Hi DMB, Matt, all DMB has long seemed to me to be confused about what Rorty means by intersubjectivity and conversational constraints on knowledge as if there is something dangerously relativistic about his notion of justification. I'll try to clear up the issue.
Just as Pirsig's calling inorganic and biological patterns "objective" and social and intellectual patterns "subjective" was an attempt by Pirsig to continue to get some mileage out of the terms after dropping the subject-object picture, "intersubjectivity" is Rorty's attempt to make some pragmatic sense of objectivity. For Rorty, "what guarantees the objectivity of the world in which we live is that this world is common to us with other thinking beings. Through the communications that we have with other men we receive from them ready-made harmonious reasonings. We know that these reasonings do not come from us and at the same time we recognize in them, because of their harmony, the work of reasonable beings like ourselves. And as these reasonings appear to fit the world of our sensations, we think we may infer that these reasonable beings have seen the same thing as we; thus it is that we know we haven't been dreaming. It is this harmony, this quality if you will, that is the sole basis for the only reality we can ever know." Of course we know that this is also how Pirsig sees the situation as well since he wrote that bit in ZAMM. Apparently Pirsig didn't see any non-conversation constraints on knowledge either. Best, Steve In ZAMM Pirsig talks about the conversational constraints on knowledge, intersubjectivity, as the only basis for making pragmatic sense of objectivity--"the sole basis for the only reality we can ever know": "What guarantees the objectivity of the world in which we live is that this world is common to us with other thinking beings. Through the communications that we have with other men we receive from them ready-made harmonious reasonings. We know that these reasonings do not come from us and at the same time we recognize in them, because of their harmony, the work of reasonable beings like ourselves. And as these reasonings appear to fit the world of our sensations, we think we may infer that these reasonable beings have seen the same thing as we; thus it is that we know we haven't been dreaming. It is this harmony, this quality if you will, that is the sole basis for the only reality we can ever know. 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
