Hi DMB,
DMB: 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?" Steve: What would ever make you think that Rorty is not interested in the questions "what is true?" or "what counts as true?" These questions are fine with Rorty. He just doesn't want to give a static definition of "true" any more than Pirsig does. DMB: 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. Steve: Now you are just putting words in my mouth. You are the one who is saying that Rorty's way of doing philosophy is somehow lacking. DMB: 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: I understand that the so-called pragmatic theory of truth is supposed to be neither of those things. I'm just saying that I don't think it works as a theory of truth because it conflates truth with justification. What James is saying about truth doesn't sound like truth to me. It says that what is true is whatever can be justified. I think that beliefs can have all the justification in the world and turn out to be false. This is why Putnam and Davidson never wanted to call themselves pragmatists. Knowledge as justified true belief is then reduced to justified belief. Putnam thought that this theory of truth is essential to pragmatism and didn't consider himself or Rorty as pragmatists for this reason. His complaint that Rorty was not really a pragmatist was a criticism of pragmatism as Putnam understood it and not a criticism of Rorty (though he also had some criticisms to level against Rortianism as well). > 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". Steve: Since you conflate truth and justification, you always miss the fact that Rorty is talking about justification here rather than the truth of the matter. He is saying our justifcatory practices are cultural constructs. What else could they be? DMB This approach does not allow anybody to say true things. It only allows us to have verbal agreements about what's true. Steve: Huh? Why can't we say true things? Again, if you recognized that most philosophers do not conflate truth and justification as you do, you would understand that what we agree to be true may not actually be true. DMB: Going beyond intersubjective agreement, for Rorty, means a return to foundationalism, a return to the quest for the way the world really is. Steve: "Intersubjective agreement" refers to our practices of justification. Rorty believes that establishing standards for justification is a social practice. Do you disagree? DMB: 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. Steve: Certainly you agree that without language there would be no knowledge? I can't image what it would mean to disagree. I agree that there are other behaviors that relate to knowledge as well. For example, if I claim to know how to ride a bike and someone says "prove it," I might demonstrate my ability by riding a bike. Is this the sort of move that you think Rorty has outlawed? DMB: For James and Pirsig, truth is matter of practical success, like health or wealth. Knowledge produces actual, practical solutions like bridges and motorcycles. Steve: I don't think Rorty would disagree here at all. DMB: Verbal agreements and cultural consensus does not determine whether or not these things work. Steve: Agreed, but our standards for justification that we apply to determining whether things work are cultural constructs. DMB: Experience does. Steve: Disagreed. Experience does not "tell us" things. Unless you can explain how to compare a bit of language to a bit of experience for agreement I can't see how you are adding anything philosophically important to our common sense notion of truth. DMB: 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. Steve: All this is just blustering that doesn't add anything that to our common sense notion of truth. This sort of philosophizing doesn;tgive us anything that we didn't already have. It's good only to the extent that it helps us discard correspondence theory. DMB: That's all truth can ever mean to a pragmatist, as opposed to "truth" as accurately mirroring nature. Steve: Yep. That's all it means. That is what is meant by a deflationary notion of truth such as Rorty's and Davidson's. DMB: 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: MMM HMMM. and how is this comparison done exactly? > 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? Steve: Yep. These are the sorts of questions anyone will face when they claim to have a theory of truth to promote. DMB: Why does it have to be a dualistic correspondence theory to count as a theory of truth? Steve: It doesn't. But you do have a correspondence theory, You say that true ideas correspond with experience. When you say such things people will want to know how exactly this correspondence works. > 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. Steve: Can you point me to where James wrote something in support of that last claim? DMB: 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. Steve: The only context in which it is possible to say that "meaning" has any meaning is the context of language. It's fine to say that beliefs are tested in experience, but how is that testing done? Experience itself is not a standard for justification. The standards for justification are the cultural constructs we appeal to in order to decide whether or not our experiences confirm or invalidate a given proposition. DMB: 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: My point has always been that we don't need to get all excited about experience and radical empiricism to be doing pragmatic philosophy. The fact that you have pointed to several philosphers who call themselves pragmatists and also talk about experience does not invalidate my point in any way. I grant that some do, I just don't think that they must. 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
