dmb said:
...Teed Rockwell wants to say that Rorty makes an unwarranted leap from one to
the other and that it's perfectly plausible to say that
astronomers can do astronomy without looking for crystalline spheres and, by
the same token, philosophers can have truth theories without search for thee
Truth. ... Rorty would look at James's theory of truth and say that it's not
really of theory of truth because it provides no promise of thee Truth.
Matt replied:
No, he would say it's not a theory of _truth_ because it is a theory of
_knowledge_, i.e. of justification, the dynamic of a live being ascribing truth
to sentences, a live being deciding to believe or not. This is what Rorty
thinks the analytic conversation has helped sharpen in a good way--the
understanding that we cannot collapse truth into justification, as Dewey and
James sometimes seem to suggest. I guess what I don't understand is what you
think a "theory of truth" is or an "epistemology" is, an understanding against
which I could judge whether Rorty has one or not.
dmb says:
Well, the objection you've articulated here is just a slightly more specific
version of the leap referred to in Rockwell's analogy. To say James's theory is
only about justification and not about truth is to assert a certain definition
of truth, one that says that truth is something over and above justification.
That kind of truth is the crystalline sphere in his analogy. But James
re-conceptualized the meaning of truth such that it can only ever be what's
justified in experience. For James, truth can never be anything more than that
and so he is not looking for anything over and above that. To say that James
doesn't really have a theory of truth because it collapses truth and
justification is to say he is not doing astronomy because he's not looking for
crystalline spheres.
There is no need to redefine the basic meaning of the term "epistemology". It's
still a theory about the nature of knowledge and truth and it still has some
standards for what is and is not true. It's just that "true" is not a Platonic
notion in this theory. It's a pragmatic notion about what's good in the way of
beliefs and this kind of truth can never be anything more than its concrete
verification in experience, its ability to successful leadings and doings. I
mean, James doesn't just sometimes seem to collapse truth and justification.
That collapse is central to his theory of truth and it's quite intentional.
Once you divest yourself of Platonic truth or get rid of the idea that truth is
about reality whereas opinions are about appearances, then what could truth
mean beyond this lived justification? Since your analytic objection is
predicated on the notion that truth and justification can NOT be collapsed, I'd
like to know why not? Why doesn't that distinction collapse under the weight of
anti-Platonism? These are not rhetorical questions. I'd like to know how you
think this distinction survives anti-Platonism. Why continue to assert that
truth is something other than beliefs that prove themselves in our experience?
(This is another way of asking why we should define the question in terms of
the failed answers?)
dmb said:
...Is it not true that he's given up on truth theories and epistemology
altogether? Isn't that why his answers take the shape they do. Is this not the
center of his vision?
Matt replied:
As I've been attempting to intimate, no, that is not true. It is based on a
deformation of the meaning Rorty was after in his slogans (and, partly, on real
shifts in his thinking). As I suggested, to figure out whether Rorty has given
up on "truth theories" depends on your definition, likewise for epistemology.
I've struggled to see the point behind your oscillation between "Rorty gives up
on truth theories" and "why don't we give up his _definition_, like James and
Pirsig do." ...
dmb says:
I really don't understand this denial. I mean, doesn't Rorty explicitly say
that we to ought to give up on epistemology and truth theories? Haven't you
quoted him many times saying that? Isn't that what Ramberg's article for the
SEP says about Rorty? I find your denials on this point to be pretty
incredible. In that article Ramberg says that Rorty view is married to a
certain picture of the mind. He says, "it is not surprising that Rorty's
commitment to epistemological behaviorism should lead to charges of relativism
or subjectivism. Indeed, many ...balk at the idea that there are no constraints
on knowledge save conversational ones. Yet this is a central part of Rorty's
position".
Here's a little of the surrounding context of those remarks:
"Epistemology, in Rorty's account, is wedded to a picture of mind's structure
working on empirical content to produce in itself items—thoughts,
representations—which, when things go well, correctly mirror reality. ... The
upshot of Quine's and Sellars' criticisms of the myths and dogmas of
epistemology is, Rorty suggests, that "we see knowledge as a matter of
conversation and of social practice, rather than as an attempt to mirror
nature." (PMN 171) Rorty provides this view with a label: "Explaining
rationality and epistemic authority by reference to what society lets us say,
rather than the latter by the former, is the essence of what I shall call
‘epistemological behaviorism,’ an attitude common to Dewey and Wittgenstein."
(PMN 174)
Epistemological behaviorism leaves no room for the kind of
practice-transcending legitimation that Rorty identifies as the defining
aspiration of modern epistemology. Assuming that epistemic practices do, or at
least can, diverge, it is not surprising that Rorty's commitment to
epistemological behaviorism should lead to charges of relativism or
subjectivism. Indeed, many who share Rorty's historicist scepticism toward the
transcending ambitions of epistemology—friendly critics like Hilary Putnam,
John McDowell and Daniel Dennett—balk at the idea that there are no constraints
on knowledge save conversational ones. Yet this is a central part of Rorty's
position, repeated and elaborated as recently as in TP and PCP. Indeed, in TP
he invokes it precisely in order to deflect this sort of criticism. In "Hilary
Putnam and the Relativist Menace," Rorty says:
In short, my strategy for escaping the self-referential difficulties into which
"the Relativist" keeps getting himself is to move everything over from
epistemology and metaphysics into cultural politics, from claims to knowledge
and appeals to self-evidence to suggestions about what we should try. (TP 57)
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