seeking: "Cochran runs together my view that
the nature of truth is not a profitable topic for philosophers
to discuss with the view that philosophy should not seek
truth. Philosophers, like everybody else, should seek to
justify their beliefs. 'True' is the commendatory adjective
we apply to beliefs we think better justified than their
competitors. So in an obvious sense we could not cease to
seek for truth as long as we seek to justify our beliefs to
one another. I do not want to 'replace the philosophical
aim of finding truth with the pragmatist's aim of acquiring
the intellectual habits which best assist us in coping.' The
pragmatist's point is that 'finding truth' just is, and always
was, the process of acquiring such habits. What is to be
replaced is a topic of philosophical discussion, not a social
practice."
Matt
_________________________________________________________________
The New Busy think 9 to 5 is a cute idea. Combine multiple calendars with
Hotmail.
http://www.windowslive.com/campaign/thenewbusy?tile=multicalendar&ocid=PID28326::T:WLMTAGL:ON:WL:en-US:WM_HMP:042010_5
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
