Hi dmb, > dmb says: > The pragmatic theory of truth is a form of empiricism and it says that truth > is a form of the good. So your assertion, that "empiricism has no pragmatic > value", strike me as pretty bizarre. It's just one more unexplained and > unsupported blanket condemnation of empiricism.
Steve: Empiricism is a term sometimes opposed to rationalism and sometimes opposed to realism but a separate question from pragmatism which simply suggests that we gain clarity of thought through understanding meaning in terms of practice--by dissolving the difference between "what it is" and "what it does." When I say that empiricism has no pragmatic value with regard to the issue of relativism, I am referring to the fact that my experience is not the same as your experience or the experience of a 10th century Austrian monk. We don't get around relativism by pointing to experience when experience is relative to the person having the experience in a given time and place and interpreted within a given set of static patterns. dmb: > And isn't it totally obvious that having epistemological standards would > prevent relativism? Steve: Everyone has epistemological standards. The question of relativism is about whose standards are the correct ones. Claiming to be an empiricist doesn't help with that question. dmb: >Any kind of empiricism is going to include such > standards and this is certainly true of radical empiricism and pragmatism. > Of course empiricism matters. You'd have to have some mighty powerful > arguments to dismiss the authority of experience, wouldn't you? Steve: Nothing of course prevents Rorty from saying things like, "How can I be so sure that the cat is on the mat? Look over there. See for yourself." No one has to adopt a particular philosophical position with regard to empiricism over rationalism or whatever to make such noises. If saying such things as that makes Rorty an empiricist in your book, fine. But then again, you have nothing over Rorty that puts you in a position to call him a relativist. There is no sort of moral argument that you can make that he could not. You can claim no ahistorical, transcultural, noncontingent method of judgment that he didn't have. Rorty is still a relativist in the eyes of the SOM absolutist, but how an MOQer or pragmatist would see fit to make the charge is beyond me since "is it absolute or relative?" is just another version of "is it subjective or objective?"--an SOM question you should have dropped long ago. 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
