dmb said:
... there are lots of different kinds of relativism but this little Wiki is
very specific. It defines relativism as the view that justification is relative
to the group and it describes Rorty's position as exactly that. You have both a
definition and the reason for thinking Rorty fits that definition. I think this
is about as clear as it can be.
Steve replied:
Hold on!!! Did you just finally provide a definition of relativism????
dmb says:
That definition and its relation to Rorty's position were both in the Wiki
quote the first time I posted it. I guess you just didn't see it until I
repeated it several times.
Steve continued:
Okay, got it, so Rorty is a relativist in your mind because he thinks that
justification is relative to an audience. But do you think that that statement
does not apply to James and Pirsig?
dmb says:
Yes, I'm saying that Pirsig and James differ from Rorty. This difference is NOT
because "they hold a view of justification as absolute" but simply because they
hold that ideas are justified by their ability to perform or operate in
experience. Rorty is very, very different when we broaden the picture beyond
the pragmatic theory of truth. In the stream/bucket analogy we have a picture
of the DQ/sq split. The language we are suspended in or the web of beliefs of
the group in which justifications are made is just one side of the whole
picture. It's just the static side and it is all Rorty has. Rorty has no
concept of DQ or pure experience and so you have the buckets isolated from the
stream of experience, language is detached and floats free of the primary
empirical reality. They are signifiers cut loose from the signified.
"to begin with, Quality that is independant of experience doesn't exist"
"Quality, on which there is complete agreement, is a universal source of
things. The objects about which people disagree are merely transitory"-RMP
Ron said:I think it helps to remember another quote, that the true is a species
of the good. That truth is what people disagree about, but the Good, that there
is complete agreement on is the universal source of those truths. I take that
to mean that the good, or Quality, is not relative but truth is. But truth does
springfrom the Good. I takes James to be saying the same.
dmb says:
I think that's pretty close to right. But its important to remember that the
buckets are derived from the stream and they are tested in the stream. The
buckets are supposed to be isolated from the stream and justification is more
than just moving buckets around. That's why the pragmatic theory of truth does
not say justification is simply a matter of what the group has in its buckets.
They ALSO have to function in the stream of experience. See, the goodness of an
idea includes its ability to harmonize with the relevant static patterns of the
group but such coherence is only one of the criteria for James and Pirsig. For
Rorty, there are no restraints excepts for conversational ones. Thus Rortyism
leaves out the Quality half of the MOQ. There is no stream, no pure experience,
no Dynamic Quality. That's a huge difference and his different idea of
justification is just one pretty big way that this difference shows up.
Steve said:
It seems to me that if "relativism" amounts to "justification is relative to an
audience," and if you find that to be a big problem, then your bigger problem
is with Pirsig rather than Rorty.
dmb says:
"The MOQ says that if moral judgements are essentially assertions of value and
if value is the fundamental ground-stuff of the world, then moral judgements
are the fundamental group stuff of the world." (Lila, 156) "So what Phaedrus
was saying was that not just life, but everything, is an ethical activity. It
is nothing else. ... this definition of 'betterness' - this beginning response
to Dynamic Quality - is an elementary unit of ethics upon which all right and
wrong can be based. When this understanding first broke through in Phaedrus'
mind, that ethics and science had suddenly been integrated into a single
system, he became so manic he couldn't think of anything else for days. The
only time he had be more manic about an abstract idea was when he had first hit
upon the idea of undefined Quality itself." (Lila, 157) "... given a
value-centered MOQ, it is absolutely, scientifically moral for a doctor to
prefer the patient. [over a germ] This is not just an arbitrary social c
onvention that should apply to some doctors, or to some cultures but not all
cultures. It's true for all people at all times, now and forever, a moral
pattern of reality as real as H20. We're at last dealing with morals on the
basis of reason. We can now deduce codes based on evolution that analyze moral
arguments with greater precision that before." (Lila, 159)
When Pirsig says "this is NOT just an arbitrary social convention that should
only apply to some doctors, or to some cultures", shall we conclude that he's
saying justification is relative to the group just like Rorty? Obviously not.
He's saying pretty much the opposite of what Rorty says.
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