Hi DMB, > dmb says: ... I do not think Rortyism has any positive program. That's the area where the two circles do not overlap in our venn diagram. I don't think it's your mistake. Lots of things have led me to this conclusion. This doesn't mean that Rorty has absolutely no answers or suggestions about what to do next. I'm drawing this conclusion based on his most famous assertions, ones that you've articulated over the years and that I also find in books and articles. Specifically, I mean the slogan, his view that truth is not something we should have theories about, that we ought not be doing epistemology. And the answers he does provide to take their place - conversation, ethnocentrism, intersubjective agreement - are answers that I take to be a form of relativism. That's really my case in a nutshell. As you can see, this case is more or less predicated on the idea that Rortyism is overwhelmingly negative and the positive side, such as it is, amounts to relativism.
Steve: I suppose this depends on what you are willing to count as something positive.Rorty didn't just get us to stop asking bad questions but also offered better alternatives: http://www.atheistichope.com/ "The Pragmatic Method of Pierce and James was to ask about the consequences of holding beliefs in experiential terms. The method of Rorty's pragmatism which focuses on language rather than experience seems to be to say, "instead of asking X, try asking question Y instead. And note that someone who is concerned with Y never bothers to ask X." Applying this method Rorty demonstrates that the above philosophical bugbears are not at all questions that we are forced to ask as part of the human condition or essential human nature. For example, Rorty asks us to stop asking whether our beliefs correctly represent reality. Stop thinking of knowledge as concerned with representing reality at all. Instead try thinking of knowledge as concerned with using reality. If we drop the ocular metaphor for knowledge as a "mental eye" trying to perceive an object, we also drop the idea that our sense organs or our thoughts intervene between the mind and true knowledge of the object as it really is beyond appearances. Instead pragmatists would like to substitute the metaphor of the sense organs and language as ways of manipulating the object. Knowledge is not thought of as being in the right relationship to the essence of the object but as being able to use the object. Knowledge is power, as Bacon said. Language is the way we wield such power. Language is then never seen as distorting the true picture an object but instead as scratches and noises that are done to achieve specific purposes. Some sentences are more useful than others. Knowledge is not thought of as representational but rather as a tool that is useful for certain purposes, so it can't fail to truly represent "The Thing in Itself" because it never represents at all. Thus Rorty replaces the appearance-reality distinction with the difference between more or less useful descriptions. The question "do our ideas about reality correctly hook up with reality?" is then replaced with the question "have we been creative enough to come up with better alternatives to our current beliefs?" When we are concerned with the latter question, we never need to ask the former. It is only in starting with the assumption that you are not in touch with reality that you need metaphysics to help you get in touch with reality. Rorty's take on language as a tool makes it impossible to imagine being out of touch with reality. All we can do is the equivalent of using of hammer for a job where a screwdriver would be more appropriate. We are still right to think that something must be off with someone who keeps trying to use the wrong tool for the job when a clearly better one has been offered, but we shouldn't say that she is out of touch with reality in the metaphysical sense. She's just making a bad choice in intellectual tools--one that is less likely to lead her to successful action. Rorty makes me wonder why I would have ever thought that someone can get more in touch with reality by coming up with descriptions of reality when sentences can only relate things to other things and no particular one of these such relations gets you any closer to the essence of a thing than any other. By giving up the Greek appearance-reality distinction and replacing it the pragmatic idea of more or less useful descriptions of the world, we can stop worrying about whether our beliefs are well-grounded in metaphysical first principles and instead concern ourselves with whether or not we can come up with better alternatives to our current beliefs. Can our future be made better than our present? Can we imagine new ways to diminish human suffering and increasing the ability of all human children to start life with an equal chance at happiness? We can stop worrying about whether we are in touch with reality and focus instead on changing it." Rorty's project was not merely negative. Looking at it that way would be to look at Pirsig's "yes, but is it any good?" as negative. 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
