dmb quoted 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 said:
..."Epistemological behaviorism" 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 is Rorty giving up
on epistemology because, for him, epistemology is defined as the attempt to
mirror nature. ...Because Rorty defines the question in terms of that failed
answer, he thinks we should give up on the question altogether.
Steve replied to dmb:
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. ...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?
dmb says:
Your question defies the fact that I have already said three or four times that
the question of truth ought not be a loaded question. As I see it, there is no
such thing as "THEE question of truth". Again, to say that we are not doing
epistemology because we are not looking for the objective truth or the essence
of truth is like saying that we are not really doing astronomy because we are
not looking for the crystalline spheres. Like astronomy, epistemological
questions ought not be defined in terms of the old failed answers. To define
epistemology as the search for "the way things really are" is exactly what we
ought not do. Like astronomical questions, the question of truth ought not be
asked in such a way that it defines in advance what the nature of truth is.
That's why there is no such thing as "THEE question of truth". Instead, we
should ask generic open ended questions like, "what is true?" or "what counts
as true?" But if we insist on asking what is OBJECTIVELY true or ESSENTIALLY
TRUE or ETERNALLY true, we are asking loaded questions. They are loaded with
failed answers and this is what creates a false dilemma between Platonic
essentialism and Rorty's relativism. I'm saying that the pragmatic theory of
truth is neither of things. You seem to think that there is only one way to be
anti-foundational, Rorty's way. You seem to think that truth is either a matter
of mirroring nature or it's a matter of conversation and social practice. I'm
saying that the pragmatic theory of truth is neither. I'm trying to tell you
this is a false dilemma but you keep asking me questions as if no third option
could be possible.
Steve asked:
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? ... exactly
what does that empiricism and theory of truth do for them in practice that
Rorty cannot do? ... 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:
I think that it's been well established that Rorty thinks "there are no
constraints on knowledge save conversational ones". This approach does not
allow anybody to say true things. It only allows us to have verbal agreements
about what's true. Going beyond intersubjective agreement, for Rorty, means a
return to foundationalism, a return to the quest for the way the world really
is. Again, I'm saying that the pragmatic theory of truth says knowledge is not
grounded in anything essential or objective but neither is it just a matter of
linguistic behavior. For James and Pirsig, truth is matter of practical
success, like health or wealth. Knowledge produces actual, practical solutions
like bridges and motorcycles. Verbal agreements and cultural consensus does not
determine whether or not these things work. Experience does. Tools like bridges
and motorcycles are good concrete analogies for the way conceptual tools work,
according to the pragmatic theory of truth. Like I said, "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." In other words,
knowledge operates within the ongoing stream of experience. It functions to
relate past experience to future experience in such a way that we can
successfully "ride" from here to there. That's what it means to say "truth" is
agreement with experience. That's all truth can ever mean to a pragmatist, as
opposed to "truth" as accurately mirroring nature. Rorty's view that knowledge
is a matter of social practice is empty and incoherent without this this
empirical dimension. As David Hildebrand puts it, "our very ability to assess
'needs' and 'social practices' depends upon our ability to measure the meaning
of these abstractions against something more intimately present, namely the
lived moments to which they supposedly apply."
Steve said:
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 says:
You're begging the central question here. You're converting the constraints of
lived experience into the constraints of linguistic practices and
conversational practices. But this whole debate is centered around the
difference between the classical pragmatists' emphasis on experience and the
neopragmatists' emphasis on language. Yes, of course talking about empirical
reality is still talking. But like I said a month or so ago, you're confusing
form with content. I mean, talking about animals is still talking but that
doesn't mean animals are nothing but talk. By the same token, talking about
non-linguistic experience is still talking but that does not make the
talked-about experience any less non-linguistic. And of course the
non-linguistic is where Rorty's worldview really clashes hard with the world of
James and Pirsig. It's not quite so bad when we're sticking to the pragmatic
theory of truth but when it comes to the core part of radical empiricism, "pure
experience" or DQ, it becomes most obvious that Rorty's approach is wildly at
odds with the whole program. Here the dynamic and the ineffable come up against
the static and the verbal. Quality is outside the mythos. Pure experience is
had prior to our conceptualizations. Intersubjective agreement is determined by
what society let's us say and is always conceptual. Like I said a couple of
months ago, these radical empiricists are saying that awareness is NOT just a
linguistic affair. I don't just mean that they acknowledge the existence of
non-verbal experience. I doubt that Rorty would deny that there is such a
thing. I'm saying that Pirsig and James both make this central to their
philosophical views and they both make a case that our past philosophies have
suffered because they didn't.
Steve said:
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 says:
I totally disagree with the premise of your question. You're demoting the
pragmatic theory of truth to common sense and you're insisting that it only
counts as philosophical truth if we can say exactly how our ideas compare to
our experience, explain the microstructure, whatever that is, of the
relationship between our experience and our ideas. But aren't you asking
exactly the kind of loaded question I was complaining about above and in
several prior posts? Why does it have to be a dualistic correspondence theory
to count as a theory of truth? Who decided that anything less was
unphilosophical? Anyway, the pragmatic theory of truth says that knowledge
functions within the ongoing process of experience. Concepts are not supposed
to be representations of experience, they are one of the phases or elements
within experience. And finally, it's important to remember that Pirsig and
James aren't talking about experience in terms of SOM. That is the REJECTED
ontological dualism in which the correspondence theories make sense. By
contrast, James and Pirsig say that experience is reality. You could even say
reality is a vast experiential field. In any case, there is no thing or stuff
or physical reality to which our ideas are supposed to correspond. For these
guys, truth is what carries you forward from one experience to the next. It
functions to relate moments within the continuity of experience.
Steve replied:
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 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.
dmb says:
How could I keep getting it wrong if I haven't even said a word about it. You
keep bringing up "common sense" notions as if I'm not talking about
philosophical positions. C'mon Steve, how many philosophers have I quoted in
the course of this conversation? Is anyone I quoted not a philosopher? I think
you don't quite appreciate the power this view has to oppose essentialisms and
foundationalisms while still retaining a modest and sensible restraint on our
truth claims. It opens up the entire field of human experience to include the
full range of our capacities and dimensions at the same time that it rules out
all kinds of metaphysical fictions and trans-experiential entities.
Steve said:
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.
dmb says:
That is a very weak point. First of all, James only meant that the two were not
logically connected. Accepting one does not necessarily entail accepting the
other. That certainly doesn't mean they don't go together quite well. They're
both James's babies after all. The fit is so neat, in fact, that James soon
began to think that pragmatism was a special chapter within radical empiricism.
On top of that, it doesn't matter if radical empiricism is attached to it or
not. The pragmatic theory of truth is still very empirical. It's all about
experience. Experience is not just the test of truth, it is the only context in
which truth has any meaning or purpose. On top of that, Pirsig explicitly takes
up both theories into a unified picture AND many of today's James scholars do
that too. James's work has taken as a whole since John J. McDermott showed a
coherent picture of James back in the mid 1970s, at least. So your point is a
rather pointless point in at least three different ways.
Steve said:
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.
dmb says:
No, you're just converting Pirsig into Rorty here. You're also presenting that
false dilemma again. Just because Pirsig isn't claiming there is a single
exclusive truth, it doesn't mean that his theory doesn't count as a theory of
truth. The criteria is just as vague as a non-essentialist, non-foundational
theory should be. The use of the art gallery analogy of truth expresses this
open-ended, provisional, pluralistic, contextual and perspectival version of
truth without losing the ability to distinguish true and false beliefs. That's
just what you want in a third option. It doesn't assert essentialism against
contextualism. It simply sets the standards of truth so that truth can change
as the context changes and different truth can work in different contexts. In
other words, we don't have to pick one painting of truth and assert it above
all the others but that doesn't mean we can't evaluate the quality of each
painting or that we can't make comparisons. In any case, the basic idea here is
that truth functions in relation to lived experience. It's not the product of a
static method and it's not just about the relations between one sentence and
another. Sometimes knowledge is a hands-on skill, an ability to interact with
concrete realities like paint brushes and doorknobs. Like I said, "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."
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