Hi all,
I know dmb already checked out on this discussion, by I just came
across an essay by R.A. Putnam in a collection called "The Revival of
Pragmatism" that I thought had some interesting things to say in
distinguishing James and Pirsig from Dewey for anyone else who is
interested. The article is called "The Moral Impulse."
Putnam:
"But do we have free will? How is one to deal with this question? Here
James and Dewey diverge. For James, the determinism or indeterminism
alternative is what he called a genuine option, that is, both
alternatives attract us (they are "live" for us, he would say).
Nevertheless, we must choose one of the other (we cannot suspend
belief), and accepting one of the alternatives will have serious
consequences in our lives."
Steve interrupts:
Note how Putnam is taking the opposite position here from what I
recently quoted from the SEP with regard to the pragmatic consequences
of free will versus determinism.("When philosophers suppose that free
will and determinism are in conflict, James responds that once we
compare the practical consequences of determinism being true with the
practical consequences of our possessing freedom of the will, we find
that there is no conflict.")
It would seem that intelligent educated people can disagree on such
matters without having to think that one is a "hack" or "wildly
incoherent," etc.
Putnam continued:
"Yet James also believed that the question of whether we have free
will cannot be settled on intellectual grounds. Consequently, it is
the sort of question one is entitled to answer on passional grounds;
James asserts he has free will."
Steve:
This argument above is made in James's "The Will to Believe."
Putnam:
"In contrast, Dewey holds that the question of whether we have free
will arises out of a radically false worldview--a dualism that regards
the moral agent as separate and different from the natural world and
takes the world to be deterministic. Dewey takes it that the free will
issue disappears once that radically false wordview is rejected."
Steve:
That "radically false worldview" is of course what Pirsig calls
"subject-object metaphysics." Once we drop the subject-object picture,
I agree with Dewey that "do we have free will?" is not a question that
we can get all anxious about. But clearly James sought to drop that
picture and was nevertheless still all anxious about free will...
Putnam:
"Lest I be misunderstood, I want to state quite clearly that James
also rejected the dualistic view in all its ramifications.
Nevertheless, James took the metaphysical question seriously, while
Dewey replaced it with concrete questions concerning the amount of
actual freedom, or open alternatives, that the social or political
environs of a given agent permit in a world that, as quantum physics
teaches, is not deterministic."
Steve:
But why would a pragmatist feel like he needs to take the metaphysical
question so seriously? Doesn't that run against his pragmatism?
Undoubtedly, though, Pirsig also took the metaphysical question more
seriously than Dewey or Rorty (or I do).
James's anxiety about the issue seems to be consistent with Pirsig's...
Putnam:
"James argued that he could not understand the willingness to act
morally, at great cost to oneself, unless one believed that moral
values were objective, and that moral values would not be objective if
the world were deterministic."
Steve:
Personally, I don't understand being anxious about the metaphysical
grounding of morals or truth or freedom while rejecting the
subject-object picture (which is the one that demands such grounding
for morals, beauty, truth,and freedom for them to be taken seriously).
But I think therein lies some significant tension between a
Jamesian-Pirsigian pragmatism and a Deweyan-Rortian pragmatism and why
I tend toward the Rortian side of such debates. I think James the
psychologist would understand it as a tempermental thing.
For some of us, all that is needed to cure us of our Cartesian anxiety
(that "oh my God! Do we even know _anything_? Anything at all???" sort
of suffering) is to drop the subject-object picture. Once we make the
Copernican inversion suggested by Pirsig back in ZAMM, "is the Quality
in the subject or in the object?," "am I really just a brain in a
vat?," "is morality absolute or relative?," and "do we really have
free will or is it just an illusion?" are all questions that no longer
seem important. They are dissolved to the point where you wonder why
you asked to begin with.
For others, that old Cartesian anxiety somehow remains even after
dropping the subject-object picture. I don't understand why, but
additional metaphysical therapy is still needed for these people. This
seems to be where the "radical empiricism" of James and Pirsig comes
in to save the day. I tend to see it as a back-slide into the old
Platonic appearance-reality thing, but for others it seems to give
existential comfort with regard to the scourges of relativism, radical
skepticism, and free will--anxieties that, at least for me, have
already been dissolved with the Copernican shift without having to
resort to talk about what experience is more primary than what other
experience.
Best,
Steve
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