I've often wondered at the antipathy towards Royce by dmb, but then I also have wondered at his rejection of Rorty as well. Because in many ways, I see the congruence that Matt Kundert has provided and explicated. Came across this:
Royce and Wittgenstein on the Context of Privacy Robert Burch The upshot of this "private language argument" of Wittgenstein is that language is essentially a public, social phenomenon that requires for its cogency a backdrop of shared verbal practice in a community of interpretation and communication. Wittgenstein's position was thought for about two decades to be entirely new in the history of philosophy and was often cited to sustain the image of Wittgenstein as a mysterious genius who ex nihilio created vistas of the philosophical spirit almost beyond the ken of ordinary mortals. Perpetrators of the Wittgenstein legend might have softened down their hagiography if they had been more closely acquainted than they were with classical American Philosophy, for argumentation and doctrines similar to Wittgenstein's can be found in several of the classical American thinkers. Dewey is a prominent example, as Quine has noted in his own John Dewey Lectures. Even those philosophers, however, who are knowledgeable about classical American thought may still not realize how early in the course of its development ideas similar to Wittgenstein's were elaborated. By at least 1885, as we shall see, Josiah Royce, in arguing for his idealist thesis of the Universal Consciousness, had developed a position about the context of privacy that is remarkably like Wittgenstein's. ... at bottom the interests of both philosophers center about the same phenomena -- meaning, error, and truth-- and they have remarkably similar doctrines about these matters. Both philosophers consider these phenomena incoherent in the context of privacy, and for similar reasons. Both philosophers insist, moreover, that meaning, error and truth depend for their cogency on a community of understanding." Sounds like a conversation to me. John 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
