Hi DMB, > dmb said: > I doubt that Rorty denies that there is an objective reality. He just thinks > we can't have access to it. > > Steve replied: > First of all, the relationship of pragmatism and the MOQ to objective reality > should not be simple denial. . Nowhere does Pirsig say "objective reality > does not exist." On the contrary, Pirsig says in the LC annotations, "The MOQ > does not deny the traditional scientific view of reality as composed of > material substance and independent of us. It says it is an extremely high > quality idea. We should follow it whenever it is practical to do so." > > > dmb replies: ...Anyway, I think you're quite mistaken. Pirsig and Rorty can both be seen rejecting correspondence theory of truth and the possibility of objective knowledge but they do so for different reasons. For Pirsig and James, it follows from their rejection of SOM but for Rorty it follows from the inability to get outside of our concepts and compare them with an unconceptualized external reality. He doesn't deny SOM so much as he denies that S can have access to O.
Steve: What Rorty says is that objective reality as metaphysics is something that he can't make sense of as anything more than a useful tool. You won't find him saying "the objective reality does not exist!" because to do so would amount to saying that it is objectively true that there is nothing to this objectivity business. You shouldn't be looking for him to say that. Even Pirsig denies denying that objective reality exists. So should you or you will face some uncomfortable questions like, is this truth that objective reality does not exist found or made? If it is found, you affirm objectivity. If it is "MADE true in experience," as you like to say, how is that done? How do we VERIFY (in James's sense of making true) that objective reality does not exist? Rorty accepts the assertion "Most of the world is as it is whatever we think about it (that is, our beliefs have very limited causal efficacy)." He accepts it in the same way Pirsig accepts it "not as an article of metaphysical faith but simply as a belief that we have never had any reason to doubt." He would agree with the MOQ which "does not deny the traditional scientific view of reality as composed of material substance and independent of us. It says it is an extremely high quality idea. We should follow it whenever it is practical to do so." Along similar lines, when someone asserts, "There is something out there in addition to the world called 'the truth about the world'" Rorty says he can't make any sense of it let alone affirm it or deny it. For all this "objective reality" business, Rorty just says that it is part of a Platonic vocabulary that he won't say is either objectively true or false. Asking what you are asking is begging the question in favor of the Platonist vocabulary. Rorty just says that that vocabulary used to be useful but is no longer useful. That is how you should answer unless you are prepared to say how it is "MADE true in experience" that objective reality does not exist. (This is Harris's objection to pragmatism by the way.) Alternatively, following James, you could say that the assertion that objective reality exists is true to whatever extent believing in it leads to successful action. But I don't see how a pragmatist can coherently claim what you are looking for Rorty to say. DMB quotes Rorty: > "There is no way to hold the world in one hand and our descriptions of it in > the other and compare the two." (Rorty, 1981:180) Steve: I think you ought to see this as a nice attack on correspondence theory. He is saying why it is incoherent to talk about comparing a bit of language to a bit of reality. He is accepting the SOM picture for the sake of argument to do a rudectio ad adsurdum just as James did with “this tertium quid intermediate between the facts per se, on the one hand, and all knowledge of them, actual or potential, on the other” DMB quotes Rorty: > "There is no point in raising questions of truth ...because between ourselves > and the thing judged there always intervenes mind, language, a perspective > chosen among dozens, on description chosen out thousands." (Rorty, 1976:67) Steve: That sounds pretty damning but it also isn't Rorty's philosophy. You'd have scored a big hit on Rorty as a Kantian if Rorty had been talking about himself in this sentence, but he was not. He was talking about Santayana's study of transcendentalism which he traced back to Kant. (Next time could you save me the trouble of looking up the context yourself?) DMB quotes Rorty: > "The notion of a 'theory of knowledge' will not make sense unless we have > confused causation with justification in the manner of Locke." (Rorty, > 1979:152) DMB comments: That last one is the most interesting. As I read it, Rorty thinks we can only have a casual relationship with the world, a brute physical relationship with the world, but we can never use that world to justify our beliefs because there is no way to get outside our language. And of course this is how he lands on the view that there can be no restraints on justification except conversational constraints. Steve: I'm not sure what this means, but if he is saying Locke is confused, this is certainly NOT an example of accepting Locke's metaphysical realms of mental substance and material substance. As for the ability or inability to "use the world to justify beliefs," this is a big can of worms. I think your question relies on the subject-object picture that you accuse Rorty of maintaining. There is never "the world" on one hand and linguistic justifications of beliefs on the other. You are right that Rorty doesn't see any value in the notion of getting outside language. Nor do I, but I do recognize that Pirsig clearly does. I agree with Rorty, pace Pirsig, that the notion is incoherent once we drop the subject-object picture. While Pirsig sees the mystic as saying that the fundamental nature of reality is outside of language, Rorty is saying that that notion is incoherent unless you imagine reality in one hand, you on the other, and language as what James sarcastically called a tertium quid intermediate between the two. Since, as Wittgenstein said, "It is only in language that one can mean something by something," how could it mean anything to talk about a fundamental nature of reality that is outside of language? Language is a part of reality, and so are you. How could you ever talk about which bits of reality are infused with language and which ones are "pure" without using language to do it and spoiling the whole endeavor? This isn't a *failure* of language to be adequate to reality unless your view of language is one of correspondence. Dewey offered an alternative view of language as a tool where this question about comparing language to the fundamental nature of reality simply never comes up. In the Deweyan view, language doesn't fail to adequately represent (this is your misread of Rorty as a dissapointed positivist) when it is not seen as representation of something else at all. Language for Dewey is a tool like a hammer about which we would never think to ask "does it adequately correspond?" For Rorty it is even more like an extention of yourself than a tool that can be separated from yourself. A person is not something distinct from her thoughts. "One can use language," says Rorty, "to criticise and enlarge itself, as one can exercise one’s body to develop and strengthen and enlarge it." Trying to compare language to something else that is outside of language is in this analogy an attempt to step out of your own skin. Why would anyone who has already dropped the correspondence notion even think of trying to do that? 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
