dmb said to Matt:
As I understand it, psychological nominalism has nothing to do with radical
empiricism and I really don't see how it's at all plausible to assert that
they are somehow parallel. ... Radical empiricism is not making any claims that
would be at odds with what Sellars is doing.
Matt replied:
Yes, indeed, I agree. You appear to have thought that I was wielding
psychological nominalism as an attack on radical empiricism. Either that's a
mistake in what you've thought I've been suggesting for a few years, or I don't
yet understand what you think the difference is between them that makes a
difference.
dmb says:
No, I don't see it as an attack on radical empiricism. Again, I don't see how
they are even related, let alone parallel to each other. You say that you don't
see any difference that makes a difference and I'm saying they are not even
similar. You think they are close enough that one could replace the other but I
think apples and oranges have more in common.
Matt said:
Yes, Sellars--as Rorty points out in Philosophy and the Mirror of Nature--has
some residual scientism that we're gonna' want to toss out. And, generally
speaking, I thought you wanted us to look beyond the tone and temperament of a
thinker at the content of their thought? Isn't that what you keep telling me
about you?
dmb says:
Well, there are two different ideas. One is just about being polite in
conversation but that's relatively trivial compared with the philosopher's
temperament. For both Pirsig and James, their central goal is to integrate two
basic temperaments. Classic and Romantic, empiricist and rationalist,
tough-minded and tender-minded, seekers of the many and seekers of the One,
Aristoteleans and Platonists, geeks and freaks, nerds and artsy fartsies. A
man's vision is the most important thing about him, James says. These two
styles answer different needs and those answers appeal to different types. This
is a matter of degree, of course, and hardly anyone is just one or the other.
That's what I'm talking about with respect to Sellars in particular and
analytic philosophers in general.
See, you've attached yourself to the kind of pragmatism that comes out of the
analytic school. They're coming out of the positivist tradition, out of logical
empiricism and guys like Sellars and Rorty are basically attacking the goals of
positivism and sensory empiricism. The basic focus was on the scientific
analysis of language and so Sellars' attack on the myth of the given is all
about saying why that's a misguided goal. It simply doesn't speak to radical
empiricism, which levels its own attack on Cartesian dualism and traditional
empiricism. As you may recall, Pirsig attacks traditional empiricism because it
fancied itself to be anti-metaphysical but, he says, they rejected a whole
range of empirical realities for metaphysical reasons. He says they weren't
empirical enough. The post-positivists don't want anything to do with
empiricism and the classical pragmatists move in the opposite direction.
Sellars's "residual scientism" can be seen as symptomatic of the whole tone and
temperament of these analytic types. You can see it in the labels they wear;
verbal behaviorism, eliminative materialism, non-reductive physicalism, and in
the general tendency to equate brains and minds and otherwise rely on a kind of
scientific functionalism. And so, to my mind, it's only natural that you'd have
a hard time equating that sort of pragmatism with the vision James and Pirsig
lay out. They are both quite fond of the empirical, tough-minded side of things
but also both had their romantic buddies, John Sutherland and Josiah Royce, and
they were both very interested in the mystical experience. That's gonna be
jarring to anyone who subscribes to scientism or settles upon material
explanations for consciousness.
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