Steve said to dmb:
You seem to have an unusual notion of what relativism with respect to truth is.
...For a Pirsigian and for a Jamesian as well as for a Rortian, "what actually
is true" is not a coherent part of the vocabulary, so the question of reativism
with respect to truth just doesn't come up. It is a question that can only be
asked in the Platonic vocabulary. As long as someone insists on that vocabulary
as I did with you over the last couple of weeks, they will continue to call you
a relativist no matter how much you protest because within that vocabulary, you
simply ARE a relativist.
dmb says:
Yea, what's up with the Platonism? You're using realism and Platonism and SOM
to push back against the pragmatic theory of truth. On this topic, you have the
philosophical equivalent of multiple personality disorder. Your position is a
complete mess of contradictions.
And besides that, I totally disagree that we can ask "what actually is true"
ONLY from a Platonic perspective. That the whole point of saying that Rorty
defines the question in terms of the failed answer. The pragmatist has an
answer to what's actually true, but "actually", only means in actual
experience, that truth is what we can successfully act upon. This has nothing
to do with any Platonic claims about trans-experiential realities or their
correspondence to the objective reality. And I have to say that I'm irritated
by the fact that you keep repeating this irrelevant nonsense despite the fact
that I've objected to it about ten times. I don't want to resort to insulting
your intelligence or your honesty, but what am I supposed to conclude from this
behavior? Why is it so hard for you to understand that your Platonism and
SOMism and realism makes no sense in this debate and has nothing to do with the
case I'm making? Seriously. How can you fail to register this point after
so many repetitions? After reading Pirsig and thinking about these things for
years? Your thickness on this topic has been kind of unbelievable.
Steve said:
See why Rorty just shrugs and tries to change the subject when relativism comes
up? Because if a pragmatist allows the conversation about relativism to take
place on SOM grounds he will always lose.
dmb says:
My concerns about Rorty's relativism do not take place on SOM grounds and
neither do my assertions concerning the pragmatic theory of truth. Again, your
argument is irrelevant and only shows that you are oblivious to what I've
actually been saying.
Steve said:
What is always wierd for me is that you want to accuse Rorty of relativism
while I don't think the issue can even be articulated on pragmatic grounds. As
I said at the beginning, you must have an unusual definition of relativism with
respect to truth if you think it is something that a pragmatist ought to be
concerned about (as something philosophical and distinct from basic moral
clarity). I'd love to here you specify what your pragmatic definition of
relativism is.
dmb says:
You rejected my description of relativism on the grounds that Platonists don't
define it that way. You say I have a very unusual idea of what relativism
means. That is nonsense. If you go to the Wiki article, you'll find a section
on Richard Rorty. You know perfectly well that his pragmatist critics have
accused him of relativism many, many, many, many times. It is thee most common
complaint about Rorty. Do all these critics have some weird idea of what
relativism is and means? C,mon, Steve. That's not even remotely plausible.
Wiki says, "Philosopher Richard Rorty has a somewhat paradoxical role in the
debate over relativism: he is criticized for his relativistic views, but
prefers to describe himself not as a relativist, but as a
pragmatist.'"Relativism" is the traditional epithet applied to pragmatism by
realists'[14]'"Relativism" is the view that every belief on a certain topic, or
perhaps about any topic, is as good as every other. No one holds this view.
Except for the occasional cooperative freshman, one cannot find anybody who
says that two incompatible opinions on an important topic are equally good. The
philosophers who get called 'relativists' are those who say that the grounds
for choosing between such opinions are less algorithmic than had been
thought.'[15]'In short, my strategy for escaping the self-referential
difficulties into which "the Relativist" keeps getting himself is to move
everything over from epistemology and metaphysics into cultural politics, from
claims to knowledge and
appeals to self-evidence to suggestions about what we should try.'[16]Rorty
takes a deflationary attitude to truth, believing there is nothing of interest
to be said about truth in general, including the contention that it is
generally subjective. He also argues that the notion of warrant or
justification can do most of the work traditionally assigned to the concept of
truth, and that justification is relative; justification is justification to an
audience, for Rorty. Thus his position, in the view of many commentators, adds
up to relativism.In Contingency, Irony, and Solidarity he argues that the
debate between so-called relativists and so-called objectivists is beside the
point because they don't have enough premises in common for either side to
prove anything to the other.
Rorty thinks justification is relative to the different conversations we can
have within a given sociological context. That's what his ethnocentrism is all
about. Rorty denies that this ethnocentrism makes him a relativist. But like I
said, James and Pirisg escape this purely sociological framework by the simple
fact that the pragmatic theory of truth has non-verbal standards and
constraints. Agreement is not excluded from the notion, but the test of truth
is its ability to perform, to operate successfully in empirical reality whether
there is an audience to persuade or not.
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