Steve replied to Marsha:
The problem for DMB of course is that he wants to support this theory of truth
but deny the relativism it entails. After years of attacking Rorty for being a
relativist, DMB now claims that Rorty wasn't "audacious" enough in his
relativism because Rorty didn't have the balls to say that the earth wasn't
round until people thought it was round. Let me be clear that I don't think
that there is anything dangerous about the relativism of Marsha, DMB, James,
and Pirsig. It is DMB who thinks there is some big danger in relativism. My
problem in this thread has always been to expose DMB's attacks on Rorty as a
relativist as having occurred over a background of DMB maintaining a
relativistic theory of truth himself.
dmb says:
Well, no. The painting gallery analogy tells us that pragmatic truth is plural
and provisional. The pragmatic theory of truth has standards of coherence,
usefulness and agreement with experience. It is a form of empiricism, even when
held separately from radical empiricism, and so it can't rightly be called a
relativism. I can see how it could look that way, because, as James puts it,
"to a certain extent, everything here is plastic".
Think of the paintings in the gallery in terms of the non-Euclidean geometry.
Pluralism doesn't mean simply "true for me, not true for you". It means there
can be more than one valid hypothesis for any given set of data. There is more
than one way to map any given territory. Each one still has to make sense and
work and be internally consistent and all the other standards. The most
important point in being a pluralist is to deny the idea of a single, objective
truth, one that supposedly corresponds to a non-human objective reality.
Rorty definitely agrees with the provisional nature of truth. Copernicus,
Newton and Einstein showed us that truth changes as time goes by and Rorty was
pals with Thomas Kuhn, after all. I don't see why he would object to pluralism
either. What he objects to is having truth theories and doing epistemology and,
I think, that's what makes him a relativist. That's what saves Pirsig, James
and Dewey from the same. Rorty goes along with the deconstruction project but
when it comes time for reconstruction, Rorty bails out. I think he bailed
without a chute.
Why does Rorty think truth a lost cause? Why do Pirsig, James and Dewey think
otherwise? That's the question. That's where their differences lie. It's
metaphysical. When you see that, you'll understand why Rortyism is relativism
and pragmatic empiricism ain't.
Why does Rorty put on the emphasis on language after rejecting the
correspondence theory of truth? Douglas McDermid puts it in terms of Rorty's
rejection of "Givenism". This, as you know, is also known as the "myth of the
given", which says that "our judgements are justified by their relation to
something extra-linguistic transcending our web of beliefs". For Rorty, he
says, "the true nature of this relation is not rational, but causal" and this
notion was "central to Rorty's attack on Givenism". As Rorty puts it: "The
notion of a 'theory of knowledge' will not make sense unless we have confused
causation and justification in the manner of Locke" (Rorty 1979:152). He also
says the world in itself is "sublimely indifferent to the attentions we lavish
upon it" (Rorty 1972:12). This is how Hildebrand reads it too. "Rorty ..insists
that the objects are there before minds come along and remain what they were
while being known", Hildebrand says, and this is "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." (111)
You see, Rorty has given up on the correspondence theory, but not the
underlying metaphysical assumptions. That's why the end of the correspondence
theory of truth, for Rorty, means the end of truth theories altogether. He's a
physicalist who thinks we can never have access to physical reality. That is
not exactly what Marx meant by alienation, but it is a very depressing picture
of our situation. Somebody should write a sad country song about a dude named
Dick who spent all his time drinking life through a straw, never getting enough
and wondering why.
> > Anthony writes:
> > Intellectual values include truth, justice, freedom, democracy and,
> > trial by jury. It’s worth noting that the MOQ follows a pragmatic
> > notion of truth so truth is seen as relative in his system while
> > Quality is seen as absolute. In consequence, the truth is defined
> > as the highest quality intellectual explanation at a given time.
> >
> > RMP:
> > If the past is any guide to the future this explanation must be taken
> > provisionally; as useful until something better comes along. One
> > can then examine intellectual realities the same way he examines
> > paintings in an art gallery...
> > (McWatt,Anthony,MOQ Textbook)
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